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WHITE PAPER Industry-Focused Strategic BPO Services: A Profile of OfficeTiger Sponsored by: OfficeTiger LLC Romala Ravi May 2005 INTRODUCTION In This White Paper This IDC white paper discusses the fast-growing demand for business process outsourcing (BPO) services around industry-focused business processes that are tied closely to the strategic operations and core business of a company. These services are gaining visibility in the market from both service provision and customer adoption standpoints. This white paper presents survey findings on the adoption of BPO for industry-focused business processes by the financial services, legal services, and printing and publishing services industries. The paper examines the extent to which companies are using these services and their expectations of BPO providers of such services. As the Definitions section shows, the industry-focused business processes in question are those that directly support the core business of each industry, that touch the frontline professionals within these industries, that are high value in nature, and that have a direct impact on the primary business of each industry. To illustrate how the BPO services for these high-value industry-specific business processes are packaged and delivered in the market, this paper also provides a profile of OfficeTiger. Definitions Business Process Outsourcing BPO services involve the transfer of management and execution of one or more complete business processes or entire business functions to an external service provider. The BPO service provider is part of the decision-making structure surrounding the outsourced business function, and performance metrics are primarily tied to customer service and strategic business value. Strategic business value is recognized through such results as increased productivity, new business opportunities, new revenue generation, cost reduction, business transformation, and/or the improvement of shareholders’ value. Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA P.508.872.8200 F.508.935.4015 www.idc.com

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W H I T E P AP E R

I n d u s t r y - F o c u s e d S t r a t e g i c B P O S e r v i c e s : A P r o f i l e o f O f f i c e T i g e r Sponsored by: OfficeTiger LLC

Romala Ravi May 2005

I N T R O D U C T I O N

I n T h i s W h i t e P a p e r

This IDC white paper discusses the fast-growing demand for business process outsourcing (BPO) services around industry-focused business processes that are tied closely to the strategic operations and core business of a company. These services are gaining visibility in the market from both service provision and customer adoption standpoints. This white paper presents survey findings on the adoption of BPO for industry-focused business processes by the financial services, legal services, and printing and publishing services industries. The paper examines the extent to which companies are using these services and their expectations of BPO providers of such services.

As the Definitions section shows, the industry-focused business processes in question are those that directly support the core business of each industry, that touch the frontline professionals within these industries, that are high value in nature, and that have a direct impact on the primary business of each industry.

To illustrate how the BPO services for these high-value industry-specific business processes are packaged and delivered in the market, this paper also provides a profile of OfficeTiger.

D e f i n i t i o n s

Business Process Outsourcing

BPO services involve the transfer of management and execution of one or more complete business processes or entire business functions to an external service provider. The BPO service provider is part of the decision-making structure surrounding the outsourced business function, and performance metrics are primarily tied to customer service and strategic business value. Strategic business value is recognized through such results as increased productivity, new business opportunities, new revenue generation, cost reduction, business transformation, and/or the improvement of shareholders' value.

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Industry-Focused Strategic BPO Services

Industry-focused strategic BPO services involve the application of industry know-how and judgment to support the core strategic business functions of an organization. Unlike BPO for horizontal back-office functions such as HR and indirect procurement or industry-focused transactional processes such as claims process, policyholder services, or loan servicing, strategic BPO services target the frontline, core professionals of a company, such as a banker in an investment bank, a lawyer in a legal firm, or a consultant in a management consultancy.

The BPO service delivered is considered high value in that the outcome or deliverable contributes directly to the core business of a company. For example, it may include research and analytics that an investment banker uses to build a leveraged buy-out model or audit support provided to a global accounting firm. The key distinction of these strategic industry-focused BPO services is they enable professionals to apply industry knowledge and expertise to make critical judgments on tasks/processes that are required to run the core business of a company.

To offer services for such industry processes, a BPO provider requires industry expertise in and understanding of a company's core business because the decisions made by a BPO provider will have a direct impact on the outcome of a company's core business. These services include much more than simply taking over a highly repetitive process or transaction; they have the value proposition of also directly contributing to and improving a company's core business activities, thereby improving a company's competitive positioning within its industry.

Put simply, industry-specific strategic BPO services involve taking on the management of a business process that directly supports the core business of a company and that helps drive better operations and better decision making around a company's core business.

The use of the words "industry-specific" and "strategic" serves to make the important distinction between these services and "horizontal" BPO services, such as customer care, call center outsourcing, HR, logistics, procurement, and others, as well as industry-specific "transactional" BPO services, such as claims processing, mortgage processing, payments processing, billing, loan servicing, and others.

B P O S E R V I C E S O V E R V I E W

O v e r a r c h i n g T r e n d s

BPO is front and center in the minds of business executives today. Though outsourcing of business functions has been around for decades in areas such as logistics, facilities management, call centers, claims processing, and billing, the BPO market has experienced a transformation over the past four years, and new business processes (i.e., those previously not outsourced or outsourced to a limited extent) are fast becoming growth segments and lucrative candidates for BPO.

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In the past, companies embraced outsourcing for IT functions and for transactional and noncore business activities such as call center management, claims processing, payroll processing, benefits administration, and accounts payable processing. These traditional outsourcing engagements focused very much on cost reduction and tactical objectives such as improved response times, fast call resolution, asset or headcount reduction, and the conversion of fixed costs to variable costs. In contrast, companies evaluating BPO today are thinking more strategically about issues such as improved business process management, improved competitive positioning, risk management and transference, technology access, business flexibility, and quick and cost-effective access to scalable and skilled resources required to support business expansion.

With these strategic objectives in mind, companies have been looking internally to identify new high-value business processes and, often, aspects of the core business that can be better served by a BPO engagement. Considerations such as these have led to the outsourcing of horizontal business processes such as engineering, direct procurement, and other core activities. On the industry-specific front, these considerations have caused companies to evaluate and outsource business processes such as financial analysis, research and analytics, and other activities that directly support core industry processes.

Industry-specific BPO services players such as OfficeTiger are aligning their offerings to capitalize on this transformation in BPO and on the elevation of strategic drivers for BPO adoption. The competitive pressures of today's business world, cost management imperatives, and resource limitations are causing companies to think beyond just outsourcing low-value transactional activities and to push the outsourcing envelope deeper into organizational processes and value chains, from both horizontal and industry-focused perspectives.

I N D U S T R Y - F O C U S E D S T R AT E G I C B P O S E R V I C E S

T y p e s o f P r o c e s s e s a n d B P O D r i v e r s

There is a wide range of industry-focused business processes. For the purposes of this white paper, we focus on the business processes that support core activities of specific industries, as shown in Table 1.

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T A B L E 1

I n du s t r y - F o c u s e d B u s i n e s s P r o c e s s e s

Business Process Types of Activities

Data analytics and research This process involves the provision of customized qualitative and quantitative research that supports and extends a client's internal capabilities. It includes activities such as business information, strategic market research, data analytics, and financial analytics.

Transaction processing associated with electronic content

This process is associated with the digitization, access, and management of electronic content and includes activities such as scanning, imaging, indexing, coding, data capture, data entry, conversion, Web publishing, translation, repository and archive solutions, and knowledge management.

Premedia processes This process includes creative and publishing activities and involves taking documents, collateral, and presentations through the development life cycle from design to print. Specific activities include creative design, desktop publishing, and prepress activities such as SEC filing, composition and template design of multiple documents, and typesetting and image manipulation to create print-ready documents.

Financial management processes This process includes activities such as financial reporting, internal financial analysis, payables/receivables management, and billing and invoicing.

Source: IDC and OfficeTiger, 2005

IDC has observed strong demand for outsourcing the services in Table 1, and we discuss the survey results that reinforce this demand in the next section of this white paper.

Although the fundamental outsourcing goals of cost management and risk transference are driving the strong interest in and adoption of BPO services for these business processes, IDC has also observed more specific and strategic goals that are propelling adoption. These goals are summarized in Table 2.

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T A B L E 2

S t r a t e g i c G o a l s D r i v i n g B P O A d o p t i o n f o r I n d u s t r y - S p e c i f i c P r o c e s s e s

Goals Description

Focus on core competencies The need to focus time, energy, and internal company resources on activities associated with a company's core mission and competitive strength and reduce their involvement in support services and daily operational technicalities

Technology access The need for cost-effective access to and effective implementation of technology to better manage the underlying business process

Integration and centralization The need to integrate, centralize, and streamline existing processes, resources, and systems along specific business processes to eliminate redundancies, gain consistency across the enterprise, and drive standardization in the management of the underlying business process

Business flexibility The need to establish mechanisms for responding to volatile/seasonal business environments and changing business dynamics

Process improvement The need to achieve industry-standard best practices around business processes from both operational cost and service-quality perspectives

Global business process management

The need to drive standards and consistency in the management of a business process across a global organization and gain external help to manage the complexity associated with managing business processes across geographies

Business expansion The need to ramp up resources/capabilities for a particular business process � required to support business expansion that results from strong growth, global expansion, new product introduction, or a merger and acquisition

Regulatory compliance The need to ensure that business processes are being managed in compliance with changing government regulations

New revenue streams The need to create new revenue streams as opportunities open up; the need to access resources/capabilities associated with new product/service launches; the need to ensure an efficient and cost-effective new acquisition process

Source: IDC, 2005

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T h e A d o p t i o n T r e n d s : A n a l y s i s o f D e m a n d - S i d e S u r v e y R e s u l t s

In February 2005, IDC conducted a survey of 171 respondents across the financial services, legal services, and printing and publishing services industries to better understand the BPO adoption trends across the previously mentioned business processes. The survey had a minimum of 50 respondents from three industry segments: financial services, legal services, and printing and publishing services. It included respondents from three employee-size segments: 1�99 employees (small companies), 100�999 employees (midsize companies), and 1,000+ employees (large companies).

The goals of the survey were to first identify the source of the demand for industry-specific strategic BPO services and then to identify the outsourcing trigger events, decision-making approaches, and vendor selection criteria for large companies (1,000+ employees) within each of the three verticals. The results are discussed in the following sections.

Overall Outsourcing Adoption

Propensity to Outsource

IDC asked companies about their current adoption of BPO services and their future adoption over the next 12 months. The results for current outsourcing and future outsourcing were added together to arrive at the propensity to outsource each business process (see Table 3). In aggregate, the results show a definite interest in outsourcing the industry-focused business processes listed in Table 1.

Table 3 shows the results of outsourcing propensity by vertical industry and by company size. Considering the relative newness of outsourcing industry-specific strategic business processes, we view the high double-digit percentages in Table 3 as an encouraging sign that speaks to the promise and opportunity in this market.

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T A B L E 3

P r o p en s i t y t o O u t s o u r c e b y V e r t i c a l I n du s t r y a n d b y C o m p an y S i z e ( % o f R e s p o n d en t s )

Q1. Which of the following processes do you outsource to an external service provider, either completely or partially? Q2. Which of the following processes do you plan to outsource to an external service provider, either completely or

partially, over the next 12 months?

Business Process Financial Services

Legal Services

Printing and Publishing Services

Small (1�99

Employees)

Midsize (100�999

Employees)

Large (1,000+

Employees)

Data analytics and research 41.1 42.6 40.0 39.4 40.5 43.7

Transaction processing associated with electronic content

42.8 40.7 50.0 29.9 56.7 54.3

Premedia/electronic prepress 30.7 29.7 56.0 27.2 48.6 44.1

Premedia/creative processes 54.8 53.7 50.0 53.0 64.9 45.6

Financial management 50.1 50.0 28.0 57.0 35.1 32.1

n = 67 54 50 74 37 60

Note: The percentages represent the sum of respondents who indicated current outsourcing of each process and future outsourcing of each process over the next 12 months. Collectively, this data represents the propensity to outsource each business process.

Source: IDC's BPO Services Survey, 2005

The results shown in Table 3 can be summarized as follows:

! By company size. In aggregate, midsize and large companies have a higher propensity to outsource than smaller companies. However, the propensity differs significantly by service line. Specifically:

# The propensity to outsource is more or less evenly distributed for data analytics and research processes and, to a smaller extent, premedia/creative processes.

# Large companies have the highest propensity to outsource data analytics and research processes, with close to 44% of the respondents indicating either current outsourcing of the process or plans to outsource over the next 12 months.

# Midsize companies have the highest propensity to outsource transaction processing associated with electronic content activities, with nearly 65% of respondents indicating current outsourcing of the process or future plans to outsource.

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# Transaction processing associated with electronic content, premedia/electronic prepress, and financial management processes had the greatest disparity in outsourcing propensity across company size segments.

# Midsize and large companies more or less mirror each other in outsourcing propensities. The only service line that differs is premedia/creative processes, where midsize companies have a significant lead over large companies.

# Overall the outsourcing propensities are closer in line across company size segments than is the case for horizontal BPO adoption, where large companies have a clear and identifiable lead. Industry-specific strategic BPO services appear to be applied more evenly across company size segments and to have more balanced appeal and acceptance across different company sizes than traditional horizontal BPO services.

! By vertical industry. When we analyzed the results by each of the three vertical industries surveyed, we found that outsourcing propensity was also more or less evenly distributed across all three industries, but we also made a few interesting observations:

# Premedia/creative processes drew the highest propensity to outsource of the three industries in aggregate. When viewed by industry, this result held true for both financial services and legal services respondents, but not for printing and publishing services respondents.

# Printing and publishing services respondents have the highest current outsourcing of premedia/creative processes, but a low result for future plans by those who do not outsource today. Therefore, the propensity to outsource is relatively weaker among printing and publishing services respondents than financial and legal services respondents.

# Financial services and legal services respondents have a strong propensity to outsource financial management processes, unlike respondents in the printing and publishing services industry. These respondents clocked in with the lowest propensity to outsource financial management processes.

Future Direct ions for Outsourcing

When respondents were asked about the direction of future BPO spending from current levels, the aggregate responses for all respondents showed an even split between plans to increase versus plans to stay at current levels. The results by industry and by company size are shown in Table 4.

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T A B L E 4

D i r e c t i o n o f F u t u r e O u t s o u r c i n g S p en d b y V e r t i c a l I n du s t r y a n d b y C o m p an y S i z e ( % o f R e s p o n d en t s )

Q. In total, do you expect spending with external service providers to increase, decrease, or stay the same over the next 12 months?

Response Financial Services

Legal Services

Printing and Publishing Services

Small (1�99

Employees)

Midsize (100�999

Employees)

Large (1,000+

Employees)

Increase 40.3 31.5 46.0 36.5 37.8 43.3

Decrease 3.0 0.0 2.0 1.4 0.0 3.3

Stay the same 35.8 50.0 32.0 47.3 40.5 28.3

Don't know 20.9 18.5 20.0 14.9 21.6 25.0

n = 67 54 50 74 37 60

Source: IDC's BPO Services Survey, 2005

The results in Table 4 can be summarized as follows:

! By company size. The results were somewhat different across company size segments. Large companies, at 43.3%, are more inclined to increase outsourcing spend over the next 12 months, whereas midsize and small companies are more inclined to keep outsourcing spend at current levels. An encouraging sign is that only a very small, and therefore negligible, percentage of respondents plan to decrease outsourcing spend.

! By vertical industry. In total, the printing and publishing services respondents have the highest percentage for planned increase in outsourcing spend. However, the results are generally high across the board. All industries indicate a low percentage decrease in outsourcing spend. This finding shows that interest in outsourcing is definitely strong. The fact that "stay the same" and "increase" accounted for the highest percentages shows that outsourcing is a strong value driver for these industries, specifically for the industry-specific business processes that are the subject of this study.

Having established overall outsourcing patterns, we present the remainder of our analysis by vertical industry. Further, because the propensity to outsource and future outsourcing direction both point in favor of large companies, the rest of the vertical industry analysis focuses on and highlights the responses of companies with 1,000 or more employees.

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Analysis by Vertical Industry: Large Companies

Propensity to Outsource

The outsourcing propensity for large companies within each vertical industry is shown in Table 5.

T A B L E 5

P r o p en s i t y t o O u t s o u r c e : L a r g e C o m p a n i e s b y V e r t i c a l I n du s t r y ( % o f R e s p o n d en t s )

Q1. Which of the following processes do you outsource to an external service provider, either completely or partially? Q2. Which of the following processes do you plan to outsource to an external service provider, either completely

or partially, over the next 12 months?

Business Process Financial Services Legal Services Printing and Publishing

Services

Data analytics and research 43.3 46.2 42.1

Transaction processing associated with electronic content

48.1 61.6 56.9

Premedia/electronic prepress 34.3 30.8 68.5

Premedia/creative processes 46.9 38.5 42.1

Financial management 54.4 7.7 5.3

n = 28 13 19

Source: IDC's BPO Services Survey, 2005

The results in Table 5 can be summarized as follows:

! Both the acceptance of and propensity to outsource data analytics and research and premedia/creative processes are more or less equal across industries.

! Legal services and printing and publishing services respondents have a relatively higher propensity to outsource transaction processing associated with electronic content.

! The printing and publishing services industry has a very high propensity to outsource premedia/electronic prepress processes because the types of activities in this area are typically printing and publishing in nature.

! Financial services respondents are unique in their high propensity to outsource financial management processes. In contrast, large companies in the legal services and printing and publishing services industries have a very low propensity to outsource financial management processes.

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Outsourcing Tr igger Events

Respondents were asked what types of events would trigger a decision to outsource these business processes. The responses by large companies segmented by vertical industry are shown in Table 6.

T A B L E 6

T o p 5 O u t s o u r c i n g T r i g g e r E v en t s : L a r g e C o m p a n i e s b y V e r t i c a l I n d u s t r y

Q. Please select the top 5 events that might trigger your company to consider outsourcing these business processes.

Financial Services Legal Services Printing and Publishing Services

Lack of skilled professionals (60.0%)

Conducted thorough internal cost analysis (61.5%)

Conducted thorough internal cost analysis (50.0%)

Outgrew existing infrastructure and need to expand (48.0%)

Lack of skilled professionals (53.9%) Outgrew existing infrastructure and need to expand (38.9%)

Tough market conditions (44.0%) Outgrew existing infrastructure and need to expand (38.5%)

Expansion in product portfolio (44.4%)

Conducted thorough internal cost analysis (36.0%)

Global expansion of customer base (30.8%)

Mergers and acquisitions (33.3%)

Mergers and acquisitions (32.0%) Expansion in product portfolio (30.8%) Lack of skilled professionals (33.3%)

n = 25 n = 13 n = 18

Source: IDC's BPO Services Survey, 2005

The results in Table 6 show that respondents are triggered to outsource by three types of events:

! A lack of skills required to conduct each process efficiently and successfully is a key trigger event across all industries and is the top trigger event for financial services respondents.

! Business expansion of any sort is an important trigger event and includes expansion related to mergers and acquisitions, infrastructure, product portfolio, or geographic coverage.

! Cost pressures also feature prominently as trigger factors. Companies are triggered to outsource after having conducted thorough internal cost analyses that might indicate outsourcing as a cheaper alternative. Financial services respondents also highlight tough market conditions, which could place both cost and competitive pressures on already stretched internal resources and budgets.

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Decis ion-Making Process

The majority of large companies across all industries have formal processes in place to assist in their outsourcing decisions and in their selection of a particular BPO vendor for their industry-specific business processes. On average, over 82% of large company respondents answered "yes" when asked whether they have formal decision-making processes in place. A higher-than-aggregate percentage of financial services respondents (86%) indicated that they have formal decision-making processes in place. Legal services respondents and printing and publishing services respondents were at 77% and 79%, respectively.

Table 7 identifies the decision makers within large companies in each industry; it captures only the top 3 responses.

T A B L E 7

T o p 3 D e c i s i o n M a k e r s : L a r g e C o m p an i e s b y V e r t i c a l I n d u s t r y

Q. Within your company, who is involved in the decision-making process when selecting an external service provider?

Financial Services Legal Services Printing and Publishing Services

Department VP (60.7%) Board of directors (46.2%) CFO (31.6%)

IT director/manager (50.0%) President (30.8%) Department VP (31/6%)

CIO (35.7%) CEO/department VP (23.1%) CEO/president/IT director (21.1%)

n = 28 n = 13 n = 19

Source: IDC's BPO Services Survey, 2005

The results in Table 7 show that:

! Financial services respondents are largely making decisions at the business unit level.

! Legal services respondents are adopting a top-down approach, with decision making emanating from senior leadership.

! Printing and publishing services respondents are driven by a combination of financial and operational considerations. Hence CFOs and business unit leaders are equally involved in the outsourcing decision-making process.

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Vendor Select ion Cr iter ia

The top 5 criteria that large companies consider in their final selection of a BPO provider are shown in Table 8.

T A B L E 8

T o p 5 V en d o r S e l e c t i o n C r i t e r i a : L a r g e C o m p a n i e s b y V e r t i c a l I n du s t r y

Q. Please select the top 5 criteria your company considers important in its final selection of an external service provider.

Financial Services Legal Services Printing and Publishing Services

Is a specialized provider with proven expertise (57.1%)

Can create content customizable to my needs (69.2%)

Provides high-quality services (68.4%)

Provides high-quality services (57.1%)

Provides high-quality services (69.2%) Can create content customizable to my needs (57.9%)

Stability of provider (57.1%) Is a specialized provider with proven expertise (53.9%)

Stability of provider (52.6%)

Can create content customizable to my needs (53.6%)

Has excellent references (46.2%) Knows technology and its impact on my business (52.6%)

Employs professionals with extensive experience (50.0%)

Stability of provider (38.5%) Employs professionals with extensive experience (47.4%)

n = 28 n = 13 n = 19

Source: IDC's BPO Services Survey, 2005

The results in Table 8 can be summarized as follows:

! Service quality is a key consideration and features prominently in the top 5 list across all industries.

! Customization of services offered is an important final selection criterion. Despite the highly repetitive nature of many of these business processes, and the applicability of these services across a range of industries, buyers of BPO services want vendors to demonstrate the customized aspects of their services.

! Vendor stability is another important criterion and is especially high on the lists of both financial services and printing and publishing services respondents. Because the services in question are high value and directly touch the core business of a company, having a provider that is stable and will be around for a long time is an important consideration.

! Specialized skills and extensive and proven experience are highly valued attributes for any service provider looking to play across any of these industries.

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! Excellent references are emphasized by the legal services respondents. This finding is likely due to the unique requirements of the legal industry. For example, even in something as "basic" as word processing, the vendor needs to have an understanding of the context of the document. This understanding will impact process flow and timeliness. Familiarity with legal terminology is also important. Legal firms are likely looking to excellent references as an indication of vendor experience in the industry. Having to assess this experience from scratch would be an uphill task, whereas having other law firms' testimony about a vendor's capabilities would provide for a quick and straightforward assessment.

! Knowledge of technology and its application to the business is a key requirement for printing and publishing services respondents because technology application is an important productivity driver for the printing and publishing business.

O F F I C E T I G E R C O M P AN Y O V E R V I E W

C o m p a n y B a c k g r o u n d

Founded in 1999 by former investment bankers Joe Sigelman and Randy Altschuler, OfficeTiger is a diversified, industry-focused provider offering judgment-based services to professional services firms and Fortune 500 companies. OfficeTiger offers tailored solutions to different verticals through its four service lines: Premedia, Data Analytics and Research, Financial Management, and Transaction Processing. These service lines are described briefly in Table 9 and more in-depth in Table 10.

OfficeTiger's industry-focused services support the mission-critical core functions of its clients. The company creates, processes, and distributes mission-critical information for investment banks, diversified financial institutions, legal firms, print and publishing houses, retail chains, and Fortune 500 companies. OfficeTiger's contextual and highly specialized services address activities that are central to the day-to-day lives of the professionals they serve, such as bankers, lawyers, consultants, analysts, printers, and procurement officials.

Headquartered in New York City, OfficeTiger currently drives its operations from its three major facilities � two in Chennai, India, and one in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The company also runs satellite operations in Bangalore and Mumbai, India. OfficeTiger's operations are spread across seven countries and over fifteen sites in the United States, United Kingdom, Continental Europe, India, and Sri Lanka. OfficeTiger has experienced exponential growth in sales and has seen revenue double year to year since its inception.

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OfficeTiger's long-term contracted clients include eight large investment banks, two large management consultants, global law firms, global publishing houses, national business services companies, third-party administrators, Big 4 accounting firms, and large private equity and venture capital firms.

T A B L E 9

O f f i c eT i g e r a t a G l a n c e

Category Description

Year founded 1999

Headquarters New York City

Supporting locations and resources • Over 2,500 professionals worldwide, including 500 MBAs and chartered accountants offering integrated, globally sourced services in 15 delivery centers (including 9 client sites)

• Headquarters, along with the London and Frankfurt offices, serve as major sales and implementation offices

• Two operation centers in Chennai (India) and one in Colombo (Sri Lanka)

Service lines OfficeTiger's four service lines are Data Analytics and Research, Financial Management, Premedia, and Transaction Processing. Each service line in turn contains a wide range of specific services offered to clients. Details are provided in Table 10.

Vertical industries Investment banking, diversified financial services, legal, management consulting, print and publishing, pharmaceuticals, retail, and real estate

Key clients Eight large investment banks, two large management consultants, global law firms, global publishing houses, national business services companies, third-party administrators, Big 4 accounting, and large private equity and venture capital firms

Source: IDC and OfficeTiger, 2005

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C o m p a n y C a p a b i l i t i e s a n d D i f f e r e n t i a t o r s

A Hybrid Model of Service Delivery

OfficeTiger offers a hybrid model of service delivery that combines and integrates onsite presence and management with offsite operational support. Over the years, OfficeTiger has built and strengthened its global delivery capabilities, with an emphasis on hiring MBAs with strong industry backgrounds. This emphasis on staffing all locations with highly skilled and specialized employees, or professionals with advanced degrees, directly addresses buyers' needs for access to resources with specialized skills and extensive industry-specific experience.

The integrated global delivery platform that is the foundation of this hybrid model is essential for the type of business processes OfficeTiger handles as an outsourcing provider. Because these business processes address core business functions and are of high value to clients' core employees, OfficeTiger's onsite presence helps with workflow coordination and overall project management and provides the face-to-face client interaction that is critical in these types of services. Further, onsite resources help to drive the seamless integration between client operations and OfficeTiger service delivery and help to promote client confidence and comfort with OfficeTiger. At the same time, offshore operational locations enable clients to benefit from cost-efficient and "round-the-clock" services.

Building Partnerships with Clients

OfficeTiger's approach is to build a foundation for long-term relationships with its clients. Because OfficeTiger addresses processes that are so closely intertwined with and support core business processes, the company stresses high-level integration of its services with a client's workflow. As a result, its role as an outsourcer becomes transparent and seamlessly linked to that of its clients. OfficeTiger's goal is to instill confidence among its clients by emphasizing long-term relationship building and deep integration between its own workflow and that of its clients.

Many of the processes OfficeTiger addresses and the types of industries it targets, such as financial and legal services, are characterized by huge amounts of confidential and sensitive information. Further, information confidentiality and security considerations around information flow are important issues for clients and often are the biggest obstacles to outsourcing. Therefore, by approaching client engagements as long-term partnerships and entrenching itself into clients' value chains, OfficeTiger can help drive client confidence and allay client concerns.

Going Deeper into Clients' Value Chains

As part of its long-term partnership-building approach, OfficeTiger works to identify and grow its business with companies for which it can provide services that cover a wide range of areas and that go deep into clients' value chains. For example, OfficeTiger might start an engagement with an investment bank by providing electronic presentations. This engagement could lead to conducting research for the presentations and delve even deeper into financial analysis of the companies mentioned in the presentations. OfficeTiger's goal is to start from one set of activities

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in the business process value chain of its clients and grow and move deeper into other aspects of a business process, thereby becoming a more valuable partner and service provider to its clients. Thus, OfficeTiger is also enabling its clients to adopt a tighter approach to keeping in-house only what is absolutely core and outsourcing as many support and noncore areas as possible to drive down costs, reduce assets, and focus internal resources on where they count and contribute the most. This focus on establishing depth within clients' value chains allows OfficeTiger to become more familiar with clients' needs and in turn positions it well to help clients identify and execute process reengineering as well as pursue an approach of continuous innovation for the business processes being outsourced.

One example of OfficeTiger's approach in going deeper is the work it does with a global investment bank. OfficeTiger started by taking over the management of a 150-person onsite document creation and processing center. This engagement has since expanded to include a separate 100-person offshore team that supports the onsite team; together, these groups process high-profile and quick-turnaround documents for the bank. OfficeTiger has also gone beyond document processing to provide the bank with financial analysis, tactical development work, and high-end studio design.

Building Its Capabilities Through Partnerships and Acquisitions

Although organic growth has been the main engine driving OfficeTiger's growth, the company has also more recently opened itself up to partnerships and acquisitions to improve upon and build its capabilities. In June 2004, OfficeTiger established a joint venture with Hildebrandt International, a leading consulting firm focused on the legal industry. The joint entity will bring a more comprehensive breadth of capabilities specifically targeted at the outsourcing needs of the legal industry. In October 2004, OfficeTiger acquired United Kingdom�based Devonshire Group, expanding its presence in Europe for creative services.

S e r v i c e O f f e r i n g s

OfficeTiger has a wide set of offerings addressing high-value industry-specific processes across a range of industries. Table 10 provides a description of each service line.

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T A B L E 1 0

O f f i c eT i g e r S e r v i c e O ve r v i ew

Data analytics and research This service line targets repetitive tasks facing professionals such as bankers, lawyers, consultants, and recruiters. It is based on an approach the company refers to as Search, Synthesize, and Analyze. This service line includes the following discrete offerings:

• Business Information Services

• Financial Analytics

• Equity Research

• Credit Analytics

• Market Research

• Data Analytics

• Intellectual Property

Financial management This service line encompasses finance and accounting activities such as general accounting, financial reporting and risk management, treasury and investment management, transaction processing, tax management, and 401K and mutual fund processing. Specific offerings within this service line are as follows:

• Retirement services

• Fund services

• Real estate management

• General ledger

• Financial reporting

• NAV

• Reconciliation

Premedia This service line encompasses three subsegments: electronic prepress services (EPS), enterprise document solutions (EDS), and creative services (CS). Through these three subsegments, this service line provides the entire set of capabilities required in print and publishing, from concept, design, and composition to prepress services and release to print. The discrete offerings under each subsegment are as follows:

• Word processing

• Presentation services

• SEC compliance

• Composition/typesetting

• Publishing

• Studio design

Transaction processing This service line handles all aspects of content conversion, processing, tagging, and publishing. Key offerings within this service line are as follows:

• Claims processing

• Litigation support

Source: IDC and OfficeTiger, 2005

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C u s t o m e r C a s e S t u d i e s a n d V a l u e P r o p o s i t i o n

This section provides a sample of the BPO work OfficeTiger does with its clients. These examples help to cull the key benefits and value proposition OfficeTiger provides its clients. Client names are confidential; therefore, the case studies highlight only the clients' industries.

Case Study 1: Outsourced Presentation Services for a Global Investment Bank

Background and Drivers for Outsourcing

A global investment bank needed scalable and cost-effective skilled resources to support its publishing department on a 24 x 7 basis. The objective was to access quick turnaround time for high-quality presentations.

Off iceTiger Solut ion and Cl ient Benef its

Through its Premedia service line, OfficeTiger offers the bank the following services:

! Creating, editing, and formatting of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents

! Document conversion

! Composition and preflighting of quarterly and annual fund books

OfficeTiger and the client started the engagement with a dedicated five-member client team with one onsite workflow coordinator. Since then, the team has expanded to 21 members to support increased volumes. Additionally, the client has expanded the scope of its engagement with OfficeTiger to include imaging and indexing of confidential business documents as well as knowledge management services. Overall, the client has integrated OfficeTiger into its operations so that OfficeTiger functions as an extension of the client's administrative work processes.

Client benefits resulting from this outsourced engagement include:

! A scalable resource structure that enables the bank to meet peak demands at incremental costs

! Cost savings of up to 70%

Case Study 2: Outsourced Financial Management Services for a Global Investment Bank

Background and Drivers for Outsourcing

A major fund-of-funds group within a global investment bank sought to outsource select financial management activities to access 24 x 7 scalable and cost-effective skilled resources to manage these activities. Fund of funds is a group of investment funds that focuses on domestic and international leveraged buyouts as well as structured equity investments, including other private equity funds and mezzanine, real estate, and venture capital investments.

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Off iceTiger Solut ion and Cl ient Benef its

Through its Financial Management service line, OfficeTiger provides the following services to the bank:

! Quarterly review of existing holdings in the private equity fund

! Exposure analysis by sectors and geographies

! Monitoring of portfolio performance

! Maintenance of portfolio data

! Creation of customized portfolio reports

OfficeTiger commenced operations in March 2002 with one analyst. The resources have since expanded to a dedicated eight-member client team with both an onsite and offshore presence. The team is a mix of intermediate and highly qualified chartered accountants who track over 600 funds on a quarterly basis.

As part of its engagement with the client, the OfficeTiger team has done the following:

! Conducted comprehensive qualitative and quantitative reviews of the fund's portfolio, including valuation and diversification analysis

! Performed attribution analysis of the portfolio by investment type, sector, stage, and geographic location to optimize portfolio allocation

! Provided customized analysis as directed by the client

! Maintained the portfolio in a multitier structure

! Created monthly, quarterly, and yearly performance reports providing a comprehensive view of fund activities for each period

! Updated the client's Web-based reports in real time, as the reports were completed

Through the outsourcing engagement, the bank has achieved up to 40% in cost savings. In addition, the engagement has helped improve turnaround time and enabled the bank to provide bankers with timely periodic customized portfolio reports that in turn facilitate the portfolio management process.

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O P P O R T U N I T I E S AN D C H AL L E N G E S

OfficeTiger has enjoyed initial success with its portfolio of industry-specific BPO services. A combination of market foresight and perseverance has helped the company increase its strength and build good traction in the market for industry-specific strategic BPO services. Specific strengths that OfficeTiger has displayed include:

! Identifying a market need at a time when it was critical and underserved by other BPO providers

! Casting a wide net in the market first and then making the offerings more targeted and incremental as market acceptance increased

! Pursuing clients where low-hanging fruit presented itself, demonstrating results, and then expanding further into related activities with the approach of building deep relationships with existing clients and integrating deep into clients' value chains

Six years after its founding, OfficeTiger has built good traction and proven its value proposition to the market. Today the company offers a wide and impressive array of services addressing the support requirements of a diverse set of strategic industry-specific business processes. The company also scores well and continues to build on many of the vendor selection criteria identified by prospective buyers, such as high service quality, customized offerings meeting specific client needs, and investment in specialized skills and employees with extensive industry experience.

As OfficeTiger works to expand its growth further, it will have to address the following challenges:

! Sustaining the costs of a highly skilled workforce and ensuring quality and service consistency as the workforce expands to meet growing demand

! Maintaining a position of profitability and financial stability required to propel the company into its next phase of expansion

! Maintaining the market traction it has established as IT service providers that are aggressively pursuing BPO overall start to make their presence felt in this market segment

! Establishing the brand visibility that is needed to stand apart from other providers as the market attracts new entrants

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C O N C L U S I O N

OfficeTiger has made an early leap in a market that is attracting more attention and interest today. With companies thinking strategically about BPO, new areas previously thought to be "too core to outsource" are now being released to the outsourcing world. Industry-specific strategic business processes, such as those targeted by OfficeTiger, are part of this new wave in BPO adoption. Survey results point to strong outsourcing acceptance and high outsourcing propensity for these services, specifically among large companies but also increasingly among midsize and small companies.

IDC expects this market to experience strong growth over 2005 and beyond. The results experienced by early adopters will help to validate outsourcing's value proposition and will drive further acceptance of BPO for these industry-specific processes. Yet, further acceptance will also attract new players into this market, specifically the IT service providers with broad offerings, as well as other niche industry-specific BPO vendors. Brand analyses already show large IT service providers commanding strong brand perception in this market where most do not have dedicated offerings at the current time.

Although OfficeTiger's current strategy of building partnerships with clients and going deeper into clients' value chains is on the right track, the company would also do well to forge partnerships not just with industry groups but also with some of the IT service providers with broad offerings. IT service providers are not likely to build these solutions from scratch, but they are likely to look for viable partners or acquisition targets. In addition to pursuing new client acquisitions and expanding the current client base, OfficeTiger must also focus on positioning itself to be favorably considered by IT service providers for partnerships and alliances.

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