As Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) matures, companies and service providers must look for the next source of value – labor arbitrage is important, but not sufficient. In particular, the industry is seeking to create value propositions that achieve cost savings while also delivering other sources of value.
We conducted a survey to understand how organizations that are attaining greater value from BPO are different from normal BPO efforts. The survey statistically analyzed the differences in relationships across many dimensions, such as objectives, organization, metrics, service provider’s role, and others.
The results show a vivid difference in the approach and mindset of best-in-class BPOs relative to others. The differences cut across many areas and do not reveal a silver bullet. Two broad themes emerge:
Best-in-class BPOs do not view BPO as a small and isolated initiative (fire and forget), but rather as important and connected (involve and optimize)
Best-in-class BPOs are more successful in executing what is known to be important
The full survey results cover many dimensions and some of the most notable findings are that best-in-class BPO relationships:
Successfully implement more standardized processes
Productively resolve conflicts
Successfully execute change management plans
Proactively refine objectives as the BPO relationship matures
Consider the service provider to be a strategic partner
Include business benefits beyond cost savings in the business case
Identify ways to use data and information from services to capture additional benefits
Leverage business users receiving services in setting the direction of the BPO relationship
Note: this report is from 2012. See our most recent R2R research report.
The Finance & Accounting (F&A) function comprises three end-to-end processes – Procure-to-Pay (P2P), Order-to-Cash (O2C), and Record-to-Report (R2R). This report focuses on…