Friday, August 25, 2006

IT and Business Process Outsourcing in North American Financial Services

Outsourcing has become one of the key strategic options available to banks and insurers not only to cut costs but to improve operating efficiency. Offshore application outsourcing and business process outsourcing are amongst the more recent additions to mainstream thinking causing controversy both in terms of employment and strategic viability.

Scope

- The report covers North American financial services across retail banking, insurance (life and general) and financial markets.

- In terms of Outsourcing services the report analyses three main markets: infrastructure, application and business process outsourcing.

- Analysis of FSI attitudes and outsourcing plans draw amongst others on 100 interviews with senior IT/business professionals in North American FSIs.


Highlights

While strategic outsourcing is an important trend, selective outsourcing has become increasingly important at the expense of wholesale IT function outsourcing as vendor performance and manageability issues have become increasingly important to FSIs.

The dominant driver for outsourcing is moving from cost control/ reduction towards a more balance spectrum of drivers. Vendors will increasingly need to be able to combine transformation and revenue-growth supporting skills with cost reductions to win deals.

Vendors must develop credible IP-backing for their service offering in line of business specific BPO either through in-house developments or strategic partnerships as proof of offering and as means of delivery.


Reasons to Purchase

- Take advantage of one of the fastest growing vendor opportunities in the financial services market.

- Understand the drives and inhibitors of outsourcing in the financial services sector to improve marketing and sales efficiency.

- Improve understanding of own relative market positioning and FSIs' perception of the competition to enhance sales conversion rates.

Source: Whitepaper.outsourcingpipeline