Those of you who were unable to attend yesterday’s Outsource Talks webinar – and, sadly, there are well over 7 billion of ye poor unfortunates – missed possibly the best installment yet, with four of outsourcing’s finest coming together to discuss our writing competition, GBS, the value of education and networking, analytics – and, mostly, RPA and its transformative impact upon the global outsourcing space.
The hybrid cloud model is here to stay for the foreseeable future. While a full public cloud infrastructure has worked well for some pure-play digital companies such as Netflix, most enterprises are finding that in spite of the benefit, not all workloads should move to the cloud. In fact, not all workloads can.
One of the most famous figures in the global outsourcing arena, Kate Vitasek is also – not coincidentally – one of Outsource’s most popular contributors, having graced our pages with both her regular column (examining lessons to be learnt by the sourcing and outsourcing community from renowned academics and thought leaders from elsewhere in business) and standalone articles for over five years.
It seems like there isn’t a day which goes by at the moment without a new robotic invention in the news, with promises around how these inventions will not only revolutionise our lives, but threaten our jobs.
In the outsourcing sector robots are most definitely on the way, or in some cases, already here. And it is, therefore, vital that businesses operating in this sector seriously consider how some robotic processes can enhance their operations – there’s no doubt competitors are also considering the same issue.
Almost twenty years ago, my son responded to the ubiquitous inquiry “What do you want to be when you grow up?” His interlocutor was his Italian godfather (the Milanese not the Sopranos variety). There were certain implicit cultural expectations about the response, the godfather being both a lawyer, an aristocrat and an exceptionally cultured Renaissance-man: doctor, lawyer at one end of the spectrum, bookended by painter, composer at the other with the (yes, stereotypical) accommodation to age and gender of train driver somewhere in-between.
The third Wednesday of every month – specifically, at 3pm UK time – is rapidly becoming a regular high point on my personal schedule – “Why?”, I hear you ask (the NSA have lent me some really cool eavesdropping kit…).
Today companies are being exposed to a changing business landscape due to macro-economic factors, greater-than-ever globalisation, and rapid advancements in technology.
The global economy is recovering but still sluggish. Companies have been engaging in significant cost savings and restructuring initiatives over the past several years to meet shareholder expectations. But business leaders are now beginning to realise that they cannot cut their way to growth. So companies now have a greater appetite to invest in developing new products, services and market reach.
Outsourcing providers consistently create and deliver quality services that are capable of beating in-house offers across the board – yet many organisations remain reluctant to use outsourcing to its full potential.
This tends to be the common complaint from outsourcers.
As companies have started to internalise (and for that matter, practice) the triple bottom line concept of sustainability, the focus now has shifted to issues beyond their walls of operations and manufacturing. In the world of outsourcing, globalisation and interdependence of suppliers, companies must look into making their supply chains more sustainable.
‘Advice For The Offshoring And Outsourcing Young At Heart’
by Fear of Gears[1]
Advice for the outsourcing young at heart
Soon we will be older
How are we going to make it work?[2]
Too many vendors living in a secret world
While they play movers and shakers,
We play digital in a whirl.[3]
How are we going to make it work?[4]
I could be happy; I could be quite naïve
Just labour arbitrage in my shadow, happy in a make-believe[5]
Soon…
We know that digital processes create leaner, more agile operations, not to mention financial and time savings. So why are so many businesses still unable to part with the millions of pieces of paper which are printed across the globe each year, despite the fact that the majority of this paper will be used once, then thrown or filed away?
University of London Professor David Faulkner has written extensively about the need for cooperative, rather than purely competitive, strategic business relationships and alliances. Since the early 1990s Faulkner has studied the “essence” of competitive strategy, and the challenges involved in integrating cooperation as part of the competitive mindset. One of his books is International Strategic Alliances: Cooperating to Compete (1995). The strategies of cooperation has been his most common theme.
Earlier today, I had the honour of delivering the final presentation at the Sourcing Industry Group (SIG)‘s latest London Regional Roundtable – this time round, actually, a joint effort with the wonderful folks at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), which also comprised the ACTE London Corporate Travel Procurement Forum.
I often get asked whether managed service is just hype and nothing but glorified “time and material” (T&M) in a different guise. Usually we understand a managed service to be measured, and paid for, based on a pre-defined effort and output for the work in hand, as opposed to T&M which is a simple calculation of the amount of time taken multiplied by the rate card value, plus the cost of any materials consumed. The simple answer is that it is hype if it is not done properly.
Three blogs in already and we have yet to tackle the elephant in the room: what precisely is robotic process automation (RPA)?
