In recent industry discussions around talent acquisition, we have identified a number of interconnected trends that are having a significant impact on talent acquisition markets. Here, we take a look at three key trends, and at how HRO vendors in the talent acquisition space are responding.
Insurance BPO: Delivery & Service Line Trends for 2017
The insurance outsourcing industry is moving at a fast pace in response to the need for rapid deployment of digital platforms and offerings, as well as advancements in new distribution models that are emerging via ‘insurtech’ start-ups. Here I take a look at some of the key trends driving the insurance BPO market in 2017, both in terms of delivery and transformation, and by individual service line.
Digital Convergence Conference: Enterprise Transformation through IT, BPO and Digital
At a key inflection point, enterprises are seeing the convergence of emerging technologies, business operations & digital transformation, as they re-think their business processes, organizational structure and sourcing, pricing & revenue models to adopt to a new Digital world.
The outsourcing journey began 23 years ago, when it was all about labor arbitrage and the focus was on cost and offshore labor; that model no longer works – but if you think outsourcing is dead, you’re wrong – it’s just been reinvented. Welcome to the “New Outsourcing” – a digitally fueled service offering powered by new technology, new business models, new pricing, less labor arbitrage, more cloud, and more service as software.
The Digital Convergence Conference, as part of The Outsourcing Institute’s 2017 programs focused around the “New Outsourcing”, is designed to help clients make the transition to the “uberization” of the enterprise and provide insight into the new ways work is getting done, examining the impact of digital technologies; exploring go-to-market strategies; digital revenue models; new methods of handling governance, risk and compliance; customer experience management and combining front, middle and back office/internal operations through IT as a service, business process as a service, crowdsourcing, automation & cognitive, IoT, analytics, cloud and platform-fueled technologies.
The Digital Convergence Conference is the place for senior buy-side executives, influencers, business and thought leaders to come together to learn, connect & pave the way for true digital transformation within their organizations and conference attendees will hear from industry experts, get first-hand information about the latest case studies, participate in roundtables, and benefit from powerful learning and networking opportunities centered around digital convergence.
September 27, 2017
2017 and Automation: My Predictions
Well, just when you thought that all 2017 predictions were behind you, here I am with the ones that will likely have the most impact on your industry, your company, and your career.
Outsourcing, Automation & Innovation Seminar Series (OAISS)
The New Outsourcing: A Revolution in High-speed, Low-cost and, Finally, Real Innovation
It’s about time!
Never before have there been such opportunities for those seeking better, faster, and lower-cost services. If you are like most business and tech executives, you’ve become quite disappointed, if not fed-up with traditional outsourcing and its labor arbitrage-centric business model. Most of the savings have evaporated, the turnover is intolerable, and the innovation is nowhere to be found. Enter advanced technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) intelligent automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI). These technologies combined with new players and new business models means that outsourcing — recently thought to be dead — is actually reincarnated, reinvented! New Outsourcing is ushering in a wave of heretofore unimaginable benefits and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
Our multi-city OAISS roadshow and roundtables are intimate, smaller, local interactive gatherings that combine education and execution, designed for those of you seeking to learn about the latest trends in automation-fueled service and how to get started.
HRO: A Year in Review & 2017 Preview
Following several years of growth, the HR outsourcing market continues to ride the crest of the wave, and is gearing up for a prosperous 2017 following investments across all service lines. We will shortly be publishing an in-depth blog on HRO predictions for 2017, but first I take a quick look at what happened in 2016 to lay the foundations for things to come, specifically in payroll services, benefits administration, RPO, learning services, and cloud-based HR.
Customer Management Services in 2017: Delivery & Transformation and Industry-Specific Predictions for the Year Ahead
NelsonHall’s principal Customer Management Services analysts take a look at how the CMS market will shape up in 2017, with predictions for CMS delivery & transformation from Ivan Kotzev, and industry-specific predictions from Vicki Jenkins.
Digital and Cloud Solutions – Impact of OpEx Solutions on a CapEx Centric Utilities Industry
Global CapEx growth is projected to surmount global GDP growth over the next decade as capital intensive industries strive to meet the world’s demand for energy, resources, information, mobility, and connectivity. As such, CapEx optimization is on the top priority list of most corporate leaders worldwide.
Owning to its practice of providing a rate of return on capitalized investments, the Utilities industry has traditionally had it easy when it came to cost of capital. However, judiciousness around spend and capital allocation-based on total value consideration have been mostly sub-optimal. Financial pundits, also at the same time, have struggled to establish credible benchmarks around optimal usage of capital due to ambiguities in capital deployment in replacement and growth projects. Other factors, like the iterative nature of capital planning, processs, and risk-oriented asset management, have forced Utilities to incline towards OpEx for finding viable technology and financial solutions.
OpEx is almost often deduced as a favorable economic calculus compared to CapEx. However, the debate is much broader than just that. The following topics discuss why:
Technology Matters:
The advent of digital and cloud-based solutions have turned the CapEx/OpEx allocation funding decision into a technology decision. Cloud-based technologies sway all decision-making in their favor by bringing in benefits like agility, resource optimization, user adoption, continuous updates, and quicker time to value. They are also ensuring adherence to performance, SLA and QoS requirements. Apart from the above, OpEx-based models often allow for zero cost transformation that ensures adoption of the latest digital solutions at no upfront investments.
Financial Imperatives:
Utility CxOs are at consistent pressure to meet ever-demanding performance criteria set by regulators and/or Wall Street. With an incessant focus on projecting higher returns compared to the employed cost of capital on a quarter-by-quarter basis, Utilities have the ability to manage key performance ratios through the OpEx model.
Utilities are starting to take cognizance of the difference between maintenance and growth capital expenditures. They are assessing CapEx programs to clean up maintenance-heavy project portfolios. OpEx-based digital solutions provide viable alternatives to free up maintenance capital that can instead be used to build additional capacity for growth initiatives.
Innovative financial models using OpEx accrue immediate benefits to Utilities, including relief from residual assets and a balanced economic structure with annual fixed and variable costs.
Vendor Landscape
The weighted average cost of capital for the IT services industry is in the range of 7.5% compared to 3.5% of the Utilities sector. Despite that, IT vendors are aggressively investing in cloud and cloud-based offerings. This is an open invitation by the vendor community to de-risk the CapEx model of Utilities by way of asset outsourcing and capitalization of services. Such services would come at a higher price for the vendors. However, the enormity of the global digital opportunity, ability to work as transformational partners of clients, and ability to hedge capital risks over multiple clients are motivation enough to invest in emerging technologies and work toward realizing unprecedented returns over the long haul.
Conclusion
The digital era has given a new course to the age-old discussion on CapEx-OpEx optimization. The direct impact of technology on financial levers of utilities business was never so great. Operationalization of capital expenditure opens up a wide range of possibilities like minimized upfront investments, improved asset usage ratios, increased average revenue per unit, average margin per user, and cost of asset recovery.
The Cloud Shift: The rapid adoption of cloud services for business organizations
The increased uptake of cloud services is reflected in global IT spending trends that have been steadily shifting from traditional IT offerings to cloud, otherwise known as “cloud shift”. Rapid improvement in cloud platforms, security, network reliability and cloud-based applications has led to the adoption of cloud in ways that were hitherto unprecedented. The industry has shifted from considering “whether” to transition to cloud to the mechanics of “when” and “how”.
It’s here.
Just when I thought I’ve seen and done it all, I recently experienced a “first” that will forever change the way I perceive and process the world around me.
I received a phone call at home on Saturday morning from what seemed to be a friendly person asking for me and introducing herself. My initial reaction was, “is this a telemarketer?”. After a brief interaction, my mind shifted to a more obscure question, “is this a human?”. The fact that I was even asking this question, blew my mind. To this moment, I can’t describe the feeling. Is there a name for it? Maybe robo-confusion, or PTTSS, Post Turing Traumatic Stress Syndrome? Either way, amidst my disorientation, I set out to get to the bottom of this new probe further.