Stories about: AT Kearney

I have just returned from a fact-finding mission about moving our IT operations offshore

Projected cost savings are almost always the key draw when companies consider sending some of their IT and business operations offshore. But performance gains can be a benefit of sending work overseas as well - as long as they are planned for from the start and built into contracts.

Labour armitage - cutting costs by exploiting the availability of lower-wage workers - remains the name of the game in IT sourcing. CIOs continue to seek savings through offshore outsourcing, and the Everest Research Institute predicts those savings will continue to drive sourcing offshore for the next 30 years. Today, 73 percent of Fortune 2000 companies say offshoring is an important part of their overall growth strategy, according to the 2005 Duke University CIBER/Archstone Consulting study. And Gartner predicts worldwide offshore spending will reach $US50 billion next year.

Sure, you can save money by working with an outsourcing vendor in a faraway land. But don't trust the outsourcer to install the right security protections. Follow these best practices to verify that your relationship is cost-effective and safe.

RFID is a technology whose time has finally come - and that's good news for your supply chain

New Zealand continues to outpace Australia as one of the world’s most “globalized” countries after its government enacted strong legal protections for online transactions, giving it the second-highest number of secure servers per capita in the world.

With massive cost overruns plaguing its core integrated systems implementation (ISI) project and the HomeSide debacle still all too fresh in investors' minds, the National Australia Bank's credibility was looking decidedly shaky earlier this year.

Gas and electric utilities face wrenching change in the next several years as regulators and demanding customers push for open competition and improved service.

A decade's worth of time and money invested in wiring up the enterprise is about to return billions to the bottom line. How is that going to happen? Supply chain automation. Who's going to get the credit? It could be you.

Finding the right people to lead your e-commerce efforts depends on what you want to do online

Pundits touting the present as "the knowledge era" could be lulling companies into a false sense of confidence. Though it's a broadly accurate portrayal of a new business environment, it's a bit like the per capita income figure of a developing nation - it can mask the huge inequalities underlying a reassuring average.