In Part 1 of this blog post (Time To Mind Your Ps and Qs), we made the case that there is limited additional opportunity in continuing to pound on “P” in the P x Q = Total Price equation, and that to achieve the next breakthrough the supplier community has…
Traditionally, the mechanism for creating value in an IT Infrastructure sourcing has been to push down hard, real hard, on price — the “P” lever. The notion is that a sourcing will result in a lower unit cost for the labor needed to manage a device or deliver a service.…
Given the great interest in “the cloud” from a business perspective, as well as Microsoft’s popularization of the concept with its “To the Cloud!” advertising campaign, it’s no wonder that many game providers are looking to the cloud as the next viable and profitable gaming platform. The cloud movement not…
With the same lack of fanfare that accompanied the April 13 release of the Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Information rules , today the Indian government released a clarification to those rules to address the most serious concerns arising from ambiguities in the original provisions. As we…
Suppliers of IT outsourcing services limit their responsibility for paying damages arising from the loss of customers’ sensitive data (whether or not intentionally lost by the supplier). Only a few years ago, it was commonplace in an IT outsourcing agreement for a supplier to agree to be responsible for any…
Once the ink is dry on a signed outsourcing contract, the real work begins for the customer and the service provider. Before the customer can start to realize any savings, efficiencies or service improvements, the parties must first complete the critical task of transitioning from the customer to the service…
A recent survey conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association yielded some interesting findings, including: Social marketing budgets are anticipated to increase significantly over the next few years, possibly reaching 18% of total marketing budgets by 2015; and 72% of companies had outsourced some…
In part 1 of this discussion we described two front end challenges that, if not properly anticipated and addressed, can (and very often do) derail successful completion of enterprise projects. We’ll now turn to the downstream transactional considerations that can help position a project for success. The Right Contract Architecture…
Industry research firm Horses for Sources reported recently that 49% of the companies it surveyed were planning to outsource call center services for the first time, or expand the scope of their existing call center outsourcing, over the next year. With call center outsourcing on the rise, we wanted to…
It is one of those sayings that people just love to recite: “The best contracts are the ones that stay in the drawer.” In ten years of advising customers on their outsourcing agreements, I have heard this phrase uttered in just about every large negotiation that I have done (typically…