{"id":1109,"date":"2014-09-12T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T21:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/shamus-rae_091114\/"},"modified":"2014-09-12T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T21:30:00","slug":"shamus-rae_091114","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/shamus-rae_091114\/","title":{"rendered":"Shamelessly Shamus: Why Europe is positioned to leapfrog the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This man founded WNS, built up IBM's Middle East and African Practice and today leads KPMG's European shared services and outsourcing advisory. He also cycles a lot…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Did you hear the one about the Mamil (middle aged man in lycra), who got off his bike, donned a suit and tie and joined a Big 4 consulting firm to wax lyrical about sourcing strategy? \u00a0And not only that, he is called Shamus Rae, the shameless sourcing strategist from Islington…<\/p>\n
Shamus has been in the sourcing business since 1993, where he started off working with British Airways and overseeing a lot of outsourcing of IT services to India. This is when he came up with the idea to build a company to act as an offshore BPO for the airline industry, which became WNS. In addition, Shamus built IBM\u2019s BPO Service from zero to 17,000 people in MEA (Middle East and Africa). In total, he’s had 21 years in the industry working for suppliers, including 13 years working with clients on multi-functioned shared services and outsourcing around the world. And all this in addition to his 120 km a week cycling addiction.<\/p>\n
So let’s hear from KPMG’s European Partner for\u00a0Operational Transformation and Advisory Leadership, Shamus Rae.<\/p>\n
Phil Fersht, CEO, HfS Research:\u00a0<\/strong>Good afternoon, Shamus, and thank you very much for taking\u00a0the time with us today.\u00a0<\/span>Let’s cut to the chase – are US enterprises ahead of the British\/Europeans with sourcing?<\/span><\/p>\n
Shamus Rae, Partner at KPMG, London:\u00a0<\/strong>Categorizing \u201cEurope\u201d as one homogeneous region is too generic. The United Kingdom, plus Switzerland, are as sophisticated as the United States, and sometimes more cutting edge. However, other European countries are in catch-up mode. We\u2019ve been doing some work recently for a large French bank helping them build a global sourcing strategy for their finance function. I asked the CFO whether he wanted to simply do a strategy or whether he was actually going to execute. We get many requests for sourcing strategies for organisations, of which a high number are never executed, but take up a significant amount of time for my team. To be fair to this client, he said that this time the bank is going ahead, and in fairness to him, he\u2019s now built an offshore center of excellence on a global basis. In a nutshell, Europe is in catch-up mode but they\u2019re positioned to leapfrog the United States.<\/p>\n
Phil: <\/strong>At our recent UK Blueprint event at\u00a0HfS, attendees were more open with their issues than many of the Americans that we regularly deal with…<\/span><\/p>\n
Shamus:\u00a0<\/strong>The fashionable trend is talking about robots in shared services. The way these concepts are branded is a bit too much sometimes. If you talk about operational efficiency and the future of robotics with French and German colleagues or clients, it can be too American. The best approach is to engage different countries in the right way for them and ensure there are relevant discussions on all of these topics and trends that are emerging<\/p>\n
Phil: <\/strong>Is the industry vastly different from five years ago when we were going into the recession? Has there been a lot of shift, or is it more noise?<\/span><\/p>\n
Shamus:\u00a0<\/strong>There\u2019s been a massive shift. I’ve been through a few recessions but none quite as significant as 2008. Previously companies were mostly focusing on straightforward labor arbitrage and people were trying to find quick cost savings. This recession was different, in terms of the way it drove the sourcing industry. People wanted cost savings for sure, but they wanted to put in the right governance, and handle more complex work within the sourcing environment. They wanted to think about the next step beyond offshoring.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot more of a drive towards process standardization\u2014what\u2019s going to happen within a retained organisation to ensure that the business benefits are delivered? Therefore, it\u2019s a more interesting time. The impact has also seen dramatic growth in multi-function shared services organizations within clients as well. The global business services piece has really taken hold. It\u2019s a dramatically different environment. Some of the outsource players are not seeing as much work as they would expect because people are being more sophisticated about the way they\u2019re building the \u201cabove outsourcing\u201d functions and the way they’re approaching simplification and standardization.<\/p>\n