Many companies consider outsourcing
as part of their strategy to become more adaptable to the changing business environment.
They seek a combination of strategic advantages such as:
- Best Practice - if a function of the business does not form
part of its core skills, then outsourcing to a specialist company can provide the best
practice needed to remain competitive
- Corporate Planning - with outsourced support services,
separating or disposal of parts of the enterprise becomes simpler with fewer splits of the
infrastructure required
- Management Focus - with a slimmer infrastructure management
can concentrate on core activities and devote more effort to sustaining competitive
advantage
- Growth and Diversification - outsource service companies with
deeper specialist resources, can quickly assimilate new initiatives, thus speeding up
growth strategies such market entry or new product release
However too often the main consideration for outsourcing is
cost cutting rather than sustainable strategic advantage. This can lead to being locked
into an inflexible service, or finding that costs rise dramatically when changes are
required.
For a successful outsourcing strategy, businesses must:
- clearly state the objectives that relate to an integrated
corporate strategy
- construct tenders for a service that demonstrably meet these
objectives
- conduct due diligence studies into shortlisted suppliers to
prove their ability to deliver the service required and not rely on legal recourse if the
selected supplier fails to perform - by that time irrevocable damage to the business could
have been done
How can CCM help:
We can provide independent advice on the development of
outsourcing strategies to achieve corporate objectives. We can further support the
creation of tender documents reflecting those strategies
We will assist in the due diligence process by:
- assessing customer satisfaction
- auditing quality/performance reporting systems
- reviewing the operations of the to assess the ability of the
companies to provide the services offered to the SLA's agreed
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