Shared Services vs Outsourcing: Asia

Asheesh Mehra, Head - Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East, Infosys BPO

Here’s the challenge to captives, according to Asheesh Mehra: "Stay honest!" Too many of them are basing their operations on legacies inherited from 10 years ago, and not enough of them have any reasonable benchmark stats to know whether they’re operating as best in class, he says. Captives need to push the envelope and look ahead, as some of the more mature ones are already doing, by bringing in external advisors to help them clean up and add technology to eliminate work. Because that is the core of your challenge: eliminate work.

Asheesh also champions a focus on business metrics as opposed to operational metrics. After all: what really matters about shaving time off invoice processing? The fact that the number is lower? – or its impact on the business? Bingo.

He’s absolutely not a fan of Hybrids, though. And it’s not why you think. But you’ll have to hear that for yourself. More

Charles is the Chief Executive Officer of Genpact in Asia. Beginning in the outsourcing industry in 1997 in Australia he has worked with some of the world’s largest companies to solve complex business problems though innovation and outsourcing. He has also worked in every major Asian economy. Charles’ main focus is on driving business growth in the region and working closely with clients to help solve their business challenges by leveraging Genpact’s assets and expertise. Prior to his current role with Genpact, he worked with Accenture first as a consultant and then as a member of the team that built Accenture’s outsourcing practice. Genpact has almost 4000 employees and China is the regional centre for growth and the headquarters. Manilla in the Philippines is also a major operation for Genpact with in excess of 2000 employees. From these two global delivery locations clients from all over the world are served in Technology and Business Process services.
A native of Australia, Charles has been living in China since 2007. More

Paul is an Executive Partner leading Accenture Finance & Performance Management in South East Asia. He has led a number of multi tower shared service design and implementation projects across Asia Pacific working with multi nationals and national companies to design and set-up shared service centres in India, China, Malaysia and the Philippines.

He is an experienced project manager with extensive experience in large scale organizational changes focusing on shared services, Finance Organization Strategy, Financial Systems, and Procurement. He is also the Global Lead for Accenture’s Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting offering domain. More

Rohit Tandon is the Vice President – Global Analytics at Hewlett-Packard Company and leads HP’s 1700+ analytics organization globally. His organization is responsible for deploying cutting edge analytical solutions across sales, marketing, supply chain, finance and HR domains to enable HP make better decisions, faster.
Prior to joining HP, Rohit was the EVP at IBM’s Global Processing Services unit where he was responsible for Strategy, IT, Quality and Transformation. More

What can Advisors offer a client on the outsourcing decision? "Insight to profit motives" may be one aspect. But Tony Rawlinson is pushing collaborative sourcing, which means aligning the goals of the client and the provider. The risk of clients pushing down too hard on providers is that providers try to recoup some revenues through change; the risk of clients being ill-prepared, on the other hand, is that they can be taken advantage of, commercially. Increasingly sourcing is not just about cost – it is about risk mitigation, capability acquisition and speed to market.

Tony is a Director of KPMG’s Performance & Technology practice in Singapore, specialising in Sourcing and Financial Services Advisory. He has more than 30 years experience in business process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, process optimisation and global service delivery. Prior to joining KPMG, Tony was Managing Director of EquaTerra’s Financial Services Practice, and a Partner in a Global advisory firm, responsible for the EMEA retail, corporate and wholesale banking sector. He has also served as Client Executive and Managing Director for EDS leading their cheque processing operations in the UK and Ireland and as Head of Financial Services for Siemens Business Services UK. More

Sakuntala Rao, IBM
Hybrid "nuances" emerging in Asian marketplace.

The hybrid model is emerging as a forerunner in Asia – but Sakuntala Rao lists five different "nuances" with slight variations depending on the client’s needs. What’s important, she says, is to take an end-to-end focus, no matter where the different parts of the process reside.

Sakuntala Rao (Saku) is a Director in IBM's Growth Markets Global Process Services (GPS) Practice and is based in Bangalore, India. She joined IBM in 2003, and is currently responsible to grow the Finance & Administration (F&A) Practice in the Growth Markets Unit. She has been with IBM since the early days of its foray into GPS in India and was instrumental in the creation of a global solutions centre of excellence for IBM in India across all process areas.

Saku has over 26 years of experience in F&A across India and the Middle East in Industry, Consulting, Assurance and Process Outsourcing. She has worked with organizations like Coopers & Lybrand, KPMG and Infosys before joining IBM. She has also been a CFO of an Oman based group. She has extensive experience in GPS and has worked on several re-engineering and strategy assignments across multiple industries. More