Two outsourcing news items grabbed my attention for today’s Pulse list — one deserving of a thumb’s up, and one a thumbs-down rating.
Thumbs Up
Congratulations to Motif, a global BPO service provider now celebrating its tenth anniversary as an outsourcing firm coinciding with the inauguration of its new delivery center in Costa Rica (adding to its global footprint in the USA, the Philippines, India, Singapore, and Australia).
Thumbs Down
An Ecademy blog focuses on what it calls the “Seven Deadly Sins of Outsourcing.” This blogger makes the Outsourcing Pulse List for using a title focused on sensationalism – something not helpful to outsourcing, which has so much negative publicity as it is.
Death, or a “deadly sin” is something unsurvivable. But the seven factors described by this blogger are simply “pitfalls.” Outsourcing can achieve highly valuable outcomes but, like other business models, it carries risks. The risks, or pitfalls, are known (and include more than these seven so-called deadly factors), and there are thousands of sources of information about how to mitigate those risks and even turn them into value-creation factors.
Outsourcing is also a model that is based on a long-term relationship; and business needs, strategies, and opportunities inevitably will change over the length of a relationship. Again, there are well-publicized sources of advice all over the Internet and in industry publications and conferences about handling this and all other pitfalls in outsourcing. None of the pitfalls are truly deadly. Any risk is survivable and can even be turned to a competitive advantage with up-front awareness and knowledgeable planning.
Since 1998, freelance writer Kathleen Goolsby has studied outsourcing relationships’ successes, failures, trends, and best practices. She has interviewed more than 860 executives at buyer and service provider companies and is the author of “Critical Requirements for Building and Sustaining a Successful Outsourcing Relationship,” a chapter in Global Outsourcing Strategies: An International Reference on Effective Outsourcing Relationships (December 2006, Gower Publishing). As a freelancer, she also currently serves as the Senior Writer for Outsourcing Center (whose parent company is sourcing advisory firm, Alsbridge) and has authored dozens of articles as well as white papers. In a past role, she was editor of Outsourcing Venture (a former print publication). You can contact Kathleen at ksgoolsby@gmail.com.
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Thank you for another essential article. Where else could anyone get that kind of information in such a complete way of writing?Kind regards from Belgium.