Thought Leadership Archive

In a recent blog I noted that there is a new wave of shared services activity. But don’t dismiss that news with an assumption that new starts in shared services just means taking a slice of business away from third-party service providers. Here are my tips for shifting this potential business loss to a

PwC announced last Friday that it completed its acquisition of Booz & Company — now named “Strategy&.” Why did Booz agree to be acquired and why did PwC want Booz? And what does this mean for the services industry? My opinion: It’s a bold move that has the signs of being a game-changer in

To date, the global services industry in 2014 has all the signs of being a “son-in-law.” As many parents will tell you about their prospective son-in-law: “He’s nice, but … I was hoping for something a little better.” 2014 arrived with so much promise, both in IT and BPO. Europe’s economy was improving. We

The service provider community is very fond of clever terms, and SMAC — standing for Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud — is a good example of that. However, if you’re a service provider looking to sell to new or existing clients, talking about SMAC may not be the most productive way to hold the conversation.

At the request of a BPO provider, we did a fairly exhaustive study of all vendor/provider-funded innovations and their impact on the business growth. The data were startling. Our study clearly revealed that the hundreds of millions of dollars that providers invested in innovation yielded very disappointing returns. Although they often succeeded in taking

I once read that our society’s major accomplishments over the last 50 years were that we had harnessed lightning and used it to get sand to think. This massive leap forward was about using information and computers to automate processes, and it really took center stage in the service marketplace. But 15 years ago

Double the fun! HCL’s stock valuation doubled in a just a little over 12 months. They’ve been on a tear, improving every month, with revenue per employee skyrocketing and the corresponding profitability rising. Sure, HCL has shifted some positions in its leadership team. But what really caused the investing community to value HCL at

We were recently a sponsor at the 18th annual Shared Services & Outsourcing Week conference in Orlando (part of SSON, the leading event for shared services). The significant portion of attendees that are just embarking on shared services for the first time and opening up new shared services capabilities was striking to us. It

I’m watching with great interest the current change in leadership at Xerox. They just announced that Lynn Blodgett will retire at the end of 2014 and Robert Zapfel will join the firm on April 1 as president of Xerox Services and EVP of the corporation, reporting to the chairman and CEO. Bob has had

TCS posted industry-leading financial results in its FQ4 2013 report. But what caught my attention was its quarterly guidance to investors where management stated they believe TCS can add “a few billion dollars” from digital as a growth driver. Really? Just a few billion? We believe TCS is substantially underplaying its digital hand. Management