New York (April 23, 2004) -- Despite election-year politics, business process outsourcing is gaining mainstream corporate acceptance, and human resources and finance and accounting outsourcing are expected to eclipse IT outsourcing over next five years, according to a survey by Capgemini and IDC.
While 59 percent of respondents said that the current U.S. political and regulatory debate over offshore outsourcing has had some impact on their company's long-term interest in BPO, 71 percent have already outsourced some of their IT functions and 31 percent are involved in outsourcing a portion of their human resources. In addition, 24 percent already outsource part of their finance and accounting. Capgemini and IDC polled more than 200 participants at the IDC Outsourcing Forum this week.
According to survey results, over the next five years, IT outsourcing will slip to the third most popular business function outsourced, behind HR outsourcing and F&A outsourcing, but still ahead of global procurement and customer care outsourcing.
According to the poll, the top four drivers for a company deciding to use BPO in their corporate strategy today are to save money; implementation of best practices; to deliver internal value and shareholder value through competitive advantage; and to focus on core competencies.
Nearly one-third of those polled said that risk concerns were the main impediment preventing an organization from undertaking a BPO initiative, followed by internal political difficulties, mentioned by 28 percent, and 24 percent who said that their organization's culture is averse to outsourcing. Half of those surveyed said that Sarbanes-Oxley had no impact one way or the other on their organization's F&A outsourcing strategy, while 33 percent said that it had a positive impact for compliance.
-- WebCPA staff
