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How Stefanini Supported Hepster In Scaling their Business Stefanini are proud to share an update on our collaboration with hepster, which is an insurance business headquartered in Germany. hepster’s CTO has spoken really enthusiastically about how the quality and speed of the service we've provided has played a really important role in hepster realizing their ambitious growth plans. During our partnership, we’ve been able to code, test and debug applications, solve customer problems, identify improvements for existing systems and evaluate potential candidates for all hepster development teams. Our work with hepster is just the latest in a series of exciting projects that are allowing us to innovate in order to co-create a better future. Watch the video, where hepster’s CTO, Peter Schöning, and our very own Business Development Director, Karin De Man, discuss how we have made the partnership a success despite the challenges posed by the pandemic. You can read more about the partnership in this article. |
Vietnam: A Hidden Gem for Outsourcingby Chloe Trinh Tran, Content Writer and Mohan Naidu, Managing Director at FPT SoftwareIn the era of uncertainty post-pandemic, businesses are presented with various adversities, one of which is IT talent shortages. Business leaders must explore new outsourcing models and locations to overcome this challenge. In recent years, Vietnam has emerged as an attractive outsourcing destination for enterprises worldwide due to its growing IT infrastructure, improving logistics, and regulatory environment: · Ranked 5th in Global Services Location Index (AT Kearney, 2021) · Tier 1 Emerging Offshore location in APAC (Gartner, 2019) · Ranked 9th in Top 10 Digital Nation (Tholons,) · Top 6 best locations for IT outsourcing, according to The Global Services Location Index (GSLI, 2021) · Ho Chi Minh City in Top Outsourcing Cities in 8 consecutive years (Tholons, 2009-2016) Read the full article here. |
Mauritius: Carving out its Niche in the Global Delivery Modelby Pratima Sewpal, Manager, ICT & Digital Services at EDB MauritiusMauritius, located in the Indian Ocean, is an island of multiple facets and a mosaic of cultures. Long hailed as an ideal getaway destination for Europeans in quest of a luxury holiday, Mauritius has a lot more to offer besides the Sun, Sea and Sand. From its roots as a traditional outsourcing destination, Mauritius has evolved into a thriving international and competitive ICT platform. The country has not only established itself as an attractive and cost competitive global services delivery destination but is also gaining prominence as an emerging tech hotspot as acknowledged in the Kearney Global Services Location Index 2021. Read the full article here. |
The Growing Tech Industry Will be The Driving Force In Ukraine’s Recoveryby Konstantin Vasyuk, Executive Director at IT Ukraine AssociationIn new military realities Ukrainian tech industry is staying stable and expanding sector of the national economy. Its rapid growth by more than 50% during 2019-2021 continued up to the War and in February 2022 resulted in the highest monthly indicator of export in the history of the Ukrainian tech market – $839 million. Moreover, for 3 months of the war - from March to May – Ukrainian Tech demonstrated its resilience in the face of turmoil and 6% growth of computer services export compared to the same period of the previous year. For the first five months of 2022 the industry provided $ 3,2 billion worth of foreign currency incomes to the Ukrainian economy. Read the full article here. |
Turning Chatbots from a Frustrating Failure to a Flourishing Business Functionby Terry Walby, Co-Founder and CEO at OpenDialog AIThere are many aspects of life that drive us all crazy. But when it comes to dealing with brands, there is a real frontrunner in the frustrations steaks - chatbots. As a staple of online brand interactions they are something we’ve all had experiences with. Mostly poor ones. Their inability to naturally communicate can leave users feeling anywhere from frustrated at best, to wanting no further interaction with the brand at worst. In the majority of cases they are as ineffective as they are prevalent and it’s time something was done about it. Read the full article here. |
South Africa: GBS/BPO Offshore Location of Choiceby Traci Freeman, Marketing & Growth at BPESADuring this auspicious festival, BPESA, as the national trade body and industry association for the Global Business Services (GBS) sector in South Africa had the opportunity to share case studies and success stories of global logo’s being serviced out of the country. For the fourth consecutive year the sector has observed a rapid growth rate of 22% CAGR. The GBS sector which includes the expanse of CX, Shared and Professional Services as well as Digital and ITO has demonstrated resilience in the face of global disruptions. Recognition as the Top CX offshore destination for the second consecutive year has resulted in an influx of large global brands and BPO’s being prompted by clients to consider the country as part of alternate geographical risk mitigation expansion strategies. We are humbled to wear this accolade and do so with pride knowing that our global client community continues to see value in the South African GBS and BPO offering. Read the full article here. |
How to Accelerate Contracting and Enable Supplier Diversityby David Jones, CEO & Founder at Claus.ifyDid you know, most businesses have their own version of a Master Services Agreement, yet around 90% of the content of executed MSAs is substantively the same (though expressed in different words)? Why are we spending months negotiating positions when we already know where we’ll likely land? It’s expensive and it’s getting in the way of closing deals quickly. It’s not good business. Then there is the fundamental problem with contracting – larger suppliers are often better-placed to assess and mitigate the risks of (pro)customer terms appended to RfPs, which effectively locks-out smaller suppliers. In a world where there is such a focus on diversity and equality, who is looking out for smaller businesses? What about supplier diversity? Read the full article here. |
Bangladesh – The Next ICT Powerhouseby Russell T Ahmed, President at Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS)With business services growing by 9% and the Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) by about 20% in 2021, the global business and technology industry is seeing the biggest economic boom since the dot.com era. These present great opportunities as companies embark on digital transformation. But there are challenges too. And the biggest challenge facing the industry right now is the talent crisis. The UK alone has 1 million tech vacancies, with software developers being in high demand. Traditional sources like India, are themselves experiencing a shortage in human resources. This crisis is further exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. As such, the UK tech industry is looking for other delivery destinations and service providers. Bangladesh is a clear alternative. Read the full article here. |
How to build a Global Business Services even in times of Corona
by Constanze Nusperling, Head of Global Business Services at Avient Corporation and GSA Executive Council Member
In case you have ever set up a new business unit in your company, you will be aware how time-consuming this can be - especially when the unit is as emotionally charged as Global Business Services (i.e. the further development of traditional Shared Services into a global, multifunctional structure). If on top of that, Corona gets in the way, and you cannot travel anywhere, some out of the box thinking is required to achieve your goals nevertheless.
Read the full article here.
The Rebirth of the Contact Centre; Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS)
by Alistair Niederer, Head of EMEA at TTEC and member of the GSA Executive Council
At a recent GSA Pop-up event a panel of leading industry speakers and CX experts including myself and Tony Chambers, Head of Digital at TTEC EMEA discussed the concept of ‘Contact Centre as a Service’ (CCaaS).
So, what is CCaaS? Contact Centre as a Service is a software deployment model that enables companies to only purchase the technology they need and is commonly operated by a vendor to reduce IT, integration, and support costs. CCaaS solutions are most commonly deployed as a cloud-based CX solution in contact centres, but in some instances, an on-site CCaaS software solution is more ideal.
Read the full article here.
The Future of Contracting
by Simon Lightman, Partner at Eversheds Sutherland and member of the GSA Executive Council
On Tuesday 9th March I had the pleasure of taking part in a roundtable discussion on the future of contracting as part of the GSA’s Festival of Sourcing (click here for a recording of the session).
The session was moderated by Chris Bates, Partner at Ashurst LLP, with the following panellists and I was joined on the panel but Arnab Dutt OBE (Chair, Social Value Policy Unit at Federation of Small Businesses), Joel Walker (Global Head of Corporate Services Procurement at Vodafone) and Ian Puddy (Partner at Independent Advisor Network).
Read the full article here.
Wellbeing for 2021 - A Review of the Impacts of Home Working
by Joe Williams, Supplier Governance Manager at Aviva and member of the GSA Executive Council
The Covid pandemic has been a huge challenge for businesses across all sectors and industry, however in amongst the challenges some notable opportunities are presenting themselves. A recent survey completed by the City of London Corporation indicated that (of 52 COL based firms) 60% of COL firms were reviewing their space requirements. Pre pandemic figures suggested that less than 1 in 4 members of staff were working from home (WFH) at least one day a week prior to the pandemic compared to an expectation that from the end of the pandemic that this will increase to 3 in 4 staff members WFH at least once a week. At the GSA, we know that a large portion of our member base are also reviewing their property footprints (as we have done ourselves) with an expectation that more of our people will move to virtual way of working on a more frequent basis.
Read the full article here.
Don't Make your CFO Grumpy Just Because You're Going Cloud Native!
by Ravi Veerasubramanian, Director, Cloud and Digital Managed Services at NTT Data UK
CTOs and IT teams love the public cloud (IaaS and PaaS) for the elasticity, feature-set, ease of use and flexibility. Its freed them up from some many constraints they've lived with....
BUT : Do you know a CFO who loves surprises - unpredictable, unforecasted OPEX and unplanned CAPEX makes them grumpy...
Read the full article here.
Five Ways to Wellbeing: Revamped
by Eleanor Thompson, Alliances Manager at Fivetran and member of the GSA Executive Council
Right back at the beginning of lockdown I wrote a piece on the Five Ways to Wellbeing. It was helpful for some people at the time but I think it’s in need of a more realistic refresh. The pandemic has continued for longer than I think many of us expected and for me, the novelty of Zoom quizzes, Instagram workouts, and baking banana bread has really started to wear off.
Read the full article here.