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11 November 2012 | Adam Leach

A benefit of outsourcing services to emerging markets such as China, India or Brazil is it gives you access to people and expertise in regions where your company is looking to grow business.

In a panel session at Procurecon 2012 this week the audience heard from senior procurement figures about a range of benefits provided by business process outsourcing. One of the benefits highlighted was with more and more companies looking to grow their activity in emerging markets, having access to local expertise, albeit through an outsourced provider, is of great value.

Reinoud Selbeck, vice president of group purchasing at Philips, explained having certain services outsourced through Infosys, which was a sponsor of the conference, to China was helpful to the company while it launched products in the country. He said that having a team who spoke the same language and lived in the same time zone was of great value to the company.

During the same session, James Shaw, director of outsourced service at pharmaceutical manufacturer AstraZeneca explained the company takes great care over what it outsources and what it keeps in house. He explained the driver was to reduce the resource demand on the company to handle the transactional side and free its in-house team up to work on the more strategic elements.

He maintained while day-to-day operations of certain elements within the company are outsourced, AstraZeneca remains the “decision maker”.