Outsourcing and Process Management

The philosopher PlatoImage via Wikipedia

My next door neighbour works for a military contractor. They are looking at taking over a division of another company on an outsourced basis and I asked him if he had done the process work behind this. He looked at me a little quizzically. "What do you mean?" he asked. I shook my head a little ruefully and asked him "Presumably you will be putting together contracts that define service levels around the outsourced division? Presumably these contracts will have financial penalties if you can't meet any given contractual clause? Presumably you have therefore, asked for (or created) a detailed process map for exactly what it is this division does and exactly how this division does it. This will then give you enough information to be able to negotiate better penalty clauses and payments based on actual data rather than something the outsourcing division is arbitrarily asking for?"

I think I hit a nerve there as my neighbour retreated quickly into his house with a nasty facial tick starting just above his left eye.

It never ceases to amaze me how companies - respected companies at that - can hope to enter into outsourcing agreements without knowing (from either side) what exactly they are outsourcing.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

I worked a couple of years ago with a pharma company that was outsourcing part of their clinical trial work to a third party clinical trial organisation. The first thing we did prior to bringing anyone in was to create a current state process map of the whole of the process to be outsourced. This allowed us - in negotiation with potential outsourcing companies - to delineate exactly which part of the process would fall under the jurisdiction of our company and which would be their responsibility. It also defined what the interactions would be between the two companies (the hand-offs and 'white space' which cause so much problem). Ultimately when we got into negotiations about the terms of the outsourcing we were in a much better position to be able to state our case for what was needed. It also meant that the outsourcing company was clear on expectations and responsibility.

With the current economic climate there are numerous companies that may be considering putting up some or all of their internal work for outsourcing. It is essential that you know and understand exactly where the demarcation lines are on this outsourced work.

Here are a few tips:

1) Before you go to any external company create an 'as-is' view of your current process. (I'll be talking about 'as-is' and 'to-be' processes in a later post). If the outsource company wants to change this process when they are managing it then they can do so. But only within the context of the following point.

2) Identify from your as-is process exactly which steps you are willing to outsource. (The whole philosophy of what to outsource is outside the mandate of this post but suffice it to say that you should not outsource your key business process - whatever that may be). Changes to the process by the outsourcing company must still fall within the steps you have defined above.

3) Concentrate on the linkages between your in-house and outsourced processes. What are the hand-offs? Who has responsibility? What is the regularity of data transfer? Again, if the outsourcing company has changed the process internally then they should still provide the appropriate linkages, to your satisfaction of course, back to your process.

4) Identify and define the expectations around those linkages. This is your means of controlling the outsourced process. The whole outsourcing contract will revolve around the ability of the company to provide what you need via the linkages you have defined. If they cannot provide what you need through these linkages then they are not the right outsourcing company for your needs.

5) If internal quality of process is key, define metrics to manage this. In other words if you are only bothered about what comes out of the process at the hand-off's, then only measure the hand-offs. If you are concerned with how the outsourced process is working then put measures in place to track this: For an outsourced clinical trial you would want, for example, to track patient enrollment rates, patient drop-out rates and adverse event information. But for outsourced printing you might only want to track quality of received product and turn-around times.

Outsourcing is probably one of the better ways of reducing your bottom line in the curent economic times, but it will only do so if you are aware of exactly what you are outsourcing and why. Address a couple of the points raised in this post (and get the right people in to help you define your process) and you are well on the way to doing this.


Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project' is still available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you.

Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.



For more about me check out my "About Me' page

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford

The "As-is" vs 'the "To-Be"

Image via wikipedia
I am a big proponent of 'As-is' modeling. Unfortunately I appear to be in something of a minority.

When I work with clients I am constantly reminding them to document what they are currently doing before they move onto their future state. Quite often the reply I get is "If we're going to move to our future state we shouldn't waste time documenting the old way of doing things" I can certainly see the logic in this statement. However it does ignore one of the fundamental issues which cause problems on projects and that is "Change". Let me explain:

In 'Alice In Wonderland' Lewis Carrol wrote 'If you don't know were you are going any road will get you there'. I think this is the polite thinking behind a lot of process project leaders. They don't know where they are going and therefore they try to manufacture a way of getting to this destination not even knowing where they are going from.

In real life if you are using a satnav to navigate to a destination it always has to know where you are starting from in order to determine the best way to the destination. Granted, it can produce a number of different routes to get there, but they are all predicated on the fact that you know where you are starting from. No navigation system in the world can work effectively without knowing a starting and ending location.

Let's go back to our early map reading days before the satellite navigation systems became ubiquitous. We used to start with a road map, or an Ordnance Survey map, and plot our route to our destination But we always started on the page which showed us where we were at the beginning of the journey. There was no other way of doing this. It happens in the world of aviation, marine navigation, and orienteering. There is no way of navigating to an unknown destination without knowing where you are starting from.

So why do projects try and do this when implementing processes?

Not creating an as-is situation is tantamount to starting your journey to a new destination without knowing where you are now. It is like opening your road atlas at the destination age and hoping to navigate their without checking the page that has your origin location. It just won't happen.

However there is a flip side to this argument. There is an old joke which goes something like this "A guy was lost in the countryside and he stopped to ask one of the locals. He said 'How do I get to the castle'. The local shook his head and said 'If I was going to the castle I wouldn't start from here'" In other words 'This is the wrong starting point to get to where you need to be'. In the process world there are also 'bad' or 'wrong' starting points. Heavily outdated manual processes that no longer reflect current working practices and which are due to be replaced by automated systems, are an example of this.

But even so, documenting what actually happens (as opposed to what should happen) is usually a good place to start

Can anyone think of a reason why an 'as-is' process would not be documented?


Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project' is still available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you.

Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.



For more about me check out my "About Me' page

All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford