From Tactical to Strategic Outsourcing

Abstract

Although the outsourcing industry is relatively young, only making an impact on the world scene two decades ago, it has gone through a dramatic evolutionary process (from applications development to ITO to BPO to KPO) and will continue to do so. What we also see in this evolution is the move away from transactional to strategic outsourcing to transformational outsourcing and in the future innovative outsourcing. This chapter traces this evolutionary journey and examines the specific characteristics within each segment, looking at cloud computing’s impact on the IT outsourcing space, the impact demanding customers are having on call centre outsourcing, the competitive advantages delivered by BPO, the growth of travel and logistics outsourcing, Finance and Accounting outsourcing, Human Resource outsourcing and the recent emergence of knowledge process and legal outsourcing.