Q&a: Peter Allen Timothe Luwawu 76ers Jersey , Tpi

In April TPI, the world's largest sourcing data and advisory firm, announced the findings from its quarterly analysis of the global commercial outsourcing industry for the first quarter of 2008 and the previous six months. Worldwide it was the second-best first-quarter performance ever for annualised contract value, with most "new scope" contracts every for a single quarter. Now SSON has caught up with TPI partner and managing director, Peter Allen, to discuss the significance of the report's findings and to get Allen's perspective on the state of the industry - and it's clear that the R-word is dominating industry thinking...

SSON: Can you start by giving us a quick overview of the index and what it’s saying about the industry at the moment?
Peter Allen: I think to give that stance we have to put it in the context of the world’s economic climate, and it’s clear certainly in the US and among most Western economies there’s a current slowdown or drag in economic growth if not an outright recession. So the prevailing question we hear is, what role does outsourcing play in the survival and competitive strategies of major corporations in the face of an economic downturn. And that’s really the question we tried to answer in our Q1 report which covered the commercial outsourcing contract awards that were let in the first quarter of 2008, and for contrast we put those in the context of prior periods as well. And what we saw was the rather healthy record of outsourcing awards in Q1 and when taken together with Q4 to form a most recent 6-month view it is an unprecedented volume of contract awards. And most of it represented what we call “new scope”, so it’s not renegotiating or realigning existing agreements: it’s truly incremental demand coming to the marketplace.
SSON: Now you’ve highlighted the regional differences here: for example, “EMEA’s percentage of the global contract TCV [total contract value] and ACV [annualized contract value] is more of an indication of softness in the Americas than any absolute increase in EMEA”. Do you think that’s something that’s going to trend for a while and is indicative of America leading the economic way, whether up or down?
PA: Well, what that says is that on an absolute basis EMEA is holding its own; its record was neither significantly higher nor lower than its historical level. It’s the Americas that really had fallen off in terms of award-values, and our sense here speaking from an American-economy participant’s point of view is that especially in the more mature outsourcing sectors such as banking or manufacturing there has been a pause in the most recent quarters as corporate executives took stock of just how deep the recession was likely to be, how deeply they needed to restructure their operations, to cut their costs, and what role their existing outsourcing relationships were likely to play in their sourcing strategies. So the thing to keep in mind here is, the TPI index generally reports on new contract awards. And by our account there are well over 2,900 active outsourcing agreements in place among corporations and service providers today in the market. And when you need to pull the trigger fast, and you need to get costs down fast, and restructure operations fast, often the first place to turn is your existing service provider relationship, not go through the laborious time-consuming process of structuring a new relationship. So what we are showing here is that in the Americas, where there seems to be perhaps a more acute and instantaneous reaction to the recessionary impact corporate executives have either deferred decisions to start new initiatives, or they are leveraging more actively their existing outsourcing relationships.
SSON: Is there any relationship between that and the fact that this is an election year in the US and people are uncertain as to what the outcome is going to be?
PA: No, I really don’t. Having been in this industry for longer than I care to remember we’ve gone through several election-year periods in which occasionally the outsourcing and offshoring words are used by either the media or the candidates to strike a hot iron. We find that it has very little play in the corporate boardrooms; whether we have a Democratic or a Republican president might matter to some level of financial planning but in terms of structure of companies to succeed in global markets it’s trivial.
SSON: There has been a little bit of anti-outsourcing rhetoric coming from both Democrat contenders at the moment…
PA: You know, it’s a popular topic to appeal to the masses. Our dialogues are among the senior-most executives among global firms, and they recognize that their survival and their ability to win in their markets depends upon having the right products at the right prices in the right markets. So they’re really not concerned about which party the US president is affiliated with.
SSON: Let’s move away from the outgoing side and look at some of the countries receiving the deals that you’re measuring. Have you noticed any change in target destination: is India still holding its own, is China finally moving ahead?
PA: India has a very strong lead here in terms of existing award-worth: I’ll tell you that many companies are now looking to second-tier cities in India and getting away from the historical top-tier locations like Bangalore.
SSON: Why do you think that is?
PA: The two reasons that we hear most often are: access to a less competitive workforce – it’s not a workforce that’s being fought over by so many other potential hiring companies – and the relaxation of the demands upon the infrastructure of th <. Cheap Authentic Jerseys   Cheap Jerseys China Free Shipping   Cheap Jerseys Free Shipping   Cheap NFL Jerseys China   Cheap NFL Jerseys   Cheap Sports Jerseys   Wholesale Jerseys   Wholesale Authentic Jerseys   Wholesale Jerseys China   Cheap Custom Soccer Jerseys