Outsourcing White Papers


We wrote a series of papers published in March 2009 on www.outsourcingandoffshoring.com, in conjunction with the outsourcing supplement distributed with The Economist'. 

A successful offshoring in today's environment
The offshoring market has matured over the last decade. Whilst the promise of better services at lower cost continue to be fundamental drivers, add to this the downturn in the current economic climate. Recessions force businesses, the purchasers of offshored services, to look to more innovative ways to increase productivity, improve business efficiencies and to achieve all important cost reductions. A successful offshoring can tick all of these boxes. 

Outsourcing Health Check
This paper considers how, with all the pressures and challenges of the current economic climate, organisations can identify and avoid the usual outsourcing pitfalls by capitalising on the wealth of learning for successful outsourcing, maintaining a view of all the critical dimensions throughout the outsourcing lifecycle and regularly reviewing the overall health of the arrangement.

Governance
"One of the most significant changes in the outsourcing landscape during the last two decades has been increased emphasis on good governance. As the focus has shifted from lowest cost to best business advantage, outsourcing has evolved into a partnership whose success depends on far more than rigid measurement of service levels." The Economist (Outsourcing Supplement)

Flexible Outsourcing
Change is ever-present in modern business, yet many outsourcing contracts fail to recognise this reality and lock outsourcing customers into multi-year commitments that do not recognise the need for flexibility. All contracts make trade-offs between cost, enforceability and flexibility, yet often this trade-off is implicit. Without explicit consideration of this compromise, flexibility is often sacrificed to lowest-cost, enforceable contracts.