systematicHR

The intersection between HR strategy and HR technology

Outsourcing

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    HRaaS

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    Every now and then I think I have a thought that is pure genius. This is not one of them. Instead, every now and then I have a thought that simply entertains me for longer than it should. This is definitely one of those. I have not yet figured out the appropriate pronunciation for this.…

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    HRO is not Dead

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    HRO has seemed dead for at least a couple of years now.  A couple years ago it was almost all I was writing about, and there were mega deals to be had every other month.  All consultants were talking about to their clients was deciding if they should outsource or not.  At the time, HRO…

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    Outsourcing 2.0

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    Hopping on the 2.0 bandwagon, the Outsourcing Institute put out their Outsourcing 2.0 whitepaper, much to my entertainment. How do we know when we’ve reached an Outsourcing 2.0 environment? Web 2.0 capabilities will have brought an entirely new mindset to the outsourcing community that will become just as contagious as the technology tools themselves. We…

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    McKinsey on SaaS

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    “Several factors are spurring the growth. New software design and delivery models allow many more instances of an application to run at once in a common environment, so providers can now share one application cost effectively across hundreds of companies—a vast improvement on the old client-server model. Bandwidth costs continue to drop, making it affordable…

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    Offshoring and Chinese English

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    We’ve all been dealing with call centers getting routed to India for a few years now.  In the beginning, the experiences were horrible as people navigated the many communications, process and cultural issues.  Things seem to begetting better lately though.  We are more understanding of the hurdles we need to get over the have international…

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    Redefining HRO

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    Jason Corsello recently posted a great analysis of the state of HRO.  His take is that the industry is on it’s 3rd generation of development, and the description of these 3 generations is so priceless that I thought I’d repost it word for word: I think we have officially entered our 3rd wave of HRO. …

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    Real Lesson From Despair.com: Dysfunction

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    The only consistent feature in all of your dissatisfying relationships is you. ((Despair.com)) I often see organizations who have many vendor relationships that are either marginally successful or complete failures. What these organizations never enjoy hearing is that they are partly to blame for these failed relationships. While I’ll always admit that failure is an…

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    More Changes at Hewitt

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    In case you missed it, HRO Today recently reported the following: “A former president of national accounts at competitor ADP, Jay C. Rising, 50, has been named president of Hewitt’s HRO business. Additionally, former acting president Julie Gordon has been named president of client and market leadership, a newly created position.” The announcement isn’t surprising…

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    Real Lesson From Despair.com: Discovery

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    A company that will go to the ends of the Earth for its people will find it can hire them for about 10% of the cost of Americans. ((Despair.com)) I have argued many times that there is actually nothing wrong with outsourcing and offshoring. Let’s face it, offshoring manufacturing is good for developing countries, and…

  • Offshoring Disproportionately Effects the U.S.

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    Much of the talk about offshoring is about India and China. With good reason too. India and China both have over 1B people each, and if you think about the “law of large numbers” even a small increase in skills translates into a huge competitive advantage against other industrialized nations. The real story however, is…

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    Top HRO Deals

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    Who’s paying attention?  Did the value of HRO deals go down in 2006?  Sure, there were much fewer $1B deals, but what was the cause of that?  Were there overall fewer deals as well? I’m thinking that deals are starting to move into the mid market and we’re seeing less of the multi-line multi-process deals…

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    Globalization, Economic Scale, and Talent – The Realities of Asia

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    Michael Specht pointed me at this video link where he drew out the following thought: “the 25% of China population with the highest IQ is larger than the total population of North America.” ((Specht, Michael, February 11, 2007. “The Growth of Our Planet and its Impact.” Retrieved from http://www.specht.com.au/michael/ on February 24, 2007.)) I’ve speculated…

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    Equifax to buy top payroll-service firm

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    That was the headline that greeted me when I opened up my Atlanta Journal Constitution Business section last Thursday.  Right there below the fold.  Plain as day.  My heart began to race a bit.  Who could it be?  Equifax is big, certainly.  With a $5 billion market capitalization they could probably make a run at…

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    HRIT: To Outsource or Not to Outsource… That is the Question

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    For some people it’s not whether to outsource, but how much? There are degrees of technology outsourcing, services and full BPO. There are a few areas where outsourcing is pretty standard. These would obviously be payroll, benefits, retirement and technology hosting. While some of these may have more market adoption than others, these are certainly…

  • Fear Automation, Not Oursourcing

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    People in the U.S.often complain that the loss of jobs to countries like Mexico, India and China are ruining the economy. Unemployed people from manufacturing sectors can’t find jobs, and the easy culprit to blame are those countries taking a few of the jobs. Here’s the truth – it’s not outsourcing and offshoring. It’s automation.…

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    Where are the HRO Successes?

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    Because much of my practice focuses on helping companies and HRO providers improve the outsourcing relationship for cost, quality and service levels, in my job I see many broken HRO relationships.  It’s the nature of the business.  So it comes as no surprise to see the article published online at Workforce.com yesterday: ACS, Delta Change…

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    How Did They Get Here – ExcellerateHRO

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    In March of 2006, a study by Forrester Research was released which ranked ExcellerateHRO as a “Leader” among HR BPO providers.  Excuse me?  I mean who were these guys?  Anyone not paying close attention might have missed that ExcellerateHRO had only been in business for 1 year at that point.  If you were busy with…

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    How did they get here – ADP

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    Next in our “How did they get here” series, I take a look at ADP, perhaps the most acquisitive organization in the payroll / HR / benefits space.  As such, I certainly cannot begin to recount all of the activity that got ADP where it is in this space.  I will however try to hit…

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    HRO Market Leaders

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    It’s interesting that only several vendors hold a large majority of the market share in the HRO world – almost an 80/20 rule.  If you look at the top 3 (Hewitt, Accenture and ADP) you are probably getting close to 70% of the total HRO market share depending on how you measure it.  This piece…

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    HRO – Innovation or Best Practices?

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    There is a lot of debate when companies enter into HRO contracts about how much best practice a HRO vendor can bring to the table. There is also much conversation around how much innovation and thought leadership the same HRO vendor can bring to innovating complex processes to bring savings to the customer. These two…