Re-assessing Your Enterprise-Wide Service Delivery Operating Model During and Post COVID-19

A recent blog from HfS about how the COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of the offshore outsourcing industry has generated a lot of debate.

Here is my take.

As we have previously discussed in the State of the Global Shared Services Market Report 2019 and elsewhere, the traditional BPO model was already being challenged as companies have looked to bring business processes, control and data back closer to the business.  This is a trend that has been enabled and supported by Intelligent Automation, and specifically the ability to leverage what we have been calling “Robotic Arbitrage”.  RPA and other IA tools have meant that businesses can benefit from automating many of their activities and processes “on premise” rather than needing to outsource or indeed internally offshore these to “lower cost” locations.  I have also previously said that this trend would perhaps be less pronounced in ITO and Manufacturing in the short to medium term, but that may change going forward now too. Re-assessing your enterprise wide service delivery operating model during and post COVID-19 is inevitable.

To address the impact that COVID-19 is having, and will have, on the Shared Services and GBS community, and on businesses in general, we have teamed up with SSON to co-host a Business Continuity Planning Digital Summit on April 23. It is a free online event that is dedicated to helping you navigate the current situation and develop future plans to protect against potential gaps and vulnerabilities in business continuity planning that COVID-19 has exposed.

Here is the link to find out more about the BCP Summit.

If you missed our recent 2019 State of the Global Shared Services Market Report, you can also download it again here.

Phil Searle, CEO & Founder, Chazey Partners