Phil,Fersht, BPO,Yankee, Group

Phil Fersht to spearhead new BPO practice at Yankee Group

04 Apr 2005 | (News)

Yankee Group today announced the formation of the first multi-discipline business process outsourcing (BPO) practice led by Research Vice President Phil Fersht.

Yankee Group said its objective in tracking and identifying this fast-growing market is to ensure that companies and vendors succeed as the industry shifts from single-point to comprehensive outsourcing of human resources processes.

Fersht, recently named a 2005 HRO Superstar by an independent panel of judges enlisted by HRO Today magazine, will lead the first multi-discipline team and will launch a suite of products and services for business process outsourcing.

Yankee Group will offer clients a new suite of services that include multi-discipline decision support services: Yankee BrandMonitor and Yankee Group Navigator.

"Our new BPO-MD Decision Service provides clients with access to a team of specialists who integrate all BPO touch-points, namely human resources, finance and accounting, customer management, and self-service portals in North America and Europe," explained Fersht. "We have expanded our services to add new capabilities that help vendors understand the BPO buying process and how to best position themselves to become market leaders as the adoption of BPO accelerates."

Fersht's new team consists of nine specialists covering the key areas in BPO transformation. The team includes Paris Burstyn, Sheryl Kingstone, Art Schoeller, Jason Costello, Euan Davis, Tom Dwyer, Kosin Huang and Meredith Hanrahan.

"We anticipate 80 to 100 new comprehensive BPO deals in next 18 to 24 months," added Fersht. "Organizations will be focused on deploying end-to-end solutions from responsive and trusted providers with deep business process expertise. Vendors competing for these deals need to understand the decision-making cycles and the internal outsourcing dynamics to acquire new customers profitably."

To help clients succeed in this rampant market, the company is launching Yankee Group Navigator, a new market strategy program that helps vendors understand the different BPO buyer types and patterns to increase their probability of winning deals. Yankee Group Navigator shows the most important selection criteria are 1) responsiveness, 2) high integrity, 3) cost saving capability, 4) service excellence for employees and 5) human resource expertise.

"Surprisingly, the top suppliers did not perform well against buyer expectations," said Meredith Hanrahan, market strategist for Yankee Group. "The top providers scored well on only 40 percent of buyers' key performance criteria. Yankee Group Navigator also reveals the differences among buyers within an organization."

For example, she said, HR professionals viewed responsiveness much more strongly than non-HR senior executives. Other key buying criteria included HR expertise, integrity and service excellence. The HR leaders scored Hewitt and Fidelity highest across these categories, with non-HR executives opting for ACS for cost-savings, IBM for service-excellence and integrity and Hewitt for HR expertise.

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