I have updated the Consulting page on my website. Consulting engagements I offer range in scope from single-day senior executive briefings to small-term strategic project assignments. Here are some of the most common offerings:

Executive Strategic Planning Retreats: Working closely with the client, Kevin scopes out a keynote presentation followed by a workshop. The day begins with the keynote and a thought provoking discussion. The workshop can be used to facilitate corporate strategic planning and design, forecasting and planning for future trends that impact the business, or brainstorming and consensus building. Past retreats have focused on strategic innovation, designing collaborative alliances for organizational resiliency, and building crisis detection and response programs.

Strategic Advising and Consulting: These short-term engagements allow Kevin to work intimately with the client on focused areas of strategic opportunities and challenges. Advising and consulting projects range from strategizing knowledge management and innovation endeavors to technology management projects and competitive intelligence assignments. Past engagements have included advising a major engineering firm on designing a knowledge management program, reviewing business plans and specifications for products of a major technology organization, and serving as a senior adviser for market and customer intelligence projects.

Ideation and Commercialization: This unique offering by Kevin is centered on helping entities leverage their ideas. Kevin works with entities ranging from individual executives in leading organizations, to technology start-up firms, to independent thinkers (e.g., scientists, bloggers, and product designers). The focus is to help entities manage their ideas optimally for goal attainment. Past engagements include working with senior executives to publish their ideas in mainstream journals or books and helping technology start-ups formulate key strategic alliances.

Akshay Bhagwatwar (University of Washington), Ray Hackney (Brunel University), and I have authored a paper that examines the knowledge integration challenges faced by organizations as they try to recover from backsourcing endeavors. The paper will appear in a future issue of Information Systems Management.

Abstract
Backsourcing is motivated by opportunities arising from changes in the business situation, redefinition of the character of outsourced service declining in quality or due to the discovery of flaws in the contract. The situation of backsourcing clearly has major implications for an organization in terms of monetary investments, IS infrastructure and changes in employee requirements during and after the process. The research in this paper consequently acknowledges a serious challenge involving the management of systems within organizations following backsourcing events. This paper considers a detailed analysis of two case studies of backsourcing: JP Morgan Chase (USA) and Sainsbury (UK). A major contribution of the paper is to identify important strategies to be followed in backsourcing projects to ensure efficient knowledge re-integration. In this respect, it is believed the paper is unique in identifying emergent suggestions for strategic backsourcing decision making through a series of insightful observations.

Bhagwatwar, A., Hackney, R., and Desouza, K.C. “Considerations for Information Systems ‘Backsourcing’: A Framework for Knowledge Re-integration,” Information Systems Management, Forthcoming.

I have received the 2010 Outstanding Reviewer award for my contributions to Strategic Outsourcing. I serve as on the Editorial Board of the journal. We would welcome your papers on all aspects of outsourcing (see, Author Guidelines)

I have a new paper accepted for publication in the International Journal of Information Management.

Abstract: The prominence of business process outsourcing (BPO) continues to intensify in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. Engaging in BPO can help an organization focus on its core competencies, while gaining specialized knowledge, skills, and processes in auxiliary spaces. The literature is laden with evidence that engaging in a BPO will help organizations secure financial, operational, and even strategic advantages. While there is little doubt that organizations can attain these benefits, few BPO arrangements work out as planned. Managing risks in BPO arrangements is paramount. In this case analysis, we describe a significant failure through chronological description of scandals that took place at one of India’s largest outsourcing vendors, Satyam Computer Services. In describing the study, we draw attention to the fact that organizations need to (1) improve their sensing capabilities and keep abreast of strategic transformations at their outsourcing vendors, (2) be able to plan for and execute contingency plans, and (3) balance the risks and rewards of BPOs in terms of knowledge and capabilities dependencies.

I will be delivering a webinar on June 17th, 2009 to the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Services & Outsourcing Special Interest Group (SIG). My presentation will examine the basic, yet critical question, How to Implement a Successful Outsourcing Process? The presentation will draw heavily from my book, The Outsourcing Handbook (Kogan Page, 2006). For more information, please click here: LINK

To purchase a copy of my book, please click here: LINK

To purchase a copy of the Polish edition, Outsourcing: Podr?cznik sprawdzonych praktyk, published by Wydawnictwo MT Biznes, please click here: LINK