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The ever accelerating pace of change, combined with the need for sustainability, has pushed gender diversity and the women in leadership issue up the agenda for outsourced recruitment and talent management processes.

Yet in one of Ochre Houses’ recent HR Network think tanks with some of the key global and local organisations in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey region (MENAT) we found there are still barriers in place for females at higher levels. Discussions at the event indicated that the majority of organisations have a real lack of women in leadership roles and are finding it difficult to make this shift. There are a number of external and internal barriers that have been identified which prevent women from reaching top roles. However, with current cultural and socio economic shifts, many organisations in the MENAT region feel there is now a real opportunity to make a difference.

Research carried out in the lead up to the think tank suggested that there are a number of reasons as to why women are prevented from reaching the top jobs. Taking the external factors, there are two key barriers to change; government practice and policy, and family and societal culture – both of which have long been recognised as inhibitors to the progression of women into leadership roles. Examples of the internal factors include: absence of role models, lack of opportunities for women and traditional male oriented social norms.

However, what was strikingly clear from the research was the recognition by senior managers of the importance for organisations in MENAT to collectively collaborate and explore how to remove some of the internal and external barriers to women’s progress to the top roles. Every single interviewee we spoke to said they believed that woman in leadership is an important issue to tackle for at least one of the following reasons:

• Organisational success is increasingly being linked to a diverse leadership group

• Some leadership behaviours more often applied by women than men have proven to enhance company performance and will be key to meet tomorrow’s business challenges

• Around half the population is female – with increasing skills gaps in the MENAT region organisations cannot afford to ignore the female talent pool

• Organisations want the best possible talent at the top and by excluding female talent pools they will not achieve this

• Women often perform better – many organisations had proof that women were outperforming some of their male colleagues, a trait attributed to their motivation to prove themselves.

• It’s important that there is the desire to tackle the issue, we just need to look at how to do this. The majority of delegates involved in the event maintained that they were committed to instituting some form of change in the next 12 months, and we’ll be helping them to develop a working group to share best practice and innovation.

It’s important that there is the desire to tackle the issue, but we now need to look at how to do this. The majority of delegates involved in the event maintained that they were committed to instituting some form of change in the next 12 months, and we’ll be helping them to develop a working group to share best practice and innovation.

Meeting deadlines and managing project workflows when working with people from different nationalities across the world can be one of the most challenging aspects of managing intercultural business relationships. This is because alternative cultures have very different perspectives of time.

For example, across Asia, building good relationships is valued and prioritised over time keeping. A training workshop was arranged for an Indian-British outsourcing partnership. The British company had planned the schedule meticulously down to the last detail but the Indian team announced that they would be arriving one week later than planned. On arrival, when questioned about the delay, the Indian team manager told their British colleagues ‘we came late only by a week not a month!’

In fact, Indian time keeping is often better known for its lack of punctuality. Indian Standard Time (IST) or better known as Indian S t r e t c h a b l e Time means that deadlines are not always strictly adhered to in the work environment. Hence strict guidelines and enforcement may be necessary to adhere to western style fixed deadlines. Alternatively, business executives may need to adapt to this pace and educate their colleagues back home to thrive.

In addition, the importance placed on hierarchy in non-western society can often cause misunderstandings with regard to timing, if not understood properly. In hierarchical cultures, employees would not want to lose face in front of their boss and so may appear to agree to complete a task by a particular deadline. When it is not complete, the Western manager understandably feels frustrated, but in fact, the employee will also feel frustrated and unsupported as they were not asked additional questions, such as: “Do you have the resources to finish the task by tomorrow? Do you have the template? Do you have the licenced software to run the project?

The level of micro-management in these regions needs to be much higher to ensure successful delivery of any task. One way to achieve this is to take time to learn how a manager working in a hierarchical culture would manage his or her staff.

In addition, because of the importance of relationships in the Asian, Arab and Southern European cultures, more emphasis is often placed on good will and good faith than on the western priorities of performance and practicalities. Anyone wishing to develop an effective business relationship in these areas also needs to have a clear idea about how trust will be built and how it will be nurtured once it is established. A greater willingness to talk directly about differences helps build trust, facilitate decision making and open the way to a better way of working together.

The Olympics are coming, every day news articles relating to the 2012 Olympic appear in the media at an ever increasing rate as the games draw nearer. Many of these stories feature outsourcing companies that are either playing a dominant role in the running of the London Olympics or expect to gain increased business from the arrival of the Games.

With private security company G4S providing security, technology services provider Atos providing supporting systems, Acer providing technology hardware, Panasonic providing display equipment and many other companies in the by-lines including BT and cisco to name a few, the Olympic Games is an event that outsources almost its entire production and represent a huge business opportunity for those involved.

The Games have also impacted on outsourcing businesses that have not been contracted to the Games. The attention that the Olympic Games brings to the UK, and the need to capitalise commercially in order to offset the economic costs of the Games has massively increased the level of business going to outsourcing companies.

An example of the 2012 Olympics impacting on in-direct business includes the expansion of contact centres to meet the increased demand. A contract centre operated by Journeycall based in Scotland announced that it was hiring new staff in order to meet massive demand on its services from clients in the transportation industry including rail and bus. Journerycall MD, Trisha Pirie, said “We’re gearing up for an exceptionally busy few months when many of our rail and bus clients may experience unprecedented demand both before, during and after the Olympics and Paralympics events.”

The public sector has offered up an increasing number of contracts for tender in preparation for a global focus on the UK during the 2012 Games. Telecommunications projects including Underground station wireless access and rolling out superfast broadband in rural areas are just some of the areas that the government have focused on in preparation for the Games.

The sale of the task in hand has seen huge deployments of staff and resources. Acer has supplied over 12,000 PCs, 900 servers and more than 1,000 notebooks to the Olympic organising committee. A total of 3,500 staff will be employed by the IT suppliers in order to meet service requirements.

G4S is in the process of hiring 10,000 workers to provide security over the Olympics as part of £200 million contract to train and evaluate security staff. The Olympic contract is expected to bolster the FTSE 100 Company which has seen growth revenues of 6.7 percent in the first quarter of 2012. A G4S spokesman commented that: "based on recent contract awards, outsourcing trends and the group's bid pipeline, the organic growth rate is expected to continue to improve during 2012."

The Games has proven to be unique opportunity for Outsourcing companies in gaining business and winning large contracts that extend many years beyond the summer of 2012.

We discussed in my last blog post that a correctly implemented electronic data interchange (EDI) system can be more effective than digital signatures at securing the confidentiality of data contained within e-Invoices. Digital signatures, on the other hand, can be transmitted by various means and consequently, it is harder to guarantee a secure document exchange. In this blog, I will be looking at how both methods compare in their data processing and integration capabilities.

According to the current EC VAT Directive, an invoice is defined by its contents, and these contents require a specific minimum set of data to allow a document to be classed as an invoice. The challenge lies in the fact that there are variations from country to country on what is specifically required as minimum invoice data fields. All countries require the details pertaining to VAT to be included, but discrepancies lie in the extra pieces of information that certain countries require. For example, France requires additional commercial fields that are not needed elsewhere.

This variation also extends to electronic invoice formats, where different countries and indeed different industry verticals all have unique cultural or industry preferences, and even legally mandated requirements. For example, issuing an e-Invoice to the Spanish government requires an XML Facturae format, but to do the same in Denmark requires the OIOUBL XML format. Sending an invoice within the Petro-Chemical industry requires the ChemXML format, but to do the same within the Auto industry will soon require the new VDA EDI format. Because of these differences, a supplier in Belgium trading with a buyer in Spain may find that while an invoice may comply with Belgian laws and legislation, it may have to be converted into a different format to meet the cultural/legal/industrial requirements of the Spanish buyer.

This complexity applies to both EDI and digital signatures, but what sets them apart is the flexibility to convert the originating file from the supplier’s preferred format to the destination file in the buyer’s preferred format, ensuring that all data fields are preserved.

When digital signatures are used on EDI/XML documents the originating file is ‘locked’. This means that after mapping to the destination format, the new document must also be digitally signed. Contrast this to EDI processes without the use of digital signatures where data processing and integration is part and parcel of the standard end-to-end process. The EDI process facilitates format conversion as there are fewer restrictions hindering the process. Additionally, EDI solutions maintain comprehensive audit trails of mid-term conversion so that tax requirements for long-term auditability can be met.

You can learn more about e-Invoicing at:

http://www.einvoicingbasics.co.uk/

If you’re reading this blog post you’re probably a social media convert – like most British adults you’ve probably got a Facebook account to keep up with friends and family, you might even do some tweeting, and as a professional you’ve almost certainly got a LinkedIn profile.

Your activity on these sites creates what’s known as social data – evidence of your hobbies and what you like and dislike, as well as more basic information about you like your name, age, gender, marital status, where you live, what job you have, and so on.

Given the explosion in social media in the last five or six years, it’s not surprising that social data is the area of marketing with the highest growth in investment – the ability to reach people and find out useful information about them is unparalleled. But it’s also the channel marketers struggle most to measure in terms of its impact.

So here are a few simple tips that should hopefully make the world of social data less overwhelming – and more valuable – to your marketing efforts.

1. Relevance is what counts…

Just because you’re able to get hold of data, it doesn’t mean you should. For many businesses, the danger with using social channels is the tendency to collect too much data such as measuring every tweet that someone does. This often contributes to a data headache rather than easing it so it’s vital that businesses take a practical approach to measuring the impact of the data they have.

2. …And size is overrated

Businesses typically and wrongly perceive size, more than relevance, to be the fundamental factor to successfully gathering data through social channels. Unless users are actively engaging with a brand then they’re not delivering value. Driving conversation and engagement is key to measuring social data and in that sense, size becomes irrelevant.

3. Social data is only part of the picture

Data is most powerful when you have the bigger picture. One of the challenges companies typically face is being able to understand social data within the framework of existing customer data. This is particularly important when dealing with crisis communications. If a customer makes a complaint via Twitter for example, it’s very tempting to reply immediately. However, it’s more effective to consider the whole picture and look at the customer’s interaction through other channels. Different behaviours inform different areas and makes managing the customer a much easier process in the long run.

4. It’s not all about sales

Many social networks are being used very skilfully by a number of companies to harbour brand loyalty and associations, and no business would turn its nose up at positive interaction with consumers. The true benefit of utilising Facebook and its peers lies in connecting with people and guiding them one step along the purchasing process rather than trying to rush them to the checkout.

However, to understand the impact that social data has on sales across a business, it must be considered in conjunction with all other measurements– even if the customer doesn’t click straight from social to sale.

With the economy hitting bleak times, corporate social responsibility programmes have taken a back seat while companies take measures to ensure survival. Juxtaposed to this is the coalition government’s vision for the Big Society, which aims to go beyond CSR and put power and responsibility directly into the hands of the people. So it follows that companies that are seen to look out for the people will become more attractive, and gain more business.

Is CSR firmly back on the agenda in 2012? How is it being done? This feature will look at the current state of play regarding CSR in the outsourcing industry, and how companies are looking to accrue positive headlines through socially responsible actions.

Dr Steven McCabe, Director of Research Degree Programmes at Birmingham City Business School believes that that some will still consider price to be the dominant factor in any purchase: “Paying extra to receive something that they can get cheaper elsewhere may seem unnecessary. Indeed, as we all experience the effects of global problems and austerity we all search for a bargain. Therefore, there is an argument that CSR could become an expensive appendage and that the additional costs may make your products and services uncompetitive.”

However, the good publicity that CSR brings can directly lead to business benefits and conversely, adverse public opinion can lead to the opposite. A trajectory study by 23red suggests that 91% say how good a company is and 90% say how it behaves towards its customers and communities, is significant when considering acquiring a product or service. Jane Asscher, Managing Partner and Chairman of 23red stated: “People are rewarding ‘good’ brands with their custom.” She continued: “Leaders in the field such as Unilever, P&G, and M&S continue to garner positive PR as a result of their long-term commitment to their CSR programmes.”

Is this is the case, in the age of social media and whistle blowing, it is difficult to for businesses and their processes to remain impervious to public awareness. Asscher states that: “It is easier by the day for uncomfortable truths to be told. So in the face of this most sensible companies are going with the flow and the city analysts who have argued that CSR is a waste of shareholder’s money are losing credibility.”

Unilever in particular have reiterated their public promise to halve their environmental impact over the next ten years. While providing good publicity for Unilever, it also provides other benefits, as Asscher stated: “It also causes problems for their competitors by giving Governments, NGOs, journalists and citizens a stick to beat them with. This bold declaration will also galvanise the company, its employees, and its suppliers to live up to their very public promise.”

CSR can also help to perpetually provide an affable economic climate for their business to operate in as Dr McCabe believes: “We have a duty to invest in the growth and development of those employed in local economies as well as the emerging ones. If the objective is to increase consumption of our own goods home and abroad this will be undermined if people’s wages are cut and they work for conditions that are unfair and exploitative.”

While the examples above apply in general to B2C organisations, the conclusions can be directly transferred to outsourcing users, specifically in the public sector. Organisations affiliated with legislation such as the ISO 14001, an EU standard for environmental management, can be extremely beneficial. Asscher states: “There are a number of Government procurement departments which request confirmation as to whether or not a potential supplier has ISO 14001, the environmental standard. While it may not be mandatory, if the tendering company thinks their chances will be improved, even marginally, then it would be worthwhile achieving the standard.”

So it seems then that CSR is, and should be, on the present and future agenda for businesses. While for some price will remain the ultimate purchasing factor, CSR is a deciding factor and can distinguish an organisation from its competitors. In terms of procurement, new legislation has meant that, while not always mandatory, CSR can provide firms with a far greater chance of winning contracts. CSR, particularly with widespread participation, creates an economic domino effect in which businesses reap the rewards of their actions by creating advantageous business conditions.

Cognizant recently topped the customer satisfaction and recommendation rankings in the four-country region (Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden) in KPMG’s Outsourcing 2012 study of service provider performance in the Nordic region.

sourcingfocus.com spoke to Jayajyoti Sengupta, Cognizant's Country Manager for the Nordics to find out about how Cognizant ensure customer satisfaction.

Please can you elaborate further on this: “Our high-touch relationship model, deep domain expertise and consulting skills, unique reinvestment philosophy, and our ability to build strong multicultural teams around the globe have helped our customers navigate structural changes in the economy and their industries, enabling them to stay efficient, effective, and innovative.”

Clients across industries—financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical, retail, media and entertainment—are going through structural shifts driven by globalization, virtualization, digitization, regulatory changes, consumerization and new technology architectures (such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud). This has led to clients seeking dual mandates of cost agility (efficiency and effectiveness) and innovation (business transformation).

While clients IT budgets have largely been flat to modestly up, they expect to achieve much more from less. This calls for working with a partner who can address the dual challenges of cost agility and innovation off one platform within the available budget.

That’s where a company like Cognizant excels because of its years of managing its target operating margins lower than comparable peers but reinvesting the excess back into the business for high levels of customer relationship management, technology excellence, multi-cultural and domain expertise. Today, Cognizant has over 1,000 client partners and account managers who are responsible for the high-touch relationship architecture, over 3,000 pure-play consultants and dozens of technology centers of excellence, and 1 MBA for every 25 software professionals, globally.

These investments help clients drive cost down on existing infrastructure and applications and helps clients to use the freed up dollar to invest in growth and innovation, thereby addressing both the bottom-line and topline needs of clients.

How does the high-touch relationship model differ from traditional governance?

We have seen two traditional models depending on the starting points of companies and how they evolved. With global system integrators who started off in the US or Europe, the center of gravity was in the US or Europe and their offshore/global delivery locations were started as extensions. It’s more of a passing-the-baton or throw it over the wall model. While for Indian companies their expansion to the rest of the world was with the view that expansion to other parts of the world was a necessary sales and marketing activity. The centre of gravity of these organisations was in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, etc. For many people who went to work for these companies in geographies outside India, it created a very difficult environment to be successful as an executive or as an individual because the centre of gravity was in India.

In our model—what we call the two-in-a-box model—the centre of gravity is not geographic but vested in a group of people. Through the two-in-a-box model—at an account level, at a customer level—the centre of gravity rests with two individuals, the Delivery Director and the Client Partner.

Does having named leaders offshore effect delivery?

It makes no difference that the Delivery Manager is delivering from India or China, or that the Client Partner is engaging with the client in the US or Europe. Each one individually and jointly feels accountable, empowered and responsible for the success of the client. In the two-in-a-box model, they together define the success of the client along the same terms—a sort of soft concept, but that’s how it really works on the ground.

We believe the two-in-a-box model is superior to the passing-the-baton or throw it over the wall models of other companies because there is no opportunity for loss or dilution anywhere in our model. In the passing-the-baton model, you need to align two sets of people in two separate stages.

Ours is more of a relationship model and the execution is good because there is alignment of all stakeholders from the start.

GM will save 2,100 jobs and create hundreds more after the company announced that it has chosen Ellesmere Port car factory to create the next-generation Astra. The Ellesmere Port complex had been highlighted by GM as being likely to face closure in part of the company’s efforts to cut European losses.

The deal is expected to be announced after workers at the Ellesmere factory accepted the terms of the deal offered by GM. The turnaround comes as the UK car manufacturing industry enjoys growth after the downturn years of 2008-09, seeing a six percent increase in growth from 2010.

The business secretary, Vince Cable, said "Today's decision to ballot the workforce signals a very strong vote of confidence by General Motors in the UK automotive industry. “

Outsourcing company Atos is set to enter into the final test phase of its Olympic Games support systems. The company will have 3,500 staff deployed during the Games to cover more than 140 sites and 10,000 end user devices.

The systems including the Games management system, data distribution services and workforce management systems, and these will be tested in rehearsal throughout next week before the whole support system goes live at the beginning of June.

Atos will oversee the IT operations of the Games and co-ordinate with third-party IT suppliers to the Games including BT, Panasonic, Acer and Samsung as well as supporting the Olympic media partners.

CSC and HP have joined together in a global collaboration with Fraunhofer FOKUS, EMC, RSA, McAfee and Sourcefire to open the Cybersecurity Demonstration Center (CDC).

The site located in Berlin will be used to create new defences against cyber attacks by researching and testing multiple and varied types of attacks on IT infrastructure. The research gained from testing is intended to safeguard and educate the security industry against vulnerabilities.

Head of Fraunhofer FOKUS, Professor Radu Popescu-Zeletin, said “The base for trust, data protection and security are constantly changing. It is important that there are systems that are able to react effectively on danger”.