Insights

Independent analysis on the outsourcing industry.

Market analysis, white papers, and The Edge, our running commentary. Published openly, read by buyers and the people they buy from. No sponsorship, no vendor talking points.

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By Victor Manzanera. Independent. No vendor sponsorship.

Featured white paper

How to move to an outcome based contract.

Our flagship analysis of what the best operators and buyers actually do differently, and what most contracts get wrong.

White paper

The Outcome Based BPO Model

Built on real executed contracts and real deal data, not vendor marketing. Why the industry measures proxies instead of outcomes, and what a redesigned contract actually looks like.

A free download in exchange for your email, so we can send it to you. No sales pitch.

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Inside the paper

Most contracts measure the wrong thing

They reward an internal compliance metric, not the business result the buyer actually cares about.
Almost none tie pay to a customer outcome

Retention, satisfaction, and conversion sit outside the contract, even where a bonus mechanism exists.
A redesigned contract that pays for results

A practical model that rewards the outcome your partner delivers, not the hours or heads they bill.

Recent work

Commentary, research, and analysis.

A running read on where value is moving in outsourcing. Market signals read straight, with the trade offs named.

KPI targets inherited from operations that look nothing like your own

The Edge · No. 12

The benchmark you inherited was built for someone else.

The KPI targets in your outsourcing contract look like an industry standard. They are not.

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Volume removed from a contract while the price per unit steps up

The Edge · No. 11

You cut the volume. The price went up.

Almost every outsourcing contract in force today was written on an assumption nobody put in writing: that volume only ever grows.

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Comparing outsourcing providers when every one of them claims the same things

The Edge · No. 10

How to choose a BPO when they all say the same thing.

Every supplier on the shortlist claims the same countries, the same technology and the same expertise, and most of those claims are broadly true.

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Contract KPIs measuring delivery activity rather than any business outcome

The Edge · No. 09

Why your BPO delivers but never transforms.

You brought in a partner to transform your customer experience.

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The offshore cost gap narrowing as wages rise and AI changes the arithmetic

The Edge · No. 08

The offshore discount runs out.

For two decades the outsourcing industry ran on a single number, the offshore cost gap.

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The consolidation wave running through the AI and outsourcing vendor market

The Edge · No. 07

The vendor survival bet.

Buyers are committing to their longest outsourcing contracts in years to fund an artificial intelligence roadmap, at the very moment the vendors selling that.

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