I am very excited to be back at Forrester. After 2 years of being immersed in the customer experience, I can’t wait to share new insights and advice with both Sourcing and Vendor Management (SVM) clients and the vendors that service those clients.  Together we can watch as the consulting and outsourcing market faces yet another tipping point driven by:

·         The increasing sophistication of the Sourcing and Vendor Management executive.

·         The expanding “cloud “and the need for service aggregation and integration.

·         The democratization or consumerization of technology (if users can buy an application for 99 cents to optimize their commute to work, why can’t internal IT build an effective claims processing system with a million times that budget?)

·         The increasing importance of contextual knowledge in the building and maintaining of enterprise IT systems.

·         The need to expand the idea of global sourcing beyond India and China in order to efficiently harness the requisite contextual knowledge.

In returning to the analyst role, I plan to devote my energies to exploring this transformation and helping clients to exploit newly emerging global sourcing benefits.

Starting next week, I’ll do a weekly wrap up of the interesting things I learned/saw/analyzed during the previous week. This could include vendor briefings, conversations with clients and industry experts, industry events, earnings announcements and/or consulting assignments. On a more frequent basis, I’ll also try to blog specifically about inquiries that I answered during the day or week.

Next week I will also publish my first new piece of research. This short document will cover some of the top priorities that I’d like my clients (and readers) to be considering.

·         How to de-risk managed services engagements by avoiding a pure black box approach and writing meaningful SLAs.

·         Why SVM executives need to revisit the basics even as they focus on advanced topics.

·         Why a vendor’s training competency is a critically important differentiator today.

·         The importance of understanding your vendors’ employee practices.

·         How to make sense of the productivity and price debate: are you getting more for less or less for less?

·         Understanding the value of contextual knowledge in the productivity equation.

·         Monitoring your vendors’ stability and viability in an evolving IT services market place.

·         Assessing whether your vendor has the know-how to help your company innovate.

 

To keep this blog interesting, blog readers should contribute questions, comments and feedback. What is on the top of your mind?