Business Platforms – BPO meets Technology

During our discussion with CPO of Energy & Gas client we were asked to share best practices on auctions. Though the company experienced quick and significant savings from the recent auction projects, there was widespread resistance from his own team as well as supplier community. And the most prominent feedback was due to auctions there's perceived supplier relationship deterioration due to inconsistent, non-standardized auction processes & tools. So it became one of the top priorities of CPO to institutionalize standard auctions process in line with best practices. The CPO was also contemplating whether to opt for SaaS or in-house implementation of auction tool. During our intense discussion the CPO in a lighter mood commented - in view of various alternatives why they can't we should do auction for the 'auction services'. It immediately struck me then while we consider auction as one of the essential negotiation strategy how tempting it is to fall for auctions in most of the negotiation situation.

Continue reading "Can you apply auctions for the 'auction services'?" »

Posted by Gurjeet at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "What you should look into while considering cloud services?" »

Posted by Gurjeet at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While in traditional lift and shift BPO, one of the key activities during any transition is to map the "As-is" processes and create the "To-be" process in an outsourced and/or off-shored model. The success of transition is largely driven by the level of detail in this activity. A Business Platforms based outsourced model presents a different scenario altogether. Here, the delivered functionality within the platform application is largely pre-defined. The "customized" component is a minor element in comparison to the delivered functionality.

Posted by Anirudh Dendukuri at 6:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The ongoing sluggish economic revival has resulted in dilemma to the organizations – whether to be on a full state of alert to thwart any further downtrend or to be in a position of readiness to capture any uptrend in economy.  This sort of conflicting situation demands upon organization to redraft their existing business model and bring in increased element of ‘agility’ and ‘flexibility’ as core to its supply chain gene. Organizations are increasingly looking at alternate business models which can help them in rapidly scaling up or down their cost structure in line with varying business situation and also at the forefront of cutting edge technology coupled with best-in-class processes without going through the conventional pain of multi-year transformational programs with unpredictable outcomes. The next generation of business models necessarily needs to be redrafted in such a way that organizations should achieve higher growth, higher profit and higher asset efficiency. Business Platforms delivered through a managed services model would be a key choice in building the foundation of agile businesses.

Posted by Gurjeet at 2:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some of the paramount reasons that why IT and business process owners are disjointed and are not aligned at the time of outsourcing are:
-          Business outsourcing decisions are typically taken by business units which are decentralized and IT is normally owned by corporate
-          Outsourcing normally focused on cost reduction and process performance with - IT as a constant in the cost equation - thereby missing opportunity on automation and process redefinition
-          Typically BPO service provider puts more effort on standardization from outsourcing perspective and system takes the lowest priority.

Continue reading "Avoid Business and IT 'silos' while outsourcing your processes" »

Posted by Gurjeet at 3:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Vertical Business Platform Services – Pushing the Envelope on the cloud !" »

Posted by Anantha Radhakrishnan at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Business Platforms are nothing but Managed Services on the Cloud !!" »

Posted by Anantha Radhakrishnan at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Green purchasing has shown excellent resilience during current tough economic time and delivered value through sustainable cost savings thereby breaking the myth that – It’s a social obligation and so you have to necessarily pay an extra premium. There are three most important aspects to be considered while detailing out policy for green purchasing – social obligation, environmental impact & economic benefit. Of these the latter – which is directly related to the cost equation needs to be broadened for life cycle costing approach , so the  cost equation not only need to capture cost for energy, waste and duration but also additionally include cost for  repair & maintenance, disposable effort, health & safety compliance thereby offsetting any potential financial and environmental risks to the organization in today’s increased regulatory world.

We have noticed that most of the organizations assessment of carbon footprint is mostly limited to ‘organic buying’, ‘local buying’, ‘eco friendly or 'energy star certification’ and reason for this is that there’s no universal criterion which can be applied to every situation. Buyers need to define green policy for each spend category keeping following broad criteria in mind:
- Look for energy efficiency
- Avoid hazardous, toxic foot print in the product or services
- Conservation for heat, light, water and other natural resources
- Look for refurbishment and recyclability
- Easy disposability like bio-gradable
- Leverage technology automation

This brings us back to the most debated aspect – How compliant your purchasing processes are?
Unless organization leverage technology to embed green policy into its purchasing processes- like green specification & standards, green selection criteria, life cycle costing approach, green clauses in contracts at an enterprise level, it is difficult to comply with green purchasing commitment. It is extremely important for organization to leverage the green technology – eSourcing, eProcurement and eAccount Payable  (which avoid paper heavy manual processes – saving tones of paper) thereby making its purchasing processes not only more effective & efficient but would also ensure complying with green purchasing policies at an enterprise level.

Posted by Gurjeet at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

It is now by and large evident that the next generation BPO will happen on more complicated and knowledge based process outsourcing in a much shorter time span, and organization’s objective would be to attain transformational benefit rather than cost savings alone. The ongoing recession has brought some method in the madness towards outsourcing rush wherein service providers are being challenged to articulate value proposition beyond ‘cost savings’ alone as a long term strategy. Today we are seeing plethora of solutions mushrooming in the provider’s offering list even if they are not solution in real sense. The next generation BPO solution has to primarily address:

-‘Standardization’ to drive savings through shared service model from a low cost location and this invariably can’t be achieved unless the underlying technology layer is seamless
-‘Tailoring’ to address client specific nuances in terms of process, language and skills in an integrated fashion to enable client become more agile to external environment.

Standardization and Tailoring, though sounds conflicting necessarily needs to be in optimal balance and its right mix is key to the success of next generation BPO solution. This would also mean that service providers would need to have a good handle on both process and technology while executing outsourcing for much needed aspired transformational benefits.

Posted by Gurjeet at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "What exactly should a Platform service provider really ‘own’?" »

Posted by Yogesh at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Consider the following two situations for a client organization:
a) Using an on-demand application with the process execution outsourced to a different service provider
b) Is live on a business platform with a single service provider providing IT application & process execution

In both these situations the organization is using services of external providers for provisioning of technology application (infrastructure, hosting, maintenance, support, etc.) as well as business process execution (BPO).

Are the client expectations from BPO service provider in these two situations identical, or does the BPO service provider provide some ‘additional value’ to the client organization in either of these situations?

Continue reading "Is Traditional BPO = (Platform minus on-demand application)?" »

Posted by Yogesh at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)