Working on the principle “better late than never” (which isn’t a law one would want to observe related to, say, catastrophic asteroid strikes, but is fit for my purpose today) allow me to bring you some of my learnings from the second day – Tuesday – of London’s Shared Services & Outsourcing Summit 2009.
A faacinating morning’s session began with Andrew Kent of Serco looking at “Fast-Tracking Maturity: Serco’s Transition to a Global, Outsourced and Standardised Multi-Functional SSO”. I’m not going into detail on this one as Andrew has kindly agreed to work with me on an article about Serco’s transition, and the company’s partnership with provider Genpact – and of course I’ll bring you more information on that down the line – so those who didn’t attend will have to trust me when I say Serco’s is an ambitious and extremely impressive project and the partnership has a number of model aspects we’ll be looking to highlight going forwards.
Following Andrew’s presentation was a panel debate featuring speakers from across the shared services and outsourcing space, and covering – with the help of an active audience – some of the key issues affecting the space today – particularly in the UK and continental Europe. Again, SSON will be bringing you content from this debate (I believe my colleague Barbara Hodge is working on something special for Shared Services News as I write these very words) but to give you a taste of what to expect, topics investigated included: single versus multiple ERP systems; the impact of social networking on enterprise-wide HR systems; the weakness of the pound and consequences for business cases; the prospect for outsourcing in the face of consolidation among big businesses; the future for supply chain management; and the growth or otherwise of “back-shoring”. And if that doesn’t whet your appetite, I don’t know what will.
In the afternoon I enjoyed, among others, the presentation by Jairo Rojas of BASDA on the impact on business of a future low-carbon economy. This provocative and at time revelatory talk highlighted some of the huge challenges lying around the corner for businesses worldwide and confirmed, if confirmation were required, the need for firms to prepare now for those challenges. Those who are asleep at the wheel, Rojas implied, only have themselves to blame if they plummet over the precipice – and there’s certainly no excuse whatsoever for not waking up (to push the metaphor a little further) if you’re reading this, since I grabbed Rojas for an interview following his presentation; you can listen to the podcast here.
There’ll be plenty more content and discussion emerging from the Summit over the next couple of weeks so keep your eye on the homepage and the Gateway e-newsletter; meanwhile I’m moving going back out to the P2P front line for the purchase-to-pay editorial project I’ve been oh-so-subtly pushing through this blog over the last couple of weeks…
Jamie
PS: This made me laugh… and laugh… and occasionally wince…
Tags: 2009, London, Outsourcing, Shared Services, sharedservices, sourcing, SSON, summit
