Comments on: How Relevant Is Forrester’s 2010 Sourcing and Vendor Management Roadmap?

By: tony

tony — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:24:41 +0000

Hi Christine!

I did send a trackback, but Forrester’s blog may not allow you to accept them. Other blogs do, and that notifies readers that the comment was made.

You know, people talk about ITO in the same way they talk about BPO. What’s ITO? Network infrastructure? Data center? CRM applications? Call center telephony? PC support? Help desk? Finance applications? Supply chain apps? It’s all very different. However, I respect the desire to not take on the BPO market. I wish more firms of your stature would. After all, there are just as many call center VPs who need help making strategic decisions as IT VPs trying to stay afloat.

I looked at your services sourcing forums that are on the schedule for 2010. Thank you for pointing that out.

However, there is no agenda posted yet, even though Forrester has found 3 sponsors. When an agenda is posted, let me know. I certainly hope the agenda focuses on your roadmap – governance, governance, and governance and best practices in “Now What.”

Thank you for responding!

By: Christine Ferrusi Ross

Christine Ferrusi Ross — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:53:06 +0000

Thanks for the feedback Tony. It’s a pity you posted your feedback here without commenting in my original blog post, or we could have interacted on this topic sooner.

You are absolutely correct. Forrester focuses on IT sourcing and vendor management.

And we made a decision years ago not to focus on “BPO.” Too often, pundits talk about BPO as one unified market, when in fact it is hundreds of markets using one umbrella term — thus, what types of BPO are you referring to? Mortgage processing? HR? If so, which HR processes? Recruiting? Benefits administration? Employee onboarding? So you see that the resources required to cover “BPO” could become massive — and frankly, given the interests of our clients, there was little incentive for us to make those resource investments in this fragmented space.

Finally, I’m interested that you note IT Forum but not our Services & Sourcing Forum, which has been quite successful and has focused heavily on vendor management since its creation three years ago. The 2010 event will be held in Chicago in November, and London in October.

If you’d like to connect and discuss realtime, please email me.

Best regards,
Christine

By: Rachael

Rachael — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:54:37 +0000

Hi Tony
I was sent your article. In response to “BPO – Damnit, cover the area will you? – - – Someone needs to…”
- may I introduce you to NelsonHall? We have been covering BPO in depth for over a decade, serving both the enduser and service provider communities…

By: Outsourcing Governance and Who Owns Supplier Performance Management? | 360° Vendor Management

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:29:35 +0000

[...] it’s a hot topic, as Forrester’s Sourcing and Vendor Management analysts have put governance on their 2010 agenda. In my opinion, vendor management organizations are a bad design, but what about Supplier [...]