It's been going on for decades. But today, more firms than ever are using outsourcing to help cut costs, improve business processes, and focus on their core business. The most successful of these companies are the best informed. Whether you're just
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a $6 trillion global industry involving thousands of companies and millions of employees. Business process outsourcing (BPO) is one of the very few business tools available to managers with the power to fundamentally transform their organizations. Done on a global scale, BPO enables companies to simultaneously reengineer their existing operations, create a more flexible and adaptable organizational structure, and tap the best minds in the world to create an innovation explosion. For the first time ever, BPO's best-known expert and pioneer, Michael Corbett, who helped craft IBM's entry into the outsourcing business, details the opportunities presented by BPO as well as a plan for implementing and sustaining its benefits. The Outsourcing Revolution is written for executives and managers in organizations of any size who want to learn how BPO can improve their company's performance. More than a ""how-to"" book, it provides a comprehensive framework for decision making and action based on the real-life experiences of executives heading up successful initiatives for their companies today. Readers will learn how to: * Determine the value of BPO for any process. * Analyze risk, evaluate its potential impact, and use a range of techniques to reduce, eliminate, and manage that risk. * Identify, evaluate, and select the right partner or partners. * Turn contractor relationships into long-term, successful BPO relationships. * Transition people, processes, and technologies to the BPO state. * Identify, develop, and reward outsourcing managers. * Create new ways of doing business ahead of the competition. The Outsourcing Revolution features case studies detailing how specific companies planned, implemented, and are managing BPO. Results from surveys of more than 1,500 companies provide real data on what organizations around the world are doing and why, as well as what does and doesn't work.
Outsourcing and offshoring are typically viewed as phenomena allowing competitive advantages for organizations, but some studies have not included the risks, benefits, and challenges of these types of strategies. As such, this book fills this gap by combining several studies from different perspectives. The chapters follow several approaches and applications that researchers explore in different contexts. This book adds to the body of knowledge in outsourcing and offshoring areas and shows how these strategies can stimulate organizations’ development in various countries and regions worldwide.
This report defines offshoring in detail, describes the wide-ranging effects that offshoring can have on employment both positively and negatively, and outlines the policy implications, suggesting ways to limit the downside of offshoring while building trust among stakeholders.
The final section considers the political ramifications of information technology for critical societal debates ranging from privacy to intellectual property. The contributors to the book map out how the digital revolution shakes up politics, creating new economic and political winners and losers. In order to do so, they connect theories of political economy to the implications of digital technology for international as well as national markets.Attempts to construct a framework for analyzing the international digital era: one that examines the ability of political actors to innovate and experiment in spite of, or perhaps because of, the constraints posed by digital technology. This book examines the reaction of nations to the dual challenges of globalization and technological change.How do high wage countries stay rich in a global digital economy? "How Revolutionary was the Revolution" constructs a framework for analyzing the international digital era: one that examines the ability of political actors to innovate and experiment in spite of, or perhaps because of, the constraints posed by digital technology. In order to assess the revolutionary nature of the digital era, this book takes four overlapping approaches. First, it examines the reaction of nations, specifically Finland, Japan, and emerging markets, to the dual challenges of globalization and technological change. This section identifies both successful and failed national experiments intended to deal with these dual pressures. Second, it assesses corporate attempts to leverage digital technology to reorganize work. A broad range of issues including off-shoring, open source production systems, and knowledge management are addressed. Third, devoting detailed analysis to the case of mobile telephones, the book offers insights into the political economy of market evolution in the digital era.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is becoming the new revolutionas company's of all sizes are seeking to take advantage of thissource of competitive advantage. This book provides a step-by-step approach to understanding theapplication of Business Process Outsourcing, assessing the BPOopportunity in the company, and then managing the transition toBPO. It serves as a guide to implementing BPO and as a referencesource to solving the variety of issues that may arise during a BPOinitiative. Each chapter features a case study, insight from apractitioner, focus on how BPO affects people, and ethicalconsiderations. * Discusses both the how and why of business process outsourcingwith a straightforward "how to" approach. * Provides managers with the tools to analyse the BPO opportunitiesfor their own firms, as well as techniques and strategies formanaging a BPO initiative. * Empowers businesses of all sizes to take advantage of thisall-encompassing business revolution.
The privatization of defence assets and the outsourcing of military services from the armed forces to the private sector is an increasing trend. This book approaches the issue of military privatization by linking it to the transformation of the defence industries since the early 1990s, and shows the extent to which many military functions and activities, ranging from military research to military consulting/training to operational support services, have already been outsourced in the US and in Europe. This detailed study provides new and updated information on the ongoing privatization of the defence sector and offers an original theoretical explanation as to why the most modern armed forces throughout the world have come increasingly to rely on private companies for nearly everything they do. Contributing to a better understanding of military privatization and its close connection to technological change, the book explains the complexity of the whole phenomenon and discusses its implications for national and international security.
As US imperialism continues to dictate foreign policy, Deadly Contradictions is a compelling account of the American empire. Stephen P. Reyna argues that contemporary forms of violence exercised by American elites in the colonies, client state, and regions of interest have deferred imperial problems, but not without raising their own set of deadly contradictions. This book can be read many ways: as a polemic against geopolitics, as a classic social anthropological text, or as a seminal analysis of twenty-four US global wars during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras.