Capgemini’s recently announced acquisition of IBX got me thinking this week about what it will take for procurement outsourcing to go mainstream. Fortunately, the timing of my analysis (not to mention the deal timing) could not have been better, as it coincided with a last-minute visit from an expert on the subject who happened to be in Chicago the day following the acquisition. I had the distinct pleasure of catching up this week over some firewater with my old friend and colleague, Phil Fersht, of Horses for Sources fame (or would that be offshore infamy?) Phil knows more about trends in the overall outsourcing market than just about anyone I know, and he’s got some fairly strong — even survey-informed — views when it comes to procurement outsourcing specifically. In a recent post on his blog, Phil spilled the BPO beans on some survey data that sheds some insight on procurement outsourcing.
In his new study, Seeking the New Normal in Outsourcing Delivery, Phil managed to get 1,055 outsourcing executives across customers/service providers and advisors to share their views on outsourcing and their intentions for 2010. In this rant, I’ll share some of what he found, and offer up my own perspective on the situation. In Part 2, next week, I’ll offer a no-holds-barred prescription for curing what holds back procurement BPO today (and how providers are just as guilty as companies when it comes to getting the sourcing/purchasing/payables outsourcing equation right)…
