G8 Europe 2010: Global Sourcing Think Tank: Eliminating the White Noise

G8 Europe 2010: Global Sourcing Think Tank: Eliminating the White Noise

SSON's global G8 series exceeded all expectations in 2009, and some familiar and new faces certainly lived up to the high expectation for 2010. The 3 remaining G8 regional panels cover local debates in APAC (Sydney), Asia (Singapore) and the Americas (Orlando). 

Designed to provide the Shared Services and Outsourcing industry with a neutral platform, SSON's Global G8 series aims to combat end-user cynicism and confusion surrounding the growing complexity of sourcing models and provider solutions options available to companies today.

Like G8 Europe 2009 SSON members selected the European line-up, which included pivotal industry figures who are active across the consulting, BPO provision/advisory and the ERP technology side of the shared services and outsourcing space.

Fiona Bruce, TV Journalist & Presenter, BBC chaired the session for the first time and she began by asking, ‘Does Global Business Services (i.e. multi functional shared services) really make sense?’

This of course brought up some very interesting topics - with varied views from the 8 panellists and vocal audience. The session also went on to discuss Outsourcing & Automation strategies as well as Shoring options and Labor Arbitrage….

G8 Europe Participant Interviews

	Bill Payne, General Manager, CRM and Industries Managed Business Process Services, IBM Global Bill contrasts his impression of the European pace of change in BPO -which is moving slowly, still - with US thinking, which is all about taking on more, and driving efficiencies faster
	Carina Smith, Head of Strategic Development and Global BPO, CapGemini While in the past many BPO contracts were limited – in terms of potential – by clients’ concerns regarding where work could be moved to, beyond their "comfort zone," the recession is causing some reassessment.
	Cesare Capobianco, VP for Oracle On Demand EMEA  With organizational automation still at only 20%, on average, Cesare foresees huge developments in enabling technologies in the future. Today’s emerging technologies can reach all the way from business processes through application technologies down to hardware and will reap significant benefits.
	Mark Bownas, Partner, EMEA Sourcing Advisory and CEE Head of Markets, KPMG Are clients maximizing the functionality of their internal systems? Mark Bownassays not, emphasizing that significant benefitsremain to be gained by maximizing the functionality already paid for. The large investments made in systems and ERP are not always matched by the necessaryexpenditures in training.
	Peter Brown, Global HR Outsouring Lead, Accenture Multi-functional centers may be a topic of debate, but are here to stay, maintains Peter Brown. The benefits of centralizing the common processes underlying HR, F&A, etc. functions are significant and lead to efficiencies in both scale and cost.
	Peter Moller, Head of Shared Services and BPO Advisory, Deloitte  Does labor arbitrate still make sense in today’s shifting markets? Peter Moller says yes – despite wage inflation in many of the low cost countries, the savings are still significant and will carry on to extend beyond 10 years.
	Tom Bangemann, Vice President of Business Transformation, The Hackett Group How mature is the outsourcing sector and what might we see from providers in future years? According to Tom Bangemann, while the outsourcing business is really not more than 10 years old, compared to 20 years in the captive sector, the performance of both is comparable. Which means that – although you cannot really say that one is better than the other -- the outsourcing industry is "running faster and learning faster.

View G8 Europe 2009 here