Service Outsourcing

Navigating legal services procurement

A Strategic Guide to Navigating Legal Services Procurement

In the realm of corporate legal services, procurement professionals encounter distinctive challenges. Unlike conventional procurement categories, legal services necessitate a nuanced comprehension of value, efficiency, and strategic collaboration between in-house legal teams and external law firms. Sacha Kirk, Co-Founder and CMO at Brisbane-based company Lawcadia, in her conversation with SmartProcurement, harnesses insights to elucidate the […]

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Nobody gets fired for outsourcing to India, but they should

By Jon Butler, an expert in technology operations, outsourcing, offshoring and nearshoring For many years India was the jewel of the American outsourcer’s eye. English speaking resources coupled with a flashy rate card proved hard for companies to resist. In fact, outsourcing to India had developed into such a standard solution that it recalled another

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Understanding and managing IT vendor relationships: do they matter?

By Tiran Gunarathna, Senior IT Category Lead, Infosys Business Process Management; andSriKrishna Koneru, AVP – Strategic Business Practice Head, Sourcing and Procurement, Infosys Business Process Management We often hear about vendor management in sourcing and procurement organisations, but how frequently do we talk about vendor relationship management? Are they the same or are they different?

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Procurement perspectives: justifying consultancy fees

Procurement perspectives: justifying consultancy fees

By Stephen Bauld One might wonder why, as a consultant for over a decade, I would write about overpriced consultants. Being in this industry, I often hear stories about the high costs incurred when securing consulting services; these stories are widespread and frequent. Indeed, it is surprising how many consultants are so sensitive to this

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The catch-22 of outsourcing relationships

Customers and suppliers alike maintain that they value innovation. But, far too many outsourcing contracts are full of perverse incentives that inherently disincentivise suppliers from investing in innovation. The result? A catch-22 where outsourcing relationships become a race to the bottom, a situation where organisations think they are spurring on innovation but, in reality, they

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Don’t treat your employees like suppliers

The war for talent is 20 years strong and has changed the way companies recruit and retain talented employees. While great strides have been made in how companies treat employees, many are still in the dark ages when it comes to how they treat their suppliers. Just how backwards? Well, what would happen if employees

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6 steps to optimise your procurement workforce

To become more agile, organisations are re-evaluating their workforce strategies. Although strategists often talk about ‘total workforce management’, what their business functions – procurement included – need most is something much simpler: total workforce optimisation (TWO). For most business functions, human capital is the most important asset and its largest single operating expense. It is

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Logistics: an opportunity for competitive advantage

“What business strategy is all about is, in a word, competitive advantage. The sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable a company to gain, as efficiently as possible, a sustainable edge over its competitors. Corporate strategy thus implies an attempt to alter a company’s strength relative to that of its competitors in the most

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Contracts: Paying for what works

Are performance clauses and outcomes-based contracts the answer? Dr Susan de Witt from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town unpacks contract performance measurement in this month’s SmartProcurement For as long as we can remember – if a government or donor wanted a third-party implementer to teach 100 children in a

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