Last year’s outsourcing scene has been marked with plenty of talks on cloud computing and many have been debating on how sustainable it is for businesses to take a plunge into outsourcing these days, especially when negative sentiments about it is on the rise. Read more

The boom in outsourcing predicted at the start of the economic downturn in 2008 never materialised. So are businesses now turning to outsourcing a help them through the crisis, asks Paul Morrison. Read more

Choosing effective call center technology is a matter of following a highly defined process and identifying the risks associated with each product being considered, according to a prominent speaker at last week's Annual Call Center Conference (ACCE) in San Diego. Many firms rush through the important organizational stages of call center technology selection projects and haphazardly leap into analyzing products based only on the functionality that's needed -- or worse, they start the selection process with a specific vendor already in mind, Brian Hinton warned a roomful of ACCE attendees. Read more

FEATURE : Businesses are moving away from trusting single suppliers to deliver multi-billion pound outsourcing megadeals in favour of accessing services from multiple providers instead. Almost 40 per cent of CIOs surveyed by Harvey Nash/PA Consulting Group last year said they planned to increase their use of multi-sourcing - where IT or business process services are sourced from a range of suppliers rather than a sole provider. Read more

Speak to any Customer Relationship Management (CRM) pundit and you will quickly find that CRM is not a technology. CRM is an approach to managing relationships with customers that must be determined through alignment of your various business stakeholders and your business goals. Once this strategy has been determined, then a supporting technology can be introduced. Read more