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F&A Outsourcing Prices are Dropping. Are You Overpaying?

White Paper | Category:   Benchmarking  Finance & Accounting Services  Outsourcing

Most companies that outsourced a portion of their finance and accounting (F&A) functions in the early to mid-2000s generated great savings at the time, but are now probably overpaying for the service levels they receive.

Now more than ever, sourcing buyers need to be prepared to aggressively renegotiate with their providers to increase service levels and decrease prices. Currently, market competition is driving F&A rates down even though the majority of local labor wages are increasing. The reasons for this are:

• Providers are decreasing profit margins to get deals and increase revenues
• Increased use of technology to automate processes results in greater efficiencies
• Increased use of benchmarking in BPO deals results in re-pricing of some
• higher-priced, out-of-market deals, thus driving down the market average

• Three reasons that market competition is driving F&A rates down (even though the majority of local labor wages are increasing)
• Three primary times you should conduct an F&A benchmark
•  Four fundamental components to consider when determining the value of renegotiating your F&A contract
• Seven elements an F&A benchmarking clause should include

Squeezing IT Infrastructure for Cost Savings: Is There More to Extract?

White Paper | Category:   Strategy & Business Case  Negotiations / Renegotiations  IT Infrastructure & Applications...

For the past 20 years or so, corporate management has looked to information technology (IT) services as a means to reduce overall annual costs. When all the internal cost reduction strategies had been squeezed dry, IT leaders turned to outsourcing to realize additional IT cost savings through leveraged service offerings, labor reductions via better tools and processes, and competition between the outsourcing service providers.

Once those IT cost savings were maximized, IT leaders went "offshore" to find even more IT cost reduction through labor arbitrage. Both offshore service providers and US-based service providers with offshore operations were able to offer IT cost savings over the onshore solutions due to lower labor costs of IT professionals located in parts of the world like India and Malaysia.

While there are some enterprise companies that have not fully leveraged outsourcing and/or offshoring to its full potential, most Fortune 500 companies have. These IT management teams have already been through several internal cycles of cost reduction strategies through layoffs, hardware/capital reductions, application rationalizations, consolidations, and more. And yet these companies are still seeking more opportunities to save IT costs in today's unsettled economic environment.

Due to the availability of better IT cost savings tools and the standardization of IT environments, IT leaders are beginning to examine the possibility of taking some services traditionally outsourced to a service provider out of their contracts and back in-house. This changing trend has clients asking outsourcing providers to further break down their pricing by the IT service towers to enable them to pick and choose what they want to have in-house and outsourced. This white paper will explain where you might be able to squeeze your infrastructure for more IT cost savings.

Avoid Costly Mistakes: IT Price Trends to Watch in Q1

eSeminar | Category:   Benchmarking  IT Infrastructure & Applications  Finance & Accounting Services...

By understanding how current economic developments have impacted IT price trends, company executives are better able to determine which IT sourcing strategy will best fit their specific needs.

Join the experts at ProBenchmark as they highlight several IT price trends and directions to watch in Q1 2012. By understanding how current economic developments have impacted IT price trends, company executives are better able to determine which IT sourcing strategy will best fit their specific needs.

Join the experts at ProBenchmark as they highlight several IT price trends and directions to watch in Q1 2012.

Attendees of this eSeminar will see up-to-the-minute analysis of outsourcing deal price trends, gain insight into how services are configured and packaged in the marketplace, and understand the impact of recent market trends on the direction of market prices.

Who Should Attend: This seminar will provide important information for CIOs, CFOs, CPOs, Sourcing Executives, VM Executives, and Global Business Services Executives.

This is part of an ongoing series of eSeminars that reviews recent market price trends and insights.

Shared Services: An In-house HR Solution

eNews | Category:   Strategy & Business Case  HR Services  Shared Services

Shared Services is commonly defined as the standardization of common administrative functions and transactional processes within an organization, and the use of Shared Service Centers (SSCs) for HR management administration and transaction management has seen a dramatic increase in recent years.

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