Posts By Ben Knowles

Seven Guideposts to Achieving the Impossible

In this article, former White House advisor, Guy L. Smith, now Executive VP of Diageo North America, offers management strategies to help teams achieve the impossible. The key, Smith believes, is providing your team with the critical motivation to achieve more than others think is reasonable or possible. Below, Smith outlines exactly how managers andRead… Read more »

iThink SSON – a Professor’s View on Outsourcing & Offshoring

Don’t let the reality of your practical work environment deter you. Here’s how the academic world – blissfully untroubled by P&L – sees sourcing… By: Professor Ilan Oshri ” There is an evolutionary path and it is therefore imperative to figure out the parent firm’s strategic objective for the captive. “ What’s Your Captive CenterRead… Read more »

New: Procurement as a Service

Combine winning strategies from centralised and decentralised models. What you’ll gain from this: leadership and local ownership… By: Gavin Bowden-Hall “Aggregation across the business will deliver commercial benefits but Procurement is best placed to spot the opportunities” As organisations become flatter so Procurement has to find new ways of delivering expertise into the business andRead… Read more »

Procurement Takes Leading Role

While we are hearing a lot of talk about Procurement Shared Services from the corporate side, the public sector may be a step ahead on this one… By: SSON SSON interview with Paul Sutton, General Manager for Corporate Services at the City of Charles Sturt, Australia. “In terms of the marketing and communications area, that’sRead… Read more »

Singapore Government saves over $1 million through sharing travel premiums

Vital, Government’s shared services department under the Ministry of Finance has reaped savings of over US $1 million (78%) in travel insurance premiums for the whole of Government. Vital is Singapore’s largest back-of-house shared services centre for the government’s public sector provides centralised travel insurance programme for its public officers… By: Rakesh Sangani, Editor-at-Large, SSONRead… Read more »

Britain…Open to Outsourcing

With various governments limiting the amount of outsourcing programs, Mark Kobayashi-Hillary predicts that the Indian, Brazilian and Chinese IT industries will become the best in the world… By: Mark Kobayashi-Hillar Who can remember that distant hazy past where Barack Obama was campaigning to become president of the USA and he talked of creating more AmericanRead… Read more »

Governments’ demands limit IT Outsourcing

Government bureaucracy and red tape stand in the way of IT companies trying to deliver efficient services… By: Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, IT Editor, Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON), There are two stories in the press in the last month that are apparently unconnected, but should be of interest to those focused on IT outsourcing. First,Read… Read more »

IT Players up against UK Government Spending review

Mark Kobayashi Hillary reflects on the outcome of the UK Government Comprehensive Spending Review – Does a dip in IT Outsourcing look likely as the UK Government looks set to shift from pure IT deals to include services and business process? By: Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, IT Editor, Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON) The UK governmentRead… Read more »

5 tips for a supercharged procurement process

By: Gavin Bowden-Hall in Share0 “The private sector has no reason to stimulate a healthy market so truly ‘open competition’ is rarely undertaken… without adopting a best-practice procurement process, and orchestrating an open competition, how can business be sure of value for money? Or is it that ‘value’ is just measured differently, and is lessRead… Read more »

Local Council look set to share services

As the UK government makes further plans to make cuts in public spending, local councils are increasingly looking at ways to cut costs and increase efficiencies by amalgamating back office services together By: Niamh Byrne, Online Editor, Shared Services and Outsourcing Network, SSON “I think within three years we will see a considerable increase inRead… Read more »