Insourcing vs. Outsourcing vs. Hybrid Models – What’s best for you?

By Mark Atterby Senior Staff Writer

As the outsourcing and shared services industries continue to grow and evolve, more hybrid arrangements for outsourcing are emerging, where organisations and their providers can adopt and adapt a variety of models to best address their business needs. The Sauce speaks to Ray Slayford, National Lead Partner of Procurement and Shared Services KPMG – at the 14th Australasian Annual Shared Services & Outsourcing Week in Melbourne, about the evolution of the shared services and outsourcing industries.

In the past, outsourcing and shared services were viewed as two very distinct business practices, where numerous debates existed concerning the merits of one versus the other. KPMG’s Ray Slayford comments, “I think the existence and understanding of shared services (in-sourcing) and the various forms of outsourcing (on-shoring, near-shoring and off-shoring) are becoming far more common. We will see greater emergence of hybrid models which will connect insourcing, outsourcing, offshoring and on-shoring with different providers including the cloud and overseas providers.”

The emergence of various hybrid forms of outsourcing and managed services has been identified in various studies. Recent research by the SSON, published in March 2011, identified three types of hybrid models that exist in the market today:

   1. Geographic Hybrid: Involves models where a particular geography may have been outsourced and another intentionally keeps its services within a captive shared service centre (i.e. the Melbourne office of a corporation may have fully outsourced a process while Sydney retains control through the managed service centre. This enables a clear comparison for many processes between what is provided by the captive shared service centre and the outsourcing provider. 
   2. Scope Hybrid: Hybrid models that are separated by scope with non-core, repeatable, measurable, and predictable activities migrating to an outsourcing provider, and activities that are core to the business or cannot be migrated due to data restrictions or culture remaining in a captive shared service centre.
   3. Intermediary Hybrid: Fluid hybrid models where the shared service centre is the intermediary step for processes prior to full outsourcing to the external provider. This allows the internal change management required in pulling activities away from the divisions, departments and subsidiaries to be completed; the activities and procedures stabilised; and the processes understood prior to transferring to the outsourcing provider.

Traditionally, Shared services (In-sourcing as opposed to outsourcing) refered to the provision of a service by one part of an organisation or group where that service had previously been found, to more than one part of the organisation or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the providing department effectively becomes an internal service provider. The key is the idea of ‘sharing’ within an organisation or group i.e. two government departments may share the same HR, Payroll and finance services and infrastructure.

In the past outsourcing and shared services were seen as being diametrically opposed. But the two have become blurred, particularly as commercial enterprises engaged in shared services. The internal department could evolve into being its own commercial entity (profit centre), where the services it provided could be offered to other businesses and organisations, hence becoming an outsourcing provider.

Though the provision of shared services and outsourcing are very different models, where there are constant debates about the merits of both, there is an increasing view that they can harmoniously co-exist. The development of hybrid models, that combines the benefits of insourcing and outsourcing, allows organisations to maintain control and migrate from one service to the next.

The Australian shared services market is quite mature, where, over the last twenty years, a lot of private organisations as well as the public sector have explored or developed shared services with different degrees of success. Slayford believes that where Australia is lacking maturity to some extent is in the outsourcing phase and the transitioning from shared services to outsourcing within a hybrid model, he states, “What’s less mature compared to Europe and North America is the outsourcing phase, which is growing at a rapid rate with the emergence of China and Asia as outsourcing destinations.”

“Asia has a lot to offer in terms of talent and resources. They have highly skilled workforces. They have highly educated workforces as well as high English speaking populations. They can provide services that are in high demand where we are experiencing shortages in Australia.” Asia is close and offers Australian organisations, with providers in places like China, Vietnam, the Philippines, as well as India; a number of opportunities in developing cost effective solutions based on hybrid managed services and outsourcing models.

The mainstream view is that outsourcing and shared services should not be viewed as being diametrically opposed to each other. Hybrid models are being developed to leverage the benefits inherent in each, offering organisations greater flexibility and options when it comes to more efficiently managing their business processes.

By Ericka Chickowski

The decline in the global outsourcing market comes from contracts being renegotiated and restructured as clients negotiate for better terms, according to the Global TPI Index.

A new study out last week showed that the global outsourcing market declined significantly over the last year due to companies spending less money renewing deals with their existing outsourcing vendors.

Released by TPI, an Information Services Group company, the first quarter 2011 Global TPI Index showed that the total contract value of commercial outsourcing contracts equaling $25 million or more added up to $17.5 billion during first quarter of 2011. That’s a 28 percent decline over numbers reported in the first quarter of 2010 and 25 percent less than the total contract value recorded in fourth quarter 2010.

Meanwhile, outsourcing reported by companies in the Americas dropped by a precipitous 56 percent year-over-year, though it did pick up some pace in the last quarter, gaining close to 17 percent.

According to TPI, the overall drop in outsourcing is largely attributable to what the company calls restructurings, or contracts that are renewed, renegotiated or restructured. These restructurings saw a drastic reduction of 64 percent year-over-year.

“In recent quarters, unprecedented shares of global TCV involved restructurings,” said John Keppel, president of information services for TPI. “That trend reversed itself in the first quarter, as we forecasted it would, but new scope values were right in line with previous periods.”

TPI found that new outsourcing contracts equaled $14.9 billion last quarter, a number that was unchanged year-over-year and dipped only by about 7 percent from fourth quarter of 2010.

The shifts found by this most recent TPI report point to a potential sea change in the way that companies are outsourcing. The report showed that by type of contract, IT outsourcing values suffered the most in the last year, largely attributable to the reduction in restructurings. TPI found that IT outsourcing contracts dropped by 46 percent from fourth quarter of 2011. Some of that ground, however, is being made up by business process outsourcing.

TPI said business process outsourcing had its second-best quarterly performance in the last two years and increased by 66 percent year-over-year. The firm believes that this strength will help pull out a more substantial total contract value in the coming quarters this year.

“The outlook for the rest of 2011 suggests an industry upswing based on healthy contracting activity and a modest amount of restructuring in the mix,” Keppel said.

“Overall, we are cautiously optimistic about next quarter and more bullish about the second half of 2011.”

Source: ChannelInsider

India’s outsourcing industry suffering 55% staff attrition: study

The staff attrition rate in India’s business process outsourcing sector jumped to 55 percent from a year earlier, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the flagship industry, a study said on Thursday.

The study released by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) blamed the high turnover rate on bad working hours and a perceived lack of long-term career growth.

Between December 2010 and April 2011, the staff attrition rate in the BPO industry increased to 55 percent from 40 percent during the same period a year earlier, Assocham said.

“Although the BPO sector has been popular since the beginning, as it has opened up plenty of job opportunities, the high attrition rate is plaguing the sector now,” Assocham secretary general D.S. Rawat.

The sector is also facing serious challenges such as a shortage of skilled workers, the study said.

Firms from the U.S. and other foreign countries, drawn by India’s English-speaking workforce and lower costs than in the West, have farmed out a wide range of jobs from answering customer service client calls to processing insurance claims and equity analysis.

Worst hit by the turnover problems are the pharmaceutical and financial services industries, which have an attrition rate of 60 percent, the study said.

“The growing trend of job-switching in the industry might prove fatal for the survival and growth of India’s BPO sector,” Rawat said.

The job retention crunch comes as India’s BPO industry faces stiff competition from countries such as Mexico, Philippines, Malaysia, China, Canada and Ireland, the study noted.

The Indian outsourcing sector directly employs 2.54 million workers and accounts for 6.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

India recently lost its crown to the Philippines as the call centre capital of the world. But India continues to lead the overall global outsourcing market, increasing its share to 55 percent in 2010, up from 51 percent the previous year.

China’s position in market is similar to where India was 10 years ago

By Patrick Thibodeau

The top 10 Chinese outsourcing providers employ a total of 85,000 people. That may sound like a lot, but it’s a small number in the world of global outsourcing.

India has a number of outsourcing companies far larger than the combined total of China’s 10 leading outsourcing firms. India’s Tata Consultancy Services, for instance, employs 187,000 people alone.

But China’s IT outsourcing firms are in a good position to grow, according to outsourcing consultancy TPI.

“What’s interesting, and perhaps coincidental, is that the size of the leading Chinese providers today by employee and revenue [counts] is roughly equivalent to the size of the leading providers in India a decade ago,” said Michael Rehkopf, a partner and director at TPI during a conference call about the outsourcing market.

A decade ago, Indian providers accounted for less than 1% of the outsourcing market; today they have about 20% of the market by contract value. Contracts were $1.5 billion 10 years ago and about $18 billion today, which represents a 32% annual growth rate, said Rehkopf.

Many of the major Indian providers count on business from U.S. customers for more than 50% of their revenue, a path that China-based firms may not need to follow.

John Keppel, TPI president, believes the Chinese firms won’t need to rely as much on the U.S. for work. They have a substantial domestic market to tap, and the large economies of nearby countries, Japan and Korea, to do business in as well.

But what could hurt China’s outsourcing growth is increasing competition from other nations and intellectual property protection issues, said Rehkopf.

Caveats aside, Rehkopf said he won’t be surprised to see “Chinese service providers take off quickly and dramatically in the decade ahead.”

China’s outsourcing firms have been turning to Wall Street to raise cash.

For instance, ISoftStone Holdings, a company with about 10,000 employees, held an initial public offering (IPO) in December. Last year, two other Chinese firms went public as well. They are HiSoft Technology International and Camelot Information Systems. All three are on TPI’s list of top 10 outsourcers.

The Chinese employment market is influenced by the country’s vast number of engineering graduates, more than 300,000 annually. One company, Bleum Inc., seeks to hire new Chinese graduates who score an IQ of 140 on the company’s test.

Patrick Thibodeau covers outsourcing issues for Computerworld.

Shared Services and Outsourcing community assembles in Melbourne

By Martin Conboy – President, Australian BPO Association

Last week I was a guest at the 14th Annual Shared Services and Outsourcing conference and exhibition in Melbourne. Over 470 industry professionals gathered for one of the year’s largest outsourcing exhibitions and conferences; speakers included Donal Graham of Deloittes and Martin Fahy of The Hackett Group. Everybody that was anybody in shared services in Australia was there and the energy was palatable.

The concept of outsourcing and offshoring was very mainstream at this conference and the discussions had moved well beyond labour arbitrage and centered on available workforces and access to skills. It was not a case of if people were outsourcing – it was a case of when. This was a sophisticated group who were very hungry for information and knowledge.

Charles Reis – General Manager of Shared Business Services at MMG Minerals & Metals Group: “This is THE annual meeting place of just about everyone in the Australian shared services profession.”

Emma Beaumont, Global Head of Events, SSON: “Over the last 14 years, the shared services and sourcing industry has been undergoing an exciting phase of growth in the Australasian region. This year, our 14th Annual Australasian Shared Services & Outsourcing Week saw over 470 industry professionals come together in Melbourne to mark the cross over in our region from industry gathering, to a bonafide shared services community.”

In case you were wondering shared services refers to the provision of a service by one part of an organisation or group where that service had previously been found, to more than one part of the organisation or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the providing department effectively becomes an internal service provider. The key is the idea of ‘sharing’ within an organisation or group. Significant parts of the shared services are outsourced or offshored. Shared service is usually the domain of IT, Finance and HR.

During the conference I met all sorts of players on different parts of the outsourcing journey, some who were starting out and looking for information and others who were well advanced and happy to share their experiences.

One of the delegates was Dr. David Platt of the Municipal Association of Victoria. He is responsible for $5 Billion of costs across the State of Victoria and is looking for ways to squeeze more value from his assets. “The biggest hurdle to this is in fact diversity, every council is different, we have different systems, we configured them differently and as result of that we work on different business processes, we do things differently in each council.

I caught up with Ray Slayford, an advisory partner with KPMG and one of the events sponsors reflecting on the place of shared services in the business landscape. “The existence and understanding of shared services and hybrids of outsourcing, onshore, offshore, in source and outsource is much more common place.”

“A lot of organisations will look at the differences on these models and the emergence in the hybrid model is the connection of both in source, outsource, onshore, offshore models with different providers including cloud or overseas providers is much more commonplace.”
He touched on the offshoring debate. “Asia has a lot to offer in terms of talent and reach as they have highly skilled workforces who are highly educated and English speaking. They can provide services that are in demand or in shortage in places like Australia. This talent can be onshore, could be offshore, could be a hybrid or even attracting the right talent to Australia through immigration.”

A sign of a good conference is that by and large most of the delegates were still there on day three, which is testament to quality of the speakers and the interesting formats that the organisers used to get the learning and information across.

Of concern like the Frost and Sullivan event of the previous week, is that there is limited understanding with in this community of the impact of Social Media, The Cloud and utilising mobile marketing as a tool. I guess that will come and I look forward to next year.

By Mark Atterby – Senior Staff Writer

Dr. David Platt was a delegate at the SSON conference and exhibition last week in Melbourne. We caught up with him during his visit.

Victorian local governments are looking to expand on their use of outsourcing and managed services, so in turn they can offer greater services to their citizens and constituents. Dr.. David Platt, of the Municipal Association of Victoria commented, “Fundamentally, it’s about improving services to our citizens and the communities for which local government serves. It also means giving them better and more flexible access to those services.”

Access is not just via the internet or the contact centre anymore. Plant observes, “Increasingly, people are accessing a vast range of services from their mobile phone and other devices. We want to offer the Victorian citizen a great deal of flexibility in how they access the services.”

Regardless of how they decide to interact with their local council, the citizen will receive a consistent level of service via a one-stop-shop for local government type of environment.
All councils, regardless of their size, have limited resources when it comes to investing in new systems and applications. They need to work together and collaborate to realise the potential benefits, Platt says, “We have very limited resources with which we can do things, so the way we are looking at doing our shared services is that it has to fund itself. One process and project at a time. Once the benefits have been realised in one area we can than move onto another.”

“The benefits that we achieve from moving into an area of shared services have to fund the change and the transformation that we have to go through. And when we start getting into some bigger programmes such as asset management, we want to see the benefits we get through collaboration actually Dr.iving a lot of cash benefits.”

The biggest hurdle local government is facing in instigating these new services involves the various legacy systems and different processes, Platt states, “Every council is different, we have different systems that are configured differently. We work on different business processes. Essentially we do things very differently in each council.”

To overcome these legacy systems, the local councils of Victoria are investigating their cloud options and the feasibility of moving to a single platform.

At present there is no political imperative from the state government for councils to undertake these initiatives. They are taking a ‘let’s experiment and see’ approach. But according to Dr. Platt, once the business case is signed off, things should start to materialise within 9 – 12 months. “Within two to three years we expect to see significant cashable benefits flowing back into councils. It is a long journey, but things in government take time.”

Everest Group: Significant Traction of Global Sourcing in Financial Services BPO, Yet Tremendous Untapped Opportunity

Global sourcing adoption growth potential nearly 15 times current size

Global sourcing of Business Process Outsourcing in the financial services sector (FS BPO), a US$16-18 billion market comprising nearly 40 percent of the US$40 billion global sourcing market, has the potential to grow nearly 15 times its current market size to reach US$250 billion, according to a study by Everest Group, a global consulting and research firm. The report includes an analysis of market size, growth and potential of global sourcing of FS BPO across the banking, capital markets and insurance segments.

Research analysts will hold a one-hour Webinar on April 19, 9 a.m. CDT, to present study findings.

Everest Group’s study, Role of Global Sourcing in Financial Services BPO, includes an analysis of labour savings and other factors that have propelled FS BPO adoption into the rapid growth stage. Global sourcing of BPO in the capital markets segment represents the fastest growth area, driven by the emergence of high-end judgmental work and analytics. Insurance BPO demand is being fueled by a greater need for analytics, an increased need in the United States for healthcare services resulting from a growing customer base spurred by reform legislation, and Solvency II implementation in the European Union. BPO adoption in the banking sector is led by United States firms that are increasing global sourcing to meet fiscal performance pressures as well as address the lack of opportunity in new account acquisitions offset by loan modification servicing needs.

“BPO emerged as the key growth driver in the 2010 third-party financial services outsourcing market with nearly a 50-50 split between ITO and BPO contracts as opposed to a 70-30 split in 2008-2009,” said Saurabh Gupta, vice president, Research. “In the current economic scenario where financial services companies are facing competitive pressures and are reconsidering their cost bases, BPO across industry-specific processes in banking, capital markets, and insurance is generating much interest. Our analysis finds the medium to long-term growth outlook to be significant and robust.”

“Despite significant challenges, such as constraints in the United States associated with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and new data protection measures in the European Union, the impact on global sourcing has been minimal,” said Rajesh Ranjan, research director and co-author of the report. “Financial services firms and service providers have adapted and properly mitigated against new and emerging challenges.”

Other study findings include:

• Most financial services companies are adopting hybrid global sourcing models by leveraging third-party service providers, captives and shared services.
• Third-party global sourcing in FS BPO is growing at 20-plus percent annually.
  Banking BPO accounts for nearly 50 percent of the overall scale of global sourcing operations within FS BPO.
• Capital markets, the fastest growing segment for FS BPO, saw year-over-year growth of 40 percent in 2009-2010.
• India, Philippines and China are mature locations for FS BPO, while Eastern Europe, Central America and South America are witnessing the fastest growth.
• In India, scale of global sourcing for FS BPO continues to grow at 20-plus percent, with growth expanding to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities for mature services in banking and insurance.

Everest Group analysed FS BPO capabilities of 15 service providers for each business segment. Service providers with the strongest global sourcing capabilities are Genpact, HP and TCS for banking BPO; Infosys BPO, TCS, and Wipro for capital markets BPO; and Accenture, EXL Services, and WNS for insurance BPO. Other services providers examined in the study were Capgemini, CSC, eClerx, HCL, Intelenet, Syntel and Xchanging.

For more information about the report, Role of Global Sourcing in Financial Services, or other research services, visit www.everestresearchinstitute.com, email info@everestresearchinstitute.com or call +1-214-451-3110.

To register for the Webinar, to be held April 19 at 9 a.m. CDT, 2 p.m. GMT Standard Time, visit: http://www.everestresearchinstitute.com/Events/Webinars

Outsourcing IT may be a wise move, says Australian Telstra chief

By Neil Hill

Businesses might be wise to consider outsourcing some of their IT operations, which may involve cloud computing, it is suggested. Dr. Hugh Bradlow, chief technology officer at Telstra, recently spoke at the American Chamber of Commerce lunch in Sydney and discussed future developments in the industry. “The way we did ICT in the 20th century is not the way we need to do it in the 21st century,” he stated. Firms should start to consider their core abilities in terms of technology and consider outsourcing if they are not capable of dealing with all related issues. Those that are concerned about the security involved with such a move should not worry, as Dr. Bradlow explained specialists have effective ways of dealing with such fears. Healthcare bodies in New South Wales may also soon come to rely on data management, Jan Newland, chief executive officer of General Practice NSW, recently suggested. Posted by

Source: QAS-Experian

By Patrick Gordon

Over the past fifty years, customer service has played an increasingly important role in the success of both B2B and B2C businesses. This development has driven the growth of call centres and has resulted in the creation of the multi-billion dollar BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry.

Over the past fifty years, customer service has played an increasingly important role in the success of both B2B and B2C businesses. This development has driven the growth of call centres and has resulted in the creation of the multi-billion dollar BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry.

According to a recent onepoll survey conducted with 1,000 UK shoppers, over half the shoppers in the survey said that they expected companies to monitor social networking sites and forums as part of their customer service processes.

43% of the participants went on to say that they would be impressed by a company that responded to complaints made using these channels. This trend was particularly prevalent among people under the age of 34.

Due to the lack of any real alternatives, until recently the telephone was the sole means of customer service interaction. However as the communication tools available to people have become more advanced so to have the ways in which people interact, creating a number of potential PR nightmares for companies who fail to cater for their customers’ needs.

Spending forty minutes on the phone or getting an email response two weeks later around a complaint is no longer acceptable. Today’s customer is far less trusting and brand loyal, if they have a bad experience they will simply go elsewhere and worse tell their friends.
The telephone no longer drives business communication; rather it plays a complimenting role alongside email and social media.

As a business focused on customer service, having a call centre dealing with phone calls and e-mails will not suffice in the future. Successful companies need to be where their customers are, and if customers are spending 70% of their time on Facebook, then that is where they need to be.

This trend has already started to show in the BPO industry with international players like Stream and Teleperformance integrating social media into their core offerings.
One of the world’s leading brands, Dell has also realised the need to move beyond traditional forms of customer service adapting their communication strategy to align with their customer’s exact needs.

As a global brand with a target audience spanning all age groups and cultures, Dell understands that not all their customers are willing to communicate via telephone or email. To cater for this, they have embraced the benefits of social media providing support via their Twitter account, Dell customer forums and instant messaging services.

In the local market, social media as a customer service tool is still very much in its infancy, but with major brands like FNB, Vodacom, MTN and Cell C integrating Twitter into their customer service offering, it is surely only a matter of time before this becomes the norm in South Africa.

Understandably businesses are concerned by this shift, but they should not view it as a threat, but rather an opportunity to improve communication with their customers through a simple easy to understand medium.  

In response to a growing demand more and more call centres have started integrating social media into their day to day offerings. This trend has been especially prevalent in the US, where call centre agents are being trained to deal specifically with customer queries via social media.

The good news is that more communication channels do not necessarily mean more staff. It is rather a shift in responsibilities that is required, with staff being trained if need be in both traditional communication tools, such as telephone and email as well as social media. 

By allowing customers to interact with a site like Twitter they can post their feedback, without having to speak to four different operators only to find out that the first operator should have dealt with the query. By training a broad based pool of call centre staff on social media, when a query does comes through, the most relevant person can respond immediately.

Source: MyBroadband

Software developer VanceInfo buys Chinese business outsourcing firm

Software developer VanceInfo Technologies Inc. said last week that it has purchased LW International Holdings Ltd., a Chinese business outsourcing services company.

China’s VanceInfo will pay $5.6 million in cash and stock for the company, with further payments based on LW International’s performance during the next three years.

LW, also known as Lifewood, was started in 2004 and serves clients in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific regions, mainly in the health care, publishing and financial services sectors.

VanceInfo said there are increasing synergies with between the business outsourcing and information technology businesses.

Lifewood reported about $4.5 million in net revenue last year.

Source: CanadianBusiness

The business process outsourcing (BPO) market in India will expand by 23.2 percent in 2011 to reach a size of $1.4 billion, compared to $1.1 billion a year ago, according to a study by global IT research firm Gartner.

“Changing demographics, increasing affluence and economic growth in Asia-Pacific continues to drive shared services and BPO adoption, especially in Australia, India, Southeast Asia and China,” Gartner’s research director T.J. Singh said.

“Buyers continue to invest in services that deliver scalable and consistent services across their geographical presence,” he added.

The study also forecasts that the BPO market will grow to $1.69 billion by 2012 and $2.47 billion by 2014.

According to the study, India is one of the fastest growing BPO markets in the region. However, the largest BPO country market is Australia, which is more than three times larger than India, the second-largest consumer of BPO services.

Banking and financial services, communications, government (both local and federal), technology and travel and transportation have been largest consumers of BPO services in the region.

Over the past three years, many established India-based BPO service providers and US and Europe-based multinational BPO service providers have started focusing on the Indian domestic market.

In the past, these providers focused primarily on the international or offshore market.

Some of the local providers include Omnia, Kenkei, Androemeda, Genpact, Magus, MphasiS, Intelenet Global Services, Tech Mahindra, Aegis, Spanco and HTMT.

Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Australasia 2011 Announces G6 Visionaries

The Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON), the largest and most established community of shared services and outsourcing professionals, announced the results of its community’s selection of the “G6”. This group of industry thought leaders will be featured at SSON’s upcoming 14th Annual Australasian Shared Services & Outsourcing Week conference, which will be held at the Palladium at Crown in Melbourne, Australia from April 11 – 14, 2011.

The panel, moderated by Dr. Martin Fahy, Practice Leader APAC, The Hackett Group, will feature the viewpoints of several of the industry’s top sell-side authorities:

•   Asheesh Mehra, Head of BPO, Infosys BPO
•   Donal Graham, Partner, Deloitte
•   Arno Franz, Partner and President, TPI
•   Ray Slayford, National Lead Partner of Procurement and Shared Services,
KPMG
•   Peter Barta, Principal – Consulting, Deloitte
•   Raja Venkateswar, Head – Sales, Marketing & M&A, Xchanging

“The G6 panel is a substantive platform to challenge conventional thinking through the kind of hard hitting, no hold barred conversations we need to have as an industry. No sugar coating, no half truths – just facts, insights and perspectives on issues and challenges that define our business,” stated Asheesh Mehra, Head of BPO for Infosys BPO.

“The G6 debate is poised to move from ‘shared services vs. outsourcing’ to ‘shared services’ value capture through strategic sourcing’. Recent advances in technology and operating disciplines have enabled the convergence of a number of value-capture options for shared services operations,” remarked Peter Barta, Principal – Consulting for Deloitte. “
Technology evolutions such as open systems, interoperability and cloud; standardised processes and quality disciplines for business processes; and greater commercial and operational control of outsourcing models are all forces that combine to create a new wave of innovation and improvement options. These choices will allow Shared Services leaders in Australia to optimise quality, cost and risks in order to create significant competitive value for their user organisations.”

Sarah Clayton, Head of Strategy at SSON, stated, “With the Australasian market gaining a deeper understanding for the true value of shared services and refined business processes, we look forward to hosting an event that provides significant educational and networking opportunities to all attendees.”

The premier shared services and outsourcing event will take place at the Palladium at Crown in Melbourne, Australia from April 11 – 14, 2011. Over the course of four days, the event will engage more than 450 shared services and outsourcing professionals with more than 35 presentations by industry experts.

The 2011 Australasian Shared Services & Outsourcing Week is set to emphasise one-on-one networking and personal development, as well as featuring the 2011 SSON Excellence Awards – which includes “The People’s Choice” for Personal Contribution to the Industry Award. The Awards Ceremony will be take place on April 12.

More information about the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON) can be found at www.ssonetwork.com. Stay up to date with SSON’s latest twitter posts at twitter.com/ssonetwork, connect with global practitioners, providers and advisors on the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON) LinkedIn group and Sign up to receive SSON’s weekly updates today