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Cloud and the future of Business 5 – Management .

Managing the Outsourcing Enterprise: From Cost to Innovation and Cloud Services

Professor Leslie P. Willcocks 
Dr Edgar Whitley
Dr Will Venters
Professor Mary Lacity

Dates:  25 June – 29 June 2012
Fee: £4,650

Course Objectives

This course offers in-depth coverage of the key issues, developments and management challenges in today’s global sourcing marketplace. It provides a learning vehicle and tools , in terms of key frameworks, principles and practices, for those preparing themselves for general management  in major organizational functions or for more specific global sourcing roles, and also for experienced managers who wish to move to the next level. It  focuses on the needs of managers and senior executives working in client companies and service suppliers. It covers global sourcing, strategy, Information Technology outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) including the most recent developments in sourcing and offshoring  for such major areas as HR, Finance and Accounting, Procurement, Legal and Knowledge (KPO) functions.

Benefits

• Gain a thorough knowledge of effective management lessons and techniques to develop and implement sourcing strategy, operate as an informed buyer, select suppliers,  and manage and deliver outsourcing services from both client and supplier perspectives
• Develop in-depth understanding of global trends in the sourcing marketplace and how sourcing fits with corporate competitive and collaborative strategies.
• Draw on an unrivalled LSE Outsourcing Unit research base of over 1500 outsourcing arrangements in Asia Pacific, USA and Europe, and 20 years of publications and working papers on global sourcing trends, country and IT industry analyses, together with case histories of effective client and supplier practices.
• Learn from up-to-the-minute case studies, negotiating exercises, guest executives and cutting edge research projects, including on bundled services, cloud computing, selective sourcing strategy, offshore locations..
• Improve your ability to analyse sourcing challenges and questions and make more effective assessments and decisions
• Develop your skills and marketability in increasingly key areas for contemporary organizations in a global context.

This course will address the following key topics

• Global context and trends –offshoring, country attractiveness, key decisions
• Moving To The Strategic Agenda – alignment, configuration, distinctive capabilities
• Preparing For Outsourcing – 9-phase life-cycle, negotiation, selection, requisite supplier capabilties
• Making The Transition – Contracts, HR and service challenges, change management, SLA and scorecards,
• Managing Outsourcing – control, relationships, leveraging suppliers
• Regeneration and Outsourcing Futures – options decisions case histories, trends to harness.

The course reader, especially prepared for this executive practitioner module is: Leslie Willcocks, Sara Cullen and Andrew Craig (2011) The Outsourcing Enterprise: From Cost Management To Collaborative Innovation (Palgrave, London

So a bank finally “goes Google” for its enterprise software (albeit for desktop productivity applications only).

The report makes interesting reading for anyone concerned about the hidden and less obvious environmental impact of cloud services. While companies can see the electricity bill of their data-centre (and may have to report it), their use of Cloud Services means the electricity bill is hidden within service charges.

Last week I chaired a session at the LSE Student Strategy & Management Consulting Conference. The session was titled: The Dark Side of Cloud and Pathologies of Big Data, and we had partner-level speakers from Bain, Deloitte, PWC and Opera Solutions in attendance.

Some interesting ideas which emerged but it was the tit-bits that interested me most:

• That we should see public cloud like Taxi’s – they are very useful and a vital addition to cars, but most people will continue to want to own their own car.
• That Google is now estimated to have 3.5m servers.
• That Cloud is really about the dark-datacentre – it is about the automation of data-centre management.
• That Twitter and Facebook both began on-cloud, but as they grew they moved off-cloud. This was within an argument that as dot.com businesses expand so they move away from the cloud.
• Bain have produced an interesting analysis of the cloud market-space with important implications for those considering moving into the cloud arena. http://www.bain.com/Images/BAIN_BRIEF_The_five_faces_of_the_cloud.pdf

The 700 people who attended may have taken other ideas away – it was a rich session.

“For Compaq, it was the start of a $2-billion-a-year business selling servers to Internet providers. For OSullivans startup venture, it was a step toward disenchantment and insolvency.”

via Who Coined Cloud Computing? – Technology Review.

Our research on Cloud Computing is discussed in an article on Forbes.com!

Understanding the Business Impacts of Cloud Computing | The European Business Review.

Read an article I jointly wrote with colleagues at the LSE on the Business Impacts of Cloud Computing within the European Business Review.

The Outsourcing Unit: podcasts.

Prof. Leslie Willcocks talks about the four reports we produced on Cloud Computing in association with Accenture.

Click on the image below for the full report.

Cloud and the Future of Business: From Costs to Innovation - Part Four: Innovation