Interesting article on BPO version 2.0

William Martorelli from Forrester recently wrote an interesting report entitled "Creating An SOA-Enabled BPO Platform: How Outsourcers Will Use Digital Business Architecture To Deliver BPO." In this report, Martorelli essentially envisions a future where BPO vendors leverage various service-oriented architecture (SOA) based technology platforms to serve their customers better and to increase their own profitability. Why do we care? Because, if he is right, BPO will fundamentally move away from labor arbitrage (who is cheaper) to technology innovation (who is smarter). This BPO 2.0 is a far more exciting world than the ongoing rush towards ever cheaper locations in search of low-cost labor.

Unfortunately, the report is not free (I am not sure about Forrester's fair use policy in such a case) and I was unable to find news articles that quoted this paper, so I will have to be satisfied with a couple of quotes from the paper's Executive Summary on the Forrester website.

Vendors seeking to deliver business process services must contend with diverse and complex customer environments, including disparate business process platforms, nonstandard business processes, and customizations. Faced with these challenges — and forced to achieve one-to-many customer leverage in order to make money — BPO (business process outsourcing) providers are adopting layered service-delivery architecture capable of isolating them from complexity.

Because technology leverage is becoming so critical to delivering on BPO engagements successfully and profitably, customers should make evaluation of this architecture a key part of their vendor evaluation criteria.