Point of View Papers

TPI’s advisors are your eyes and ears in the sourcing marketplace, understanding the intricacies of industries and geographies around the globe and lending their expert perspective on topics that may impact your decisions on outsourcing, offshoring, shared services and internal service optimization.

What emerging issues should you be prepared to think about? Practical considerations versus hype? Turn and return to TPI’s Points of View for our “on-the-ground” perspectives designed to help you make informed, effective decisions that stand the test of time.

Deployment of Sourcing Strategy: What Comes First – Fix or Move?
by Dinesh Goel, Project Director, TPI
A common dilemma that organizations confront with pursuing sourcing strategies is whether to fix existing operations before shifting or whether to outsource first and then optimize. Because there are no easy answers to this conundrum, we offer a suggested framework to assist with a formal evaluation of fix versus move options, including potential benefits of both strategies.

Equipping and Empowering Corporate Strategic Sourcing Organizations for the Complexities of Outsourcing and Offshoring
by Mike Slavin, Partner and Practice Leader, Global IT Advisory Services, TPI
The changing nature and prevalence of outsourcing and offshoring within the corporate fabric of business support operations are placing emphasis on the need for deep expertise and breadth of insight among the leaders in these corporate centers of excellence. As a result, corporate strategic sourcing organizations are performing far more significant and pervasive roles in the lifecycle of outsourcing and offshoring approaches. New tools and resources are required to better equip and empower the Strategic Sourcing function to succeed in the world ahead. In this Point of View, TPI offers its perspective on market developments that have lead to a new level of organizational self reliance; how internal organizations can effectively prepare themselves to succeed with their missions; and signs indicating that a different approach would be a better fit.

How the U.S. Subprime Crisis will Affect Indian Service Providers
by Kashyap Kompella, Advisor, TPI, and Thomas J. Sebastian, Project Director, TPI
The fallout from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis is crossing oceans, and some of it has already landed on India’s shores. This paper describes among other topics, TPI’s view on how this will affect the smaller service providers, what a slowdown in discretionary spending on IT projects in India will mean to the service provider community, and how the market will be affected if the U.S. economy weakens the dollar against the Indian Rupee.

India Service Provider Tax Holiday End Draws Near: Cause for Concern?
by Thomas J. Sebastian, Project Director, TPI
For the past 10 years in India, considerable tax breaks have been extended to service providers to fuel the rapid expansion and export of IT and IT-enabled services. With the “tax holiday” ending in 2009 and several of India’s Tier 1 and Tier 2 service providers moving to organize into other tax-favored structures, how might this impact parties negotiating with India-based service providers? Get a concise view of how the India-based IT industry has grown via tax breaks and what the end of the “tax holiday” may mean for clients and the industry.

Managing Employee Redeployment — Creating Value Through Opportunity
by Sarah Seabury, Director, TPI
Corporate redeployments are becoming increasingly common globally, and the challenging European legislative environment requires companies to take an informed and proactive approach to these circumstances. By establishing a positive redeployment culture, companies may mitigate negative or conflicting communications, protect their brand identity and solidify the commitment of retained staff. This TPI point of view offers experienced advice for companies facing redeployments, including key issues to consider for initiating a professionally managed redeployment project to successfully navigate the complexities of European employment laws.

Monetization of Captives Fueling the Outsourcing Marketplace: Aviva’s Recent Sale of its Captive Illustrates Common Motivations, Benefits
by Sid Pai, Partner & Managing Director, TPI India
Aviva’s sale of its large scale, offshore captive operations to third-party service provider WNS is a case study for how parent companies can “monetize” their captive units to raise cash during challenging economic times. This point of view recaps the thought process behind this growing trend in the business process outsourcing (BPO) market, explains how parent companies and service providers can both benefit from monetizing strategies, and offers TPI’s view of the future for this movement.

Monetization of Captives: How Long Will the Opportunity Last?
by Dinesh Goel, Project Director; Rukmini Priyadarshini, Senior Research Analyst and Lubna Esmail, Knowledge Management Editor, TPI
This paper describes TPI’s view on the window of opportunity for the monetization of captives. During the last few years, captives – wholly owned subsidiaries set up with the goal of pro­viding services only to the parent company – have mushroomed in India and other offshore locations. This development has taken place in parallel to the strong growth of India-based service providers, as well as the rapid expansion in India of service providers based elsewhere.

Interestingly, in the recent past, parent compa­nies of some of these captives have sold or oth­erwise exited the majority ownership and the management of their offshore captive opera­tions, a phenomenon commonly referred to as “monetization.”

Proceed With Caution When Outsourcing Large-Scale ADM Outsourcing in China
by Greg Blount, Partner & ADM Strategy Leader, TPI; and Paul Schmidt, Partner & Managing Director, Global Service Delivery, TPI
Executives considering outsourcing large-scale Applications Development & Maintenance (ADM) projects to China should consider the alternative with eyes wide open. While this emerging market may seem a logical place to send projects, buyers of outsourced services should be aware of several areas of concern that TPI has noted in the short- to medium-term. Also learn several positive factors about the capabilities in China along with tips for buyers who opt to look closer at outsourcing ADM projects there.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats?
by Duncan Aitchison, Partner & President, EMEA, TPI
The outsourcing market has seen a near seismic shift over the last two years in the geographic profile of market demand. No one is standing still.

For the majority of the past three decades the United States has been the leading buyer of outsourced services. In fact, just five years ago it comprised 66 percent of the outsourcing contract value. By the end of 2007, this picture changed dramatically. The United States accounted for less than 30 percent of the global contract value while Europe led by 50 percent in the same period.