IntoPeople and ScienceSoft organized a conference and networking event titled “Using outsourcing to strengthen your business: doґs and donґts” on November 3, 2009 in Kaatsheuvel, the Netherlands.

The conference saw a high turnout of more than 50 companies. The conference gathered several categories of participants: businesses that are already involved in outsourcing, those that only evaluate strategic perspectives of establishing outsourcing relations as well as service providers.

The event earned positive feedback of the attendees and of the speakers. “I believe it was quite a successful event. It is for the first time that a company from Eastern Europe took part in organizing an event on such a scale in the Netherlands,” commented Paul Tjia, one of the speakers at the conference, co-author of the book “Offshoring Information Technology – Sourcing and Outsourcing to a Global Workforce” (Cambridge University Press). “I was quite impressed to learn about the interesting offerings from Belarus, and I hope that follow-up events will be organized,” he added.

On the attendeesґ side, Linus Wiggers, Directror of Proxlin Automatisering, highly appreciated the initiative and expressed that it was a good initiative with a good content level and a nice network environment. “Using outsourcing event organized by IntoPeople and ScienceSoft is in whole one of the best organized IT events of this entire year,” said Amir Sabirovic, Project Director at POS Development.

Competent speakers focused on trends, risks and opportunities in outsourcing arrangements and on how to leverage their value for business.

Paul Tjia, renowned Dutch IT consultant and founder of GPI Consultancy, spoke on the latest trends in offshore sourcing with a special emphasis on nearshore vs. farshore juxtaposition.

Frans Slьper, owner of AAAHAA Results BV, shared his experience as a manager of large outsourcing teams at IBM.

Dr. Otto Kopius, Assistant Professor at Rotterdam School of Management, provided his insights into knowledge sharing and outsourcing projects gained from an extensive academic research.

Dr. Ulad Radkevitch, VP Marketing, sales and business development at ScienceSoft Inc., elaborated on not-so-obvious ways to extract more value from outsourcing relationships through combining partnersґ competences and resources.

The conference part of the event was followed by a two-hour networking round where attendees and speakers exchanged knowledge and best practices in an informal friendly environment. Sharing his impressions of the participation in the event, Peter van der Kolk, Owner and Managing Director at Helioment B.V., said, “A success! Learn all day long with interesting people. Excellent!”

IntoPeople and ScienceSoft, the organizers of the conference “Using outsourcing to strengthen your business: do’s and don’ts” appreciate the feedback of the attendees and consider organizing such networking and knowledge-sharing events on a regular basis, perhaps in a new format.