Customers have been spoiled. Thanks to companies such as Amazon and Apple, they now expect every organization to deliver products and services swiftly, with a seamless user experience. Are your processes up to that level of expectation?

A recent TAKE Supply Chain survey indicated that the primary reason companies choose to outsource some or all of their manufacturing or distribution activities is cost reduction. This was the number one reason chosen by 61 percent of survey respondents across all global regions. However, a frequent issue faced by companies after the outsourcing project goes live is that they're not achieving their expected cost savings. Two common causes for this disconnect are vague contract terms or metrics, and manual processes.

Businesses today are faced with many challenges, from economic uncertainty and complex regulations to heightened consumer expectations. With these difficulties come fierce realities for many companies, as they realize they can't afford any inefficiency in their business model. Companies mostly suffer from inadequate back office processes, with transactional areas tending to have the most inefficiencies. In response, increasing numbers of business process outsourcing vendors are offering solutions to these issues.

Wavelink has developed a new version of Avalanche, its mobility-management software.

The last year has seen much change in the enterprise business process management software market. The U.S. BPM market for 2013 amounted to $65bn and is expected to grow to more than $77bn by 2017. Certain verticals are poised to surpass the expected CAGR of 4.3 percent of market growth. Organizations focusing on BPM will see the largest impacts, as many inefficiencies can be fixed, if done correctly. - Dylan Persaud, Managing Director, Eval-Source

Analyst Insight: Continuous industry, business and customer demands force companies to maintain business processes in permanent evolution. Highly productive organizations strive to achieve a technological edge, business efficiency, and regulatory compliance, which must be assimilated within the organization's operations, to increase and optimize business performance. - Jorge Garcia, Senior Analyst, Technology Evaluation Centers

Intel senior commodity manager Suzanne Ralls discusses how processes that begin with the "ideal state" have helped simplify and improve commodity procurement at the company.

Over the last year, we've posted a number of blogs and published some articles on the benefits of outsourcing. We've discussed the reasons why companies choose to outsource specific functions and shown how business process outsourcing (BPO) providers can actually improve operations and save money. What we glossed over was the necessary relationship that has to exist between the company that's outsourcing and its provider. Making a success out of this relationship is a shared responsibility, one that cannot be overstated.