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Casual Articles - Managing Outsourcing Relationships
JV Mailings – For certain product or service offerings, direct mail can be prohibitively expensive. That’s why card decks and Value-Paks are so popular. But aside from those types of mailings, you can always partner with a non-competitor (or two or three) that offer a complementary or similar product/service with the same target market as yours. By splitting the cost of the mailing, you still get your message out, but at a much-reduced cost.JV Inserts/Flyers/Circulars – Similar to JV mailings, you could arrange to have your flyer, insert, or circular inserted into another publication already being mailed. This “hitching a ride” approach works best when your audience is targeted, although newspaper inserts are popular with local bricks and mortar businesses. The JV part comes into play when you pay so much per lead or a percentage of all sales resulting from the arrangement. Depending on your price structure, you can pay a percentage of the first sale only, or a tiered approach where a smaller percentage is paid for all first year purchases, a percentage of the back-end purchase, etc. You need to determine what types of deals bring in the biggest profits for you, while still providing a valuable incentive for your JV partners. And that really goes for any type of deal.JV a Mini-Seminar or Teleseminar – Using the lawyer/accountant example again, the two could get together and hold a seminar for new business owners, offering a package deal for both of their services.Sell Your JV – When you have an income stream from a JV deal you have worked out, you can always sell the rights to that deal to someone else. Just like a money-maki
“Outsourcing in India has reached a near term peak and meaningful expansion from this point forward will result in higher costs and lower quality delivery.” Business Leaders in Asia have been saying this to each other for months now. Today, we are seeing deliberate action to move capacity from India to next step destinations like Philippines, China and Vietnam.Even major business publications have picked up on the evolving situation. Both Forbes (India: Good Help is Hard to Find) and BusinessWeek (India’s IT Challenge) recently published feature articles that directly address the growing problems in India and the viability of the next step destination countries.Looking at current events in Philippines, we can get a better idea what is going on. Sykes, a large US-based contact center and IT support organization, has operations in both India and Philippines. The company said it would shift much of its Indian capacity to Philippines where it already has 7000 employees. "We moved calls to other facilities in Asia to get a higher rate of return," was the official statement from Dan Hernandez, Sykes's vice-president for global strategies. But knowledgeable observers in the region say that the rate of return differential must be large for a company of Sykes’ size and prominence to forgo India after already putting capacity in place.Ambergris Solutions is another large contact center organization with operations in Philippines. The company just received a $43.5M investment through Telus International, a Canadian-based global IT Solutions provider. Jim Evans, who played the key local role in coordinating the deal, says his com
Increased market competition, more demanding customers, tighter margins and shorter product life cycles have caused businesses to examine where they may be able to focus better on core competencies, reduce risk and costs, and become more agile and competitive. For many companies and small businesses across all industry segments, outsourcing IT is the only answer.
Outsourcing lowers operating costs, eliminates backlogs, improving data input quality, production and document availability. And, in the end, outsourcing adds profits to the bottom-line.
But outsourcing is far from a panacea. How an outsourcing relationship is managed - internally and externally - is as important to its ultimate success as the execution of the outsourced tasks themselves. Given that industry analyst Gartner recently reported that outsourcing can trigger an employee backlash, what do organizations need to know to make outsourcing a win-win for all concerned? How can a company best manage the firm that it has just retained? What project managemen
The first step in planning an agenda is to identify the goals for the meeting. Properly done, goals have five S M A R T characteristics. They are:Specific. The goal must tell exactly what will be accomplished. For example: During the next hour we will find at least three ways to reduce defects on Unit #4 by 10%. This states exactly what the group will work on. Vague goals can cause you to lose control of the meeting.Measurable. A measurable criteria helps you determine if the goal has been completed. This can be stated as a number (5 ideas, 10% gain, one decision) or as an achievement (Did we write a strategy or not?).Achievable. Goals must be realistic for the resources and time available. For example, most groups could identify twenty ways to reduce the budget in a fifteen minute meeting. On the other hand, it is unlikely that a group could develop a marketing plan in 30 minutes.Relevant. To be meaningful, a goal has to relate to the overall mission of your business. Otherwise, you may be wasting time. Challenge each goal with the question, “What happens without it?” If your answer is “nothing,” cancel the meeting.Time. Specifying a deadline (e.g., by noon) or a rate (e.g., 3 per hour) moves activity toward completing the task and provides a criteria to measure progress. Of course, you want to select realistic times.As a final check, make sure your goals are so clear that someone else could use them to run your meeting.
Increased market competition, more demanding customers, tighter margins and shorter product life cycles have caused businesses to examine where they may be able to focus better on core competencies, reduce risk and costs, and become more agile and competitive. For many companies and small businesses across all industry segments, outsourcing IT is the only answer.
Outsourcing lowers operating costs, eliminates backlogs, improving data input quality, production and document availability. And, in the end, outsourcing adds profits to the bottom-line.
But outsourcing is far from a panacea. How an outsourcing relationship is managed - internally and externally - is as important to its ultimate success as the execution of the outsourced tasks themselves. Given that industry analyst Gartner recently reported that outsourcing can trigger an employee backlash, what do organizations need to know to make outsourcing a win-win for all concerned? How can a company best manage the firm that it has just retained? What project manageme
One of the things I am often asked is how do I manage to talk to so many different people at an event and get into almost any conversation that is going on. The key to this is simply eavesdropping. I stand outside the circle and listen to the topic of discussion. If I know nothing, I simply move away and eavesdrop on the next group. When the topic comes around to something that interests me or I know some of the answers, I smile and slip in an important comment. The circle always opens up and I find myself included. I then introduce myself and then we continue the conversation. The key to getting into the conversation is to only go where you have something of importance to say. If they are discussing a recent movie that you saw, then by all means throw out a question to the group and wait for an answer. Most networking events are open for many discussions. Food is always a good topic. If you are having trouble getting into one of the groups, go by the snack table, pick up a plate of goodies, and pass the plate to one of the members to pass around. Bingo, you are now part of that group. You can use other tricks to get into conversations but I find the ones I have described the easiest. Do not be a pushy pest, be polite and make your introduction on a professional level. Once you have been introduced, you can start asking others about what they do. This is your opportunity to mine for information that you can use at a later date.
Outsourcing lowers operating costs, eliminates backlogs, improving data input quality, production and document availability. And, in the end, outsourcing adds profits to the bottom-line.
But outsourcing is far from a panacea. How an outsourcing relationship is managed - internally and externally - is as important to its ultimate success as the execution of the outsourced tasks themselves. Given that industry analyst Gartner recently reported that outsourcing can trigger an employee backlash, what do organizations need to know to make outsourcing a win-win for all concerned? How can a company best manage the firm that it has just retained? What project manageme
In today’s era of Professional and IT Services competition and consolidation, some small to medium-sized companies are proudly delivering 20%-50% annual growth.Unfortunately, the vast majority of firms have experienced two consecutive years of fee erosion, commoditization, client defection, and company identity crises. We set out to discover where the growth opportunities exist in today’s economy, and to share our findings.The StudyOur ten-month study uncovered the major gaps between the top performing and bottom performing companies. Our interviews with 53 CEOs across North America were designed to help leaders in this industry achieve three goals:1. Identify the most common barriers to company expansion;2. Learn what investments will positively affect their 2004-2005 growth;3. Compare their operating model and areas of focus against their peers.We spoke with companies across six major sectors of the IT and Services market, including hardware and software support, business and process consultants, IT outsourcing firms, integrators, and BPO’s (business process outsourcing). BPOs had, by far, the most rapid growth rates of any other sector.More than three-fourths of our interviews focused on understanding the dynamics within the small to medium sized organizations (50-500 employees).We compared and integrated our findings with IT research firms and trade groups. These included ITSMA, AFSMI, Gartner Group, Culpepper and Associates, and the New Client Marketing Institute.The Top Frustrations—and HypeWhen we spoke with CEO’s, three common frustrations surfaced:· “
But outsourcing is far from a panacea. How an outsourcing relationship is managed - internally and externally - is as important to its ultimate success as the execution of the outsourced tasks themselves. Given that industry analyst Gartner recently reported that outsourcing can trigger an employee backlash, what do organizations need to know to make outsourcing a win-win for all concerned? How can a company best manage the firm that it has just retained? What project manageme
Change. The very word can sometimes produce fear in many people. Why? Because lurking behind the word change is oftentimes the word unknown, and for most people it’s the fear of the unknown which makes them afraid of change.When it comes to making career changes, the fear of the unknown is what keeps people paralyzed, which also keeps them stuck in unfulfilling jobs, hating to go to work every day. At least it’s known, right? And, for most people, a crappy known beats an unknown any day, even if that unknown will eventually make someone happier.If you’re reading this and you recognize yourself, it’s time to take the bull by the horns and start making some changes. And, yes, that means facing the unknown.When deciding to change career directions, you can help minimize the unknown by doing some of the following:1. Realize how many times in the past you’ve faced the unknown successfully.Well, that sounds simple, doesn’t it? And, it is. Just take out a piece of paper and write down the many times in the past you’ve made changes successfully. What you’ll soon see is that many of those times you didn’t really know what to expect, but you went ahead and made changes anyway, often times achieving results far better than you’d expected. This helps drum it in to your subconscious that you have faced the unknown in the past and you can do it again.2. Visualize a successful change.Again, the point here is to get you used to the change, turning it from an unknown to a known. You can achieve this by sitting in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed; close your eyes, take several de
Outsourcing on Paper: Cost-Effective, Valuable, Efficient
Outsourcing IT isn't only (or even primarily) about costs. In terms of hard dollars, outsourcing isn't always a decisive win over the in-house approach, although it usually is. The real advantages can be seen in the "soft gains" that accrue -- the opportunity costs of not having to reinvent the wheel, and the efficiencies that arise when enlisting a company that specializes in doing the heavy lifting of IT.
Quality is an issue as well. In the hosting market, for instance, a company could hire five system administrators to run their network in-house, and find the collective wisdom limited to the specific experiences of that small team. When a third party assumes control of servers and infrastructure, that firm brings real world experience, gleaned from facing an array of problems across a diverse customer base. Dynamic learning occurs more rapidly because the outsourcing firm is simply in a better position to benefit from --
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