In the earlier days of outsourcing much importance was given
to cost savings and meeting SLAs. Now a vendor meeting these criteria would have
a par game at best.
In today’s maturing global sourcing environments the clients
and suppliers are taking the game to the next level. The clients need to
continually explore ways to deliver cost savings, enable innovations and create
business value. They are developing long term relationship with their strategic
suppliers to achieve this intent.
It is important that you select a supplier who has a good game,
but it’s even more vital that the supplier works on improving it. They should have
skills to stay on the green but when required navigate the hazards well also.
Once you have the right player onboard you should have means
to monitor and manage the performance. Increasingly, mature clients measure
their suppliers on the overall outsourcing engagement objectives. These cover both
hard and soft metrics and key performance indicators:
- Financial Management: Plan vs. Spend, Blend
rates, On/offshore ratio
- Resources and skills: Attrition, Experience
level, Capacity Planning and Leakage
- Service Management: Uptime, SLA performance
- Solution Management: Percentage on time, Percentage
under budget
- Value adds: Innovation, Center of excellence
utilized
In a relationship management driven approach, clients are also
measured on how their internal processes contribute towards making the supplier's delivery more effective.
The outsourcing engagements should focus on creating a
win-win relationship. Take the relationship as it is and invest time and energy
to make it better and get the score below par.
“Play the ball as it lies, play the course as you find it, and
if you cannot do either, do what is fair”.