Tag Archives: Knowledge Process Outsourcing

What’s Next for the Chinese Yuan?

On February 17th, in a significant announcement by Chinese authorities, plans to allow domestic trading of Yuan options against other currencies from April onwards were rolled out, with the fundamental aim of assisting Chinese exporters and importers hedge against currency … Read More…

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The Key to Establishing Procurement’s Credibility within the Organization

The last two decades have seen a sea change in the Procurement function’s (and the Procurement executive’s) standing within the organization. No longer the proverbial ‘back water’ department, Procurement now occupies an important seat at the executive table—a development that … Read More…

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China and its Influence on the Global Rare Earth Metals Market

“The Middle East has its oil, China has rare earth metals.” —Deng Xiaoping, Chinese President (1992) Take an even a cursory look at any major business media today and China’s influence in the minerals and metals commodity markets is inescapable. … Read More…

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Four key challenges for supply chains in 2011 and beyond

These four challenges are highlighted in this article, along with a high level look into the types of informational tools and techniques that can be leveraged to help manage them effectively. If there is a truism in supply chains, it … Read More…

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The Evolving Model for Professional Services: A practitioner’s perspective.

These days, companies aren’t questioning whether to outsource as much as they are pondering how best to go about it. Although (at times) still the proverbial hot potato fraught with workforce issues, political quagmires, and public relations sensitivities, outsourcing moved … Read More…

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Rethinking Satisfaction Survey Analytics – How the factor performance index transcends the conventional importance-satisfaction matrix.

The core objective of the traditional customer satisfaction survey is to gauge the consumer’s overall satisfaction levels (or perceived satisfaction) with a given brand or a product. To make this information actionable from a marketer’s point of view, though, one … Read More…

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6 Key Actions – Aligning supply chains with corporate strategy.

The supply chain and procurement executive(s) has a ‘seat at the executive table’. To illustrate its potential impact from a pure economic perspective, where else in an organization does one executive have the ability to influence and manage the cost … Read More…

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Copper – Primer & Outlook

Copper is regarded as the most valuable of primary base metals, barring nickel, even though it is not the largest base metal market in the world. Indeed, it is considered a barometer for the state of the economy, given its … Read More…

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The Evolving Digital Marketing Landscape

Digital Marketing (DM) represents an enormous opportunity for marketers to complement (and, in many cases move beyond) traditional ‘offline’ marketing tools to redefine how they interact with their customers. While still a new practice in absolute terms, the DM landscape … Read More…

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Whither Goest The Mobile App?

Since it launched its ‘App Store’ in July 2008, Apple has revolutionized the mobile applications (mobile apps, for short) space and started a phenomenon. Although mobile apps have existed for years through companies such as Handango and Handmark — which … Read More…

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Iceland’s Volcanic Ash Cloud and its Impact on Global Trade: A Primer

The volcanic eruption in Iceland has led to a crisis not only for the European air transportation industry, in particular, – disrupting air travel and air cargo operations across northern Europe – but also global commerce overall. The eruption of … Read More…

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Is There Any Value in Forecasts?

With most companies either in or rapidly approaching their business planning cycles, executives and analysts alike are hard at work trying to predict how the next fiscal year will unfold, making a range of decisions from where best to focus … Read More…

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Asset Bubbles and Bursts: The Re-emergence of Rational Valuation

Aswath Damodaran, the famed NYU finance professor and High Priest of quantitative valuation, shares a lot with Edward Altman, his equally famous colleague at NYU. (Damodaran penned “Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset”, a … Read More…

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Beyond Politics: Do Job Creation and Outsourcing Go Hand in Hand?

This weeks announcement between Dr Pepper Snapple and HCL Technologies has us thinking about how the practice of Outsourcing has been changing in recent years. Traditionally viewed as simply a means of cost arbitrage (effectively, moving work from one high … Read More…

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Surviving the Storm: Value Creation in the US Auto Parts Sector

In a period of unparalleled economic turbulence, perhaps no industry has been more severely impacted than the US Auto Parts industry. The sector, in tandem with the Big 3 Automakers, has been facing severe financial distress over the last year … Read More…

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The Credit Crunch and Outsourcing

The recent tumult in the markets – and its reverberations from Wall Street to Main Street – have made the business news channels compulsive viewing for executives across the globe. One group of professionals that have been keeping a close … Read More…

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The Smart Cube Financial Services Survey : Implications of The Credit Crunch

Listen or read any news site or publication over the last several months and talk of the economy is never far behind. Recession or no recession, individuals and corporations alike are clearly acting as if we are in one. Housing … Read More…

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Offshoring – Taking its place within the Management Toolkit

One of the most intriguing findings from our recent Financial Services survey related to the impact of offshoring (and outsourcing*) on the financial job market – both in recent years as well as today. All in all, 70% of recruiters … Read More…

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Is Corporate America Outsourcing Itself Out of Opportunities to Cultivate Future Leaders?

These days, companies aren’t questioning whether to outsource as much as they are pondering how best to go about it. Although still the proverbial hot potato fraught with workforce insecurities, political quagmires, and public relations sensitivities, outsourcing moved from “emerging … Read More…

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