Skip to main content

Not Quite Ready

Read this excellent summary of signs that an organization is not ready for outsourcing. Almost every consulting engagement that I have been a part of, has suffered from a multitude of the malaises listed. But that did not dampen their zeal for outsourcing whatever was in sight - from back-office operations to core business processes and critical applications. While the results were far from pretty, never was it attributed to the organization's lack of preparedness.

Vendor SLAs are scrutinized, operational metrics are sought where none exist and blame is divvied up as convenient. Major unforeseen costs and inconveniences are attributed to the newness factor. It is generally believed once that wore off and everyone in the equation reached stable equilibrium all will be well.

Interestingly enough the clamor of the initial days subsides to a low din and just stays that way for the length of the outsourcing relationship. It is deemed an acceptable level of chaos because eliminating it is too expensive and therefore impractical. That it may be a significant contributor to lost business opportunity and impact customer retention does not appear to bother management unduly. You are exhorted to work around the challenges and seek out "opportunities" for improvement which is management-speak for a five-slide deck.

While I have often borne the brunt of trying to baseline metrics and monitor vendor performance and the like (a largely thankless and pointless exercise in gathering numbers just to have some digits on the ready to throw around as needed - not intended for driving meaningful change), I have yet to participate in a "
true cost" of outsourcing assessment specially over a 5-6 year window. Maybe it is for a good reason that some histories are best left buried.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Operation metrics are really helful.If you are interested in balanced scorecard, KPI and metrics in business, check this web-site to learn more about Metrics and development metrics.

http://www.business-development-metrics.com "

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques