{"id":5022,"date":"2022-04-09T13:29:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-09T13:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.horsesforsources.com\/outsourcing-oxygen_032822\/"},"modified":"2022-04-26T17:16:26","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T17:16:26","slug":"outsourcing-oxygen_032822","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/outsourcing-oxygen_032822\/","title":{"rendered":"Outsourcing today is about providing your firm oxygen to stay alive, not cost savings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In today’s highly complex, uncertain, and difficult business environment, outsourcing might just save your business. The whole focus on pricing and scoping outsourcing engagements is being completely rethought, as are the strategies of the leading service providers to support them. The IT and BPO services industry is reaching its most defining moment since Jack Welch doubled down on India in the 1990s…<\/em><\/p>\n The old 1-many outsourcing model only half works in today’s virtual environment.<\/strong> In pre-pandemic days, outsourcing deals were rapidly moving away from the old “take the people” model, where the outsourcer rebadged a bunch of their clients’ staff, usually housed in service centers, and re-employed them as their own. Adding staff to deliver fairly low-value work was treated with revulsion by Wall St – the Holy Grail was to take on new deals that required minimal<\/em> labor additions to the outsourcing service provider, thus maximizing the immediate profitability of the deal. <\/p>\n Automation became the antidote to this revulsion by enabling service providers to reduce labor dependency over the course of multi-year deals – however, this only works when the service provider takes ownership<\/em> of the automation and has hard targets to hit to sustain delivery standards at lower costs. Moreover, it’s proving more and more that automation rarely replaces<\/em> people, it merely augments efficiencies and smooths workflows in a virtual environment.<\/p>\n Forget “mess-for-less”… we’re now doing “mess-for-more”.<\/strong> The 1-many model worked in the past when there was a fierce determination from the client end to make a rapid transition to the existing service provider model, and a workable transition plan was set out in advance, to which both sides could commit. However, this invariably needed a LOT of in-person sessions – at junior, mid and senior staff levels – to make possible. Attempting to perform a fast-track transition from a messy enterprise set of processes to a standardized delivery model hosted by the service provider in today’s largely remote environment is practically impossible<\/em>. Talk to anyone attempting this and they will show you the lumps on their head and smashed laptop screens…. So forget about challenging remote-centric transitions and just move the whole lot across – people, processes, and technology (under the guise of an “asset transfer”) – and then figure it all out. The only difference being many enterprises will be (or already are) willing to pay a premium to get to a deal. And besides, it’s cool to have people again!<\/p>\n