Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/210252
10th Anniversary Special between the really transactional activities and the valueadded professional activities is clear in our mind now. With the onset of technologies, even the transactional activities are a lot easier for companies than 10 or 12 years ago. We'll see a lot more organisations doing more HR services in-house,'' he says. Aon Hewitt's Durston believes that will be more of an exception than the rule and that bringing HR back in-house ``is quite rare because it is such a long, tough process to outsource in the first place and to bring it back in-house is very unusual.'' Procter & Gamble's King says that while ``it hasn't been easy to achieve, we discovered we can grow faster and stronger with the expertise of strategic partners. It requires a lot of work from both sides to find a way to genuinely create joint value. We certainly feel we are in a much better place now than if we had remained with our in-house model, both in terms of cost and quality. Perhaps more importantly than all of that, we have created the possibility of unlocking whole new tranches of value that we could never have done on our own.'' Technology's Impact It's clear that technological developments over the decade, including cloud applications, have changed the HRO/BPO landscape and empowered both clients and providers. Unwieldy and highly expensiveHRO software platforms are out; flexible web-based plans are in. ``The move from on-premise solutions to the cloud has been a huge opportunity for lots of organisations,'' says BAE's Walsh. ``Technology is so good now that it's not something you have to worry about unlike 10 years ago, where there was a demand for HR outsourcing experts. It's not about that anymore. Technology is much more user-friendly, much more intuitive.'' The arrival of SaaS HCM platforms such as Workday, SuccessFactors, a SAP Company, and Oracle Taleo Cloud Fusion ``generated excitement for many of our clients given the intuitive user interface and delivered self-service of those platforms,'' Accenture's Goldstein says. ``What's ironic is that in many cases the SaaS self-service HCM providers are just delivering on a promise, or the hope they have had for the past several years.'' ``This idea of self-service empowers the user to manage their work in a very effective, efficient way and helps to automate back-office processes to increase data access and completeness,'' Goldstein continues. ``Under the traditional on-premise model, the burden for setting up service, for creating those interfaces, really fell on the shoulder of clients. What typically happened was that even though clients bought the technology assuming that it was the way it would operate, it never really was implemented that way. The cost and effort of deploying self service was astronomical. Now that self service, that intuitive user interface, are all delivered as a box. Oversimplified, it's just a matter of turning them on.'' Aon Hewitt's Durston says advances in technology ``are driving the next level of BPO" at the company and at client BP. ``BP's reason originally for outsourcing HR was to try to save money—there was an element of service and quality— but there was also a big financial play,'' he says. ``As tech has evolved, it has become more about the quality of the experience and less about costs. But costs are lowering because of things such as the cloud. There is genuine interest from clients. It's the next turning point.'' For an industry that has had several ``turning points'' in the past decade with the revamping of contracts and technological innovations, they have all led to a market that has finally found its sea legs, according to clients and providers. At Procter & Gamble, the company is ``looking forward to the next five to 10 years with tremendous excitement [after] having gone through the growing pains of doing things on our own to doing things with partners, and therefore we can take it up to a whole new level,'' King says. For Accenture's Goldstein, the rapid evolution and maturity of the HR BPO industry in Europe means it shares little resemblance to the market of a decade ago. ``If I take a look back over the past 10 years at the HR BPO market, it quite frankly seems like a lifetime of change,'' she says. ``I would struggle to actually compare the two -- the 2003 and 2013 markets. It has largely come about as a result of market maturity. It has been a whirlwind.'' Stephen V. Taylor is a freelance journalist and has more than 15 years reporter at news organizations including The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. He can be reached at Stephen.VTaylor.01@gmail.com. AUTUMN 2013 | www.hroglobal.com [41]