A.T. Kearney’s Global Services Location Index (GSLI)
The Index evaluates 40 countries as potential locations for the most common remote services, including IT services and support, contact centers, back-office support. Each country’s score is comprised of a weighted combination of relative scores on 40 individual metrics, which are grouped into three categories: financial attractiveness, people skills and availability, and business environment.
Content: Article | Source: Kearney | Subjects: International, Outsourcing / BPO
The Path to Maximizing Margins
Can an obsession with product costs ultimately hurt profits? Can products be too good for their own good? Such questions reflect the complicated relationship between product design and pricing. Companies that manage this relationship skillfully can maximize their gross margins and, in turn, fatten their R&D and marketing budgets.
Content: Article | Authors: Michael Broquist, Thomas Kratzert | Source: Kearney | Subject: Marketing / Sales
Nanotechnology Is More than a Hot New Label
Nanotechnology often inspires images of “science fiction” rather than science. The word conjures visions of technological marvels such as atoms and molecules joining together to create materials hundreds of times lighter yet stronger than steel. This material is used to build “carbon nanotubes,” allowing pod-like crawlers to carry cargo thousands of miles up to a space station. Hollywood caters to the fiction, most recently by … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Lisa Tan | Source: Kearney | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business
Real Options = Real Value
Real options analysis offers executives a new way to value large strategic projects that reduces risk and uncertainty by turning the unknown into the known.
Content: Article | Authors: Duane Dickson, Mike Matheis | Source: Kearney | Subject: Finance
Satisfying Customers vs. Reducing Costs: How Optimizing the IT Front Office Can Help You Do Both
While many IT organizations claim to focus on the customer, few actually do. To provide guidance, A.T. Kearney developed an innovative framework called the “IT Front Office Model” that applies world-class sales, marketing and product development processes to the IT organization. In this model, the IT organization delivers valued services and products to its customers at a lower cost by building better relationships and focusing … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Mike Matheis, Steve Berger | Source: Kearney | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business
Check Your Mindset at the Border
In this article, the authors discuss why the West still doesn’t “get” China. They begin by discussing how multinational companies tend to manage China from the outside (Hong Kong and Singapore are close but not close enough). They also point out that the Chinese locals are becoming increasingly capable players and, therefore, more competitive.
Less visible reasons why companies languish in China are equally important. Most … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: F. Nikolaus Soellner, Guy Bouchet, Lian Hoon Lim | Source: Kearney | Subject: International – China
Mobinet 2005: Raising the Stakes
Shifting Your Supply Chain into Reverse
“Satisfaction guaranteed” is still promised by many retailers today. But what happens to those returned products? How do the retailer and the manufacturer handle them? Both have traditionally focused on delivering goods to customers, not on managing their return in an efficient manner. The handling of returned products, often called reverse logistics, is an often-neglected part of an otherwise efficient supply chain.
Pressures to improve customer … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Charles Harthan, Patrick Van den Bossche, Sean Monahan | Source: Kearney | Subject: Operations
When Your Suppliers Talk… Listen
This article discusses why listening matters- particularly as it relates to suppliers. Your suppliers have taken up residency in some of the best run companies in the world, which makes them wellsprings of information. In many cases, this means they have already dealt with and overcome some of the same challenges that you face. Spend time with your suppliers and you may hear an informed … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Richard Sheinfeld, Robert M. Tevelson | Source: Kearney | Subject: Operations
Forward and Reverse Logistics Characteristics
Value-Building Growth
Today, companies must strike a proper balance between the top and the bottom lines, while keeping in mind that neither growth for growth’s sake nor a pure profit focus offers the optimal path to superior shareholder value. CEOs who consistently achieve value-building growth do so by adhering to a strong strategy and promoting innovation, geographic expansion and risk taking.
Content: Article | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Best Practices, Management
Reverse Logistics Costs
Rising to the Growth Challenge: A.T. Kearney’s Financial Institutions Organic Growth Index, 2005
Crunch Time: The Competitiveness Audit
China Versus the United States: Who has the most to gain (or lose) in apparel?
Creating Value through Strategic Supply Management: The 2004 Assessment of Excellence in Procurement
A.T. Kearney’s 2004 Assessment of Excellence in Procurement global research study of more than 300 companies confirms that senior executives expect procurement to go well beyond its traditional role. Rather than focusing solely on cost reduction, today’s business leaders see procurement’s greatest challenge as capturing value beyond cost from the supply market.
Content: Article | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Best Practices, Operations
Why Today’s IT Organization Won’t Work Tomorrow: Future-proofing information technology
Information technology (IT) can change the way businesses work in unexpected new ways–but today, such breakthroughs are rare. Most IT departments can’t effectively explore innovative uses of technology because they are stuck in a daily operational grind. Today’s IT organizations will not meet tomorrow’s needs unless they move beyond fixing the past and participate more actively in planning for the future by focusing on the … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Source: Kearney | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business
“No Insult” Pricing and Promotions: A smarter approach to winning back value-conscious retail customers
Traditional pricing and promotion strategies are coming up short against the growing pressures from value retailers such as Wal-Mart and Costco. How can retailers improve their tarnished price image and offer customers the deals they want without giving away the store?
This paper discusses A.T. Kearney’s approach to pricing and promotion. We offer a customer-focused strategy in which retailers identify and exploit the items most … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing
The Changing Face of China: China as an Offshore Destination For IT and Business Process Outsourcing
Long the world’s factory, China is now becoming an attractive offshore location for IT offshoring (ITO) and business process offshoring (BPO). These markets are expected to grow as the Chinese government continues to entice foreign multinationals. Similarly, Chinese-based ITO and BPO providers are working to improve their capabilities to capture business from multinationals in the United States and Europe.
This paper highlights findings in
A.T. Kearney’s … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Source: Kearney | Subjects: International – China, Outsourcing / BPO