BPO Providers: from Arbitrage to Innovation

Robotics are on my mind at the moment, as I am researching their impact on business services. In the past, a lot of the conversation around improvement was about automation – remember the days? – and this is still, of course, just as valid. But automation does require significant investments, and we are now seeing some new opportunities that offer a sort of 'band-aid' solution (but more of that next week). I just read an interesting interview with David Poole, from Sutherland Global. He points out a trend that we’ve all been witnessing but maybe are not really coming to grips with: namely that technology is STILL having a huge impact on service delivery options and solutions, but that, as he describes it, today’s BPO role is really all about innovation – and no longer arbitrage. "It [arbitrage] was an interesting phase," he says, "but we need to be thinking about offshore capabilities as access to talent, rather than access to cheap labour." There is a lot of work that was previously offshored, which could, today, really be automated, he points out. And this also touches on the sensitive spot of retaining customer proximity – which many organisations feel they surrendered when they let labour arbitrage rule their sourcing decisions. David also believes that data analytics has not yet delivered. Yes, there have been some results, and companies are loving the ‘business insights’ to make smarter, more informed choices. But much of this still lacks the context to give it its proper weighting. Meaning: if we are still looking back over our shoulder, or even taking ‘today’ as our benchmark, we are not really preparing for tomorrow, are we? It will be interesting to watch providers like Sutherland break new ground as they shift their focus beyond cost, onto that holy grail of 'value-add'. (Read the interview here.) [inlinead]

BPO Providers: from Arbitrage to Innovation

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