Top HRO Superstars
In a year of fewer new contracts, not as many industry buyers, providers, and advisors made it into HRO Today’s Superstars list. To join this group of standouts, it takes courage, vision, and an ability and willingness to reshape how outsourcing is practiced for the betterment of the HRO community. While we saw a new crop of leaders emerge, especially within the HR BPO Buyers Advisory Group, many other veterans who helped pioneer the space moved on to new career paths, new employers, and more important positions within their organizations—no doubt recognized for their courage to embrace outsourcing and their contribution to the industry.
What are the criteria for becoming a Superstar? They are different for each of the three categories:
• For buyers, the path to Superstardom begins with their vision for a better HR organization. That means discarding any preconceived notion they have about outsourcing, investing the time and sweat effort to learn how it can benefit their organizations, and taking the calculated risk to bring better service, lower costs, and more effective support to the overall business. Even among companies that have outsourced for several years now, the Superstars we name there are demonstrating a continued effort to improve their HRO deals as well as a willingness to help other buyers to perfect their implementation.
• Among providers, we base our choices on their innovation and contributions to the industry. Beyond marketing hype, their efforts leave an impact on how HRO is practiced—whether enterprise, end-to-end implementation, or narrowly focused point solutions. HRO is as much a partnership as any buyer-vendor relationship can be, and the providers named as Superstars this year demonstrate that their efforts benefit their clients as much as they benefit their own organizations.
• Without advisors, HRO engagements would take a lot longer to execute. Sharing their domain expertise and best-practices knowledge, these sourcing experts, analysts, and legal advisors help buyers find appropriate vendors, develop contracts, and oversee implementation. Their role is becoming increasingly critical as HR leaders look to transform their organizations instead of just outsource administrative tasks. That means the nature of HRO deals are becoming more complex, requiring buyers to seek even more hand-holding than ever.
We want to congratulate all of the Superstars this year and acknowledge their role in bettering the industry. One change we’ve made to the list this year is the exclusion of European Superstars, who we’ve included in past year’s reports. Instead, we will expand our coverage of European buyers, providers, and advisors in our sister publication, HRO Europe.
As always, we encourage you to give us your thoughts and nominations to help us build a better list for 2009.
