Search results

The authors share a real-world case study of a multiple-year adoption process of robotic process automation (RPA) in procurement to add to the limited empirical research base on RPA in supply chain management. The Maersk case offers hard evidence of the value of RPA that can be used as a benchmark for decision-making in companies and as a basis for further research in key areas such as change management and behavioral aspects as well as return on investment on RPA and the need for RPA capability development.

Together with the co-author from Maersk, the authors cover a multiple year RPA program in procurements, to capture lessons learned and develop research questions for the future. The authors consider 39 generic action principles for RPA adoption in a specific procurement context.

The authors find RPA for procurement to be an enabler of strategic progress and of advancing the concept of triple values (enterprise, customer and employee) in a supply chain setting. The authors offer RPA adoption scoping guidance and show how, with growth and maturity of the program, conditions such as predictability of volume become less relevant as a scoping criterium. The authors also find that RPA augments work rather than replace staff. Maersk utilizes staff time freed up by automation to focus employees on more strategic priorities. The authors consider 39 generic action principles for RPA adoption in a procurement-specific context and develop additional action principles based upon the Maersk case.

The authors study both a unique and rich case to complement limited empirical research on RPA in procurement and supply chain management and the limited research into RPA past early stage adoptions. The authors address Hofmann et al.'s (2019) questions about the change management involved in RPA and consider generic RPA action principles from literature in this specific procurement setting. The authors extend those action principles and develop a rich set of research opportunities.

This paper offers a novel approach for conducting impactful research on emerging topics or practices. This method is particularly relevant in the face of emerging phenomena and new dynamics, such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on supply chain risks. Because these new phenomena and dynamics are relatively unexplored, little prior knowledge exists in literature and industry, and they represent a large opportunity and/or challenge to practitioners.

The action principles research (APR) approach, as a newer version of critically engaged research (CER), offers comparison against more traditional empirical or intervention-based research. The authors illustrate the approach with a pandemic risk-management study.

The APR approach originated in the information technology field. It is highly applicable for researchers who are seeking to more expeditiously support decision making and actioning on new dynamics and emerging topics and practice in supply chain management than is allowed by traditional methods and longitudinal CER.

In the context of ongoing calls for relevance, impact and actionable findings on pandemic risk management, this paper describes an approach to developing timely findings that are actionable for practitioners and that advance science around dynamic and emerging topics or practices. We hope this will grow societal value of research, particularly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the new dynamics and uncertainties that managers face in modern supply chains.

To identify key lessons, trends and enduring challenges with global outsourcing of back office services.

The authors extract lessons, project trends, and discuss enduring challenges from a 20 year research program conducted by these authors and their extended network of co‐authors and colleagues.

The authors identify seven important lessons for successfully exploiting the maturing Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) markets. The lessons require back office executives to build significant internal capabilities and processes to manage global outsourcing. The authors predict 13 trends about the size and growth of ITO and BPO markets, about suppliers located around the world, and about particular sourcing models including application service provision, insourcing, nearshoring, rural sourcing, knowledge process outsourcing, freelance outsourcing, and captive centers. The authors identify five persistent, prickly issues on global outsourcing pertaining to back office alignment, client and supplier incentives, knowledge transfer, knowledge retention, and sustainability of outsourcing relationships.

The authors present some experimental innovations to address these issues.

This paper aims to answer the question: how do clients and BPO service providers work together to foster dynamic innovation? Dynamic innovation is a process by which clients incent providers to deliver many innovations each year that improve the client's performance in terms of operational efficiency, process effectiveness and/or strategic impact.

The paper is based on research conducted in 2011 and 2012 and includes 202 survey responses and 48 in-depth interviews in 24 client organizations.

The most effective innovation incentives are mandatory productivity targets, innovation days, and gain-sharing at the project level. Threat of competition and special governance arrangements for innovation also positively influence innovation. The least successful incentives for innovations were found to be innovation funds, gainsharing at the relationship level, what has been called “pain-sharing”, and benchmarking.

The 24 BPO relationships do not represent a random sample, but rather a convenience sample. The authors aimed to understand emerging best practices from high-performing BPO relationships, thus the paired interview samples are purposefully biased towards higher-performing relationships.

Delivering innovations requires a process the authors call AIFI – acculturating, inspiring, funding, and injecting. The research finds that leadership pairs are key drivers of the dynamic innovation process. Leadership pairs jumpstart the dynamic innovation process by starting with innovation incentives. Even so, just having one right leader makes a positive difference. The positive difference is stronger if that leader is on the client side rather than the provider side. With no right leaders, the practices that the authors describe are less efficacious but still have positive impacts on the levels of innovation experienced.

In the ITO and BPO literatures, researchers have under-examined the more strategic drivers of outsourcing, including innovation. This research examines the process and practices that deliver dynamic innovation in client organizations.

Nearly all legal firms and in‐house counsels will have to consider the opportunities and risks afforded by the rapidly changing legal process outsourcing (LPO) market, estimated to be worth $2.4bn globally, and growing rapidly. The purpose of this Industry Insight is to assess the current LPO provider landscape by analyzing data on 27 LPO providers.

The authors analyzed LPO provider data collected in 2011 by Orbys, a leading sourcing and transformation advisory firm based in Europe. The 27 providers in the sample include specialist LPO providers, full service LPO providers, and global BPO providers that offer LPO services. The authors assessed LPO provider services, provider competencies, geographic location, pricing, team composition, and staff turnover rates.

The LPO providers in the sample provide a variety of services, including litigation, intellectual property, corporate, compliance, procurement, employment, property, and consulting services. LPO providers allocated most of their human resources to litigation (26 percent), intellectual property (14 percent) and corporate/compliance (12 percent) services. LPO providers balance team composition – the percentage of onshore resources located close to the client versus offshore resources in low‐cost locations – to reduce client costs while still delivering quality services. The average team composition average was 22 percent of resources onshore and 78 percent of resources offshore, mostly in India. The authors also analyzed LPO prices by skill level and location. For example, the average daily rate for a fully qualified lawyer based in India was $248. LPO provider turnover rates ranged from 3 percent to 34 percent, with an average turnover of 15 percent.

This research on the LPO provider landscape helps to inform potential clients about LPO services and the global LPO landscape. The authors also identify three practices to help clients achieve success with LPO engagements. First, consider overall value, not just price. Second, mediate the effects of high LPO provider turnover. Third, assess and develop client‐retained capabilities, because outsourcing legal services is not about abdicating responsibility, but about learning to manage legal services in a different way.

Legal process outsourcing is the next evolution in the provision of services. Because the LPO market is less mature than the information technology outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) markets, very little research has been done on LPO in general or on LPO provider capabilities specifically. This Industry Insight helps to bridge the knowledge gap.

Given the global economic recession, anti‐offshoring political campaign platforms and proposed anti‐offshoring legislation in many developed countries, organizations face pressure to keep jobs in their home country. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which organizations are responding to anti‐offshoring pressures. It aims to ask whether client organizations are changing their buying patterns for information technology outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) services because of anti‐offshoring pressures.

A survey was administered to respondents representing 84 client organizations that purchase ITO and BPO services. Nine countries are represented, but the data primarily capture US client responses.

Overall, it was found that client organizations are not changing their buying patterns because of anti‐offshoring pressures. Client respondents report strong satisfaction with offshore outsourcing of IT and business services. In particular, clients favorably reported on the costs savings and increased flexibility with offshore ITO and BPO. Consequently, the majority of respondents have not altered how they select service providers or service locations because of anti‐offshoring pressures.

The economic recession is prompting at least two pressures on client organizations: reduce costs and keep jobs at home. Based on the authors' findings, the former is more influential. Even though respondents indicated a moderate to high level of uncertainty about possible anti‐offshoring legislation being passed, client organizations continue to source IT and BP services without much consideration to anti‐offshoring pressures.

Academic researchers have conducted very few studies that examine the effects of public pressure on sourcing strategies of client organizations. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by filling that gap. ITO and BPO clients and practitioners, as well as politicians, lobbyists, and labor advocates will find the results pertinent.

While strategic outsourcing decisions are crafted by senior executives, they are executed by middle managers and staff who may not share the vision or enthusiasm of their senior leadership team. The purpose of this paper is to provide a deep understanding of the effects of outsourcing on one of those stakeholder groups – the client project managers – responsible for the implementation of outsourcing strategies, and to identify practices to better empower and enable them.

Interviews with 67 client project managers in 25 organizations responsible for integrating suppliers into project teams.

Client project managers report 27 effects of outsourcing on their roles, including six positive effects and 21 negative effects.

Senior executives who implemented the following practices had more success with their outsourcing decisions: provide enough resources to implement the sourcing strategy, be willing to change internal work practices, build social capital with key supplier executives and seek independent assessment of sourcing strategy effectiveness.

The paper presents an original framework to categorize the effects of outsourcing on client project managers. The framework addresses six areas of concern: organizational support, project planning, knowledge transfer, process standards, managing work and managing people. The paper identifies four practices senior executives use to align and empower their employees to deliver the expected business benefits from strategic outsourcing decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide industry insights on the business models, practices, and capabilities that suppliers need to deliver cost‐effective information technology (IT) outsourcing services from rural locations within the USA. As rural outsourcing has not yet been studied by academics, many questions have not yet been answered. How can suppliers attract enough talent to rural areas to make rural outsourcing viable? How can suppliers scale operations? Will the value proposition attract serious clients? An ongoing research project was launched to answer these and other questions about rural outsourcing. This paper aims to report on the first set of findings based on four case studies.

This paper reports on the results from four case studies of rural outsourcing suppliers. In total, 35 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with founders, executives, delivery center managers, and delivery team members and a visit was made to a rural delivery center owned and operated by each of the four suppliers.

After comparing and contrasting the value propositions, location strategies, human capital development, and scalability of operations across the cases, in general, it was found that rural outsourcing suppliers position their value proposition as lower in price than urban outsourcing but higher in value than offshore outsourcing. Rural outsourcing suppliers achieve this value proposition by locating delivery centers in low‐cost areas and by recruiting, developing, and retaining a high‐performing workforce. Rural suppliers scale operations either by building multiple, small‐sized delivery centers or by building one large delivery center.

There are still many aspects of this phenomenon that warrant additional study. The paper identifies areas of future research pertaining to client experiences, competition from large suppliers, government support, and rural outsourcing in countries outside the USA.

The paper identifies five lessons for practice: rural outsourcing works best when clients engage a team to deliver a service; rural outsourcing is not freelance outsourcing or staff augmentation; rural outsourcing addresses an unfilled gap in a client's sourcing portfolio; rural outsourcing suppliers will continue to move up the value chain; and most rural outsourcing suppliers operate best on a sell‐build sequence, so clients should plan ahead.

This paper reports on industry insights from one of the first known, ongoing academic studies of rural outsourcing.

Information systems (IS) outsourcing has been viewed as an attractive option by many senior managers generally because of the belief that IS outsourcing vendors can achieve economies of scale and specialization because their only business is information processing. The challenge of implementing, operating and maintaining enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and the outsourcing service offered by ERP vendors have made ERP outsourcing an attractive option for some organizations. However, although IS outsourcing is now a major industry, the outsourcing of ERP applications is still in its infancy. This paper explores ERP outsourcing in terms of the application service provider (ASP) approach where a third‐party vendor hosts, manages and maintains various data and ERP applications on behalf of different clients. Critical to the management of the ERP outsourcing relationship is the outsourcing contract, which, if improperly or incompletely written, can have significant negative implications for the outsourcing firm. Contracts that encourage vendor performance and discourage under‐performance are therefore clearly of interest to managers. Although many articles have appeared on outsourcing, the issue of incentive contracts for ERP outsourcing has not been adequately addressed by researchers, partly because of the infancy of this area. In this paper, an approach to analyze incentive schemes and structuring ERP outsourcing contracts for the mutual gain of the parties is presented.