PULSE Magazine | IAOP's e-zine takes you deep into outsourcing with the latest ideas, advice, knowledge, and best practices, and turns the conventional upside down with stories designed to engage, inspire and challenge you. With editorial content from the leading thinkers and doers in the outsourcing industry, you’ll have the know-how, tools and resources to succeed as a new professional in today’s global economy.
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MOST POPULAR ARTICLES
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Certified Outsourcing Professional® (COP) 
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Reducing the Complexities of Scaling Ecommerce in China 3
View from the C-Suite: Rhonda Vetere, CTO, Estée Lauder Companies, Inc. 4
C–S–R You Ready? An IAOP Webinar 5
Innovation in Outsourcing: The Case of The Procter & Gamble Company 6
Show Me the Money 7
Key Components of an Outsourcing Agreement 8
The State of Tools & Technology in The Outsourcing Industry 9
Socially Responsible Outsourcing: Doing Good While Doing Well 10
The Rise of Legal Services Outsourcing
Sense of Urgency | Taking a genuine interest in another person, especially a client, means that you need to go the extra mile, be a bit vulnerable and transparent and most of all, behave in a manner that communicates that they are a priority. More »
Atos Journey 2022 | The relentless evolution of opportunities and challenges presented by digital technologies, brings a corresponding business imperative for continuous digital transformation. But, the waves of disruptive change and the accompanying divergent choices they often present, can introduce unanticipated complications and uncertainties. We describe these as Digital Dilemmas. Businesses that understand the nature of these dilemmas and their options for resolution will be the ones that flourish on the journey to 2022 and beyond. More »
Agile Insourcing | A significant number of US based enterprises are bringing a portion of their outsourced work back into their internal technology function. At the same time, we are seeing significant growth in the nature and volume of work handles by 'captives' - a term spanning Global Inhouse Centers (GICs), Shared Services Organizations (SSOs) and Global Business Services (GBS) hubs. In our experience, the largest portion of thins 'insourcing' or reversal of past decisions to outsource is occurring by moving work to offsite captives with the remainder back to onsite locations. A considerable proportion of this insourcing has been centered around Applications Development. More »
Establishing a Strategic Business Case for Enterprise IT Automation | Current IT automation initiatives often focus on IT cost and productivity, rather than on comprehensive business value creation. Consequently, enterprise expectations around cost reduction tend to be highly unrealistic, leading to dissatisfaction.
Above all, IT automation strategy anchored to IT cost metrics leaves significant business value on the table. With effective prioritization, IT automation strategy, formulated as part of a broader IT modernization and business transformation strategy, has the potential to deliver breakthrough value such as superior customer experience, new revenue channels, faster time to market, and monetization of digital assets.
However, IT automation cannot be the sole driver of business outcomes. To achieve desired value, IT automation adoption needs to be supported by appropriate business process reengineering and change management initiatives. More »
Key Trends Shaping and Disrupting the Landscape of Global Services Locations | Multiple forces are driving unprecedented disruption of existing service delivery locations, including disruptive technologies, intensifying competition for talent, evolving customer preferences, pressure on growth and margins, and geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties. In the face of these challenges, enterprises are significantly transforming their service delivery organizations – a critical part of which is their delivery locations portfolio strategies.
During this interactive session, industry peers and Everest Group experts covered top strategic trends shaping global delivery locations strategies. Attendees also heard first-hand perspectives from senior industry practitioners on key likely disruptions (e.g., automation, platforms, agile) for service delivery portfolios expected in the next 2-3 years, and how they plan to tackle these challenges to ensure survival and sharpen competitive advantage. More »
The Latest Trends in IT Services – Four Prescriptions to Make Digital Real | The IT services market is in a state of constant flux. Digital technologies, the explosion of data, and innovations in the technology startup ecosystem are changing thinking in the C-suite across industries. Based on our popular PEAK Matrix™ assessments, this webinar provides a view into the most important shifts taking place in sourcing of services and technologies. It offers the analysis and insights you need to make critical decisions about key elements of your digital services strategy, addressing issues such as how different industries are approaching digital technology adoption; what digital is and how it differs from traditional IT services; and where growth in the IT services market expected to come from and how it potentially informs your strategy. More »
Decoding the Principles of Modern Software Engineering | Enterprises are driving software-led transformation across products, services, and internal operations. Be it delivery of a seamless user experience, enhancement of operational efficiencies, or introduction of new features in their offerings, the role of software in enabling enterprise innovation and transformation is more pronounced today.
As software proliferation grows across industries, enterprises are increasingly realizing the need to shorten the software development life cycle and make it a more iterative process. They also need to create customizable and scalable offerings in line with the evolving customer expectations around personalization, connectivity, and security. Enterprises can address these objectives by integrating modern engineering principles into their software engineering efforts. In this whitepaper, we discuss these principles and the changes in software architecture, engineering practices, and technologies they necessitate. We also measure enterprise adoption and understand the challenges associated with adopting these principles. Finally, we assess how leading service providers are collaborating with enterprises and helping them create modular and scalable software in shorter development life cycles.
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Decoding Organizational DNA | Companies are waking up to an untapped source of business growth: vast amounts of new data on work and the workforce that can unlock the potential of their people. This data—now available through a range of digital innovations—is both a goldmine and a minefield.
On one hand, value as far as the eye can see: employees who are more motivated, engaged and highly productive. On the other, the potential for misuse of data: individual rights ignored, employment wrongfully terminated and employees’ skills underutilized. More »
The Wise Pivot | Disruption by digital technologies?
That’s not a new story.
What is new is “the wise pivot”, a pragmatic and replicable approach for harnessing disruption to survive, grow, and remain relevant, both today and tomorrow.
Pivot to the Future introduces business leaders to the tools they need for perpetual reinvention. It’s a battle-tested framework that helps businesses usher in new offerings and scale innovations, while simultaneously revitalizing their current businesses. More »
Future Systems | When we envisioned the Future of Applications back in 2014,1 we defined three groundbreaking strategies for applications in a world in which technology-driven disruption had become the norm.
Centered around the concepts of liquid, intelligent, and connected applications, we predicted these strategies would transform core applications and power the high-velocity, software-driven companies of today.
We now see these strategies adopted widely. With liquid applications, companies are assembling reusable components and modular architectures with a cloud-first mindset. Intelligent applications are maximizing business data through machine learning and analytics. And connected applications are providing the technological foundation for new kinds of business, partner, and customer interactions. More »
Intelligent Process Automation | Predictions for the immediate and not too distant future all point in the same direction – putting your client at the heart of all operational activities will further erode organizational silos around the front, middle, and back office, leading to the emergence of new, borderless, client-centric organizations that can optimize the way value creation is executed. More »
Five Traits of Effective Digital Transformation Leadership: Key Takeaways from 500+ Senior IT Executives | Effective digital transformation requires a range of strategic, organizational, operational, cultural, and talent-related actions to achieve business success. What are the necessary leadership dynamics and characteristics required to take on digital transformation?
Based upon insights derived from surveying over 500 senior IT leaders across the globe, covering topics such as next-generation infrastructure and cybersecurity, we’ve identified a handful of critical qualifications required to lead successful digital transformation journeys.
The webinar content is geared toward global enterprise stakeholders responsible for leading IT and related digital transformation efforts, including Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), Chief Digital Officers (CDOs), and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs/CSOs). Attendees will walk away with five key traits required to lead successful digital transformations. More »
How to Make Business Innovation Become Routine | The success of modern enterprises depends on their ability to transform according to the current technological trends. For many reasons, sometimes it’s not easy to update your business processes. Here is when outsourcing of innovations can become a proper solution. More »
The Modern Workplace: The Importance and Benefits of Good Communication and Collaboration in Today’s Business | Modern business cooperation is working with customers, suppliers, partners, and subordinates. Success of the business largely depends on the established communication processes. That is why it is important to set them up with maximal effectiveness. More »
Automate Outsourcing Governance to Drive Competitive Advantage | Large corporations have been using outsourcing as a business transformation tool for decades. Although the service delivery is transferred to the vendor, the accountability remains with the client organization to ensure risks are managed, and the promised value is delivered. This is where Outsourcing Governance teams come into the picture.
Organizations have performed outsourcing governance in silos and mostly manually. The outsourcing governance teams are usually understaffed and lack the tools to manage the engagements effectively.
This fragmented and completely manual approach results in significant loss of the value expected from outsourcing engagments. What organizations need is a tool that can automate the outsourcing governance function and help maximize value. More »