Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis

As we reach the end of 2023, we have once again compiled all of the links to our Contract Corner blog posts, a regular feature of Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis. In these posts, members of our global technology, outsourcing, and commercial transactions practice highlight particular contract provisions, review the issues, and propose negotiating and drafting tips.

Deloitte has issued a biennial report that identifies trends that are impacting customer/client contact center operations. The respondents surveyed by Deloitte represented both internal- and external-facing contact centers. This blog post summarizes some key trends outlined in the report.

In a recent LawFlash, George Cyriac, Wai Ming Yap, and Dr. Axel Spies reviewed key features of India’s new privacy law—the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act). They also discussed what to expect regarding and how to prepare for these new requirements, including that India’s central government may enact separate rules to give effect to certain provisions of the DPDP Act.

While the regulatory landscape around artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, navigating contractual arrangements and apportioning risk for the use of AI may seem like stepping into the unknown. In this blog post, we consider how a few familiar concepts within commercial contracts may be applied to the provision and use of AI tools as part of services.

Please join us on May 10, 2023 at 12:00 pm ET to learn about key points to consider when terminating cloud service arrangements. Morgan Lewis partner Chris Archer, of counsel Emily Lowe, and associate Jonathan Traub will discuss the importance of drafting termination clauses and addressing the transition to new vendors with a view toward efficiently protecting an organization’s business interests.

A recently released Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Market report indicates significant continued growth in the BPO sector over the next decade. The results of the study on which the report is based show an expected growth from the 2022 market of $245.9 billion to $544.8 billion in 2032, an 8.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

The UK communications regulator and concurrent competition authority, Ofcom, announced on April 5 its proposal to refer the UK cloud services market to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for further investigation. This coincided with publication of the interim report of Ofcom’s market study of the largest providers of cloud services (referred to by the authority as “hyperscalers”) in the United Kingdom’s £15 billion ($18.7 billion) cloud services market.

As noted in our recent blog posts, The Rise of Next-Gen Business Process Outsourcing and Key Contracting Issues to Consider, the core premise of next-gen business process outsourcing (BPO) includes (1) the leveraging of automation, bots, performance tools, and other technology to transform and optimize workflows and business processes and (2) the implementation of solutions to collect and analyze data to improve user experiences and business outcomes. Next-gen BPO drives the development and implementation of transformative technology and the generation of critical business data. As such, the identification of key intellectual property (IP) and the allocation of IP use and ownership rights invariably becomes a gating issue in contract structuring and negotiations.

Our recent blog post, The Rise of Next-Gen Business Process Outsourcing, highlighted the importance of understanding the exciting opportunities and the challenges of next-gen business process outsourcing (BPO) in order to effectively negotiate contract provisions that maximize the benefits of next-gen BPO and minimize the risks. In this blog, we take a look at a few key issues to consider when developing and negotiating a next-gen BPO contract.

Join us at our Philadelphia office for an interactive discussion on hot topics related to next-generation transactions and outsourcing, followed by a reception with refreshments and opportunities to network with peers.