Monthly Archive:: October 2013

Infosys Moves On, But There Are Chilling Immigration Reform Implications for Others in the Industry

The U.S. federal government this week announced a settlement agreement with Infosys with a record fine of $34 million — a penalty Infosys agreed to pay in settlement of the investigation related to its I-9 paperwork errors and H1-B and B-1 visa matters. There is both good news and bad news in this settlement.

The Biggest Losers in the Service Provider World

I talked recently with one of the biggest losers among service providers. They had just been through a competitive RFP process as the incumbent provider. They worked tirelessly to martial the firm’s resources to get both the external and internal sale and get executives lined up. Their sales team was engaged. There were a

Just Like CSC and Dell, Sell Your Truck While It’s Still Running

When Bobby Pinson recorded his country & western song “Don’t Ask Me How I Know” dispensing bits of wisdom, I’m sure he didn’t realize he was providing advice to service providers. But my favorite line in the song is also great advice for today’s BPO providers — “Sell your truck while it’s still running.”

A Win-Win-Win Model Attracts Attention in Global Services Market

Whether you are a service provider or a buyer of services, you can benefit significantly from a relatively new delivery model in the services ecosystem — outsourced in-home services. Why is it attractive? The in-home model leverages the labor arbitrage idea but applies it in a different way for even greater benefits. Over the

What’s Reinvigorating EPAM, Syntel and Virtusa?

Over the last five years the story of growth in the global services industry has been one of the rich getting richer. In fact, the larger tier-one firms, especially Cognizant and TCS, are growing faster than the marketplace. But I think it’s more notable, at this time when markets are maturing and growth is

What You Need to Know about the Convergence of Systems Integration and Application Outsourcing Services

Are the systems integration (SI) and application outsourcing (AO) spaces converging? We’ve been asked this question numerous times. It does appear that in the large-company buying group that there is a trend to combine SI and AO services. By combining them, customers seek to reduce or eliminate the premium pricing on their SI services,

Jilted — What Happens When Your Provider Sells the Service Line That You’re Buying?

So you’re in an outsourcing relationship and so far you’ve achieved impressive results in meeting your objectives. Then you wake up one day to the unwelcome news that your service provider sold that line of business to another company and you’re now relegated to a provider you didn’t select. What should you do? Do

In Services Marketing, Fruitcake Won’t Bring You New Business

One of my favorite quotes of American humorist Mark Twain is: “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” He knew the secret of creating effective content: less is more. This is absolutely the case when creating content for marketing your service offerings and capabilities.

Doing a Double Take on IBM’s Spinoff in the Customer Care Services Market

IBM is consistently more profitable than its peers in the global services market. Why are they succeeding and staying out in front of competitors? If you take a deep look at IBM’s impressive record of profit and growth, the reason behind its success becomes apparent: IBM has a clear strategic intent and makes hard

Is It Time to Sing “Happy Days Are Here Again?”

After several years of believing that discretionary spend would come back into the marketplace, it appears that we are, in fact, experiencing an uptick. This increase in demand is definitely welcome after recent years of suppressed demand. The question is: How long will this trend continue and will we move back to the heady