Studies on Communication Problems and Best Practices in Outsourcing

Author: Tommie Pope

Effective communication plays a major role in the world of outsourcing where folk with different nationalities, culture, and interests work in partnership to achieve their business goals. Even though it is now simple and convenient to talk to folk overseas, thanks to sophisticated technology, issues are still being encountered because communication best practices are usually neglected. This eventually obstructs BPO players to create and maintain long term outsourcing relationships.

In the first of four-part Best Practices Series 2009 released by Outsourcing Center titled'Four Communication Best Practices frequently neglected in Outsourcing Relationships', fifty six buyers who took part in the study noted that communication issues arise from :
2. Agreeing ( or not ) on the significance of'noise' or customer's's feedback/complaints
Service supplier's failure to hear the buyer

The secret to having a successful outsourcing relationship is to reach a shared understanding of one another's goals. To reach this, service suppliers and buyers must adhere to the four communication best practices that are frequently overlooked in outsourcing :

1. Service suppliers must take the'noise' into account. They pay so much attention on meeting the requirements that they fail to look into what customers consider the deliverables, so it is the buyer who ends up dealing with customers' beefs. Suppliers have to understand that'noise' is important in building an outsourcing relationship.

two. Create a communication plan for the period after the transition phase. The relationship generally runs smoothly at the start of the project when both parties understand one another's goals.
Outsourcing contract should be'crystal clear'. To avoid conflicts, there has to be no room for vagueness or enigma when it comes to the outsourcing contract.

Mutual trust must be established. Buyer and service supplier need to demonstrate that they truly listen and understand one another. For service suppliers, concentrate on the purchaser's issues and make efforts to resolve them. The same goes to buyers. Communication entails 2 or more parties, and having mutual trust is important to conquer the problem.

this study is a clear indication that communication is more than just talking to the service buyer or supplier. It is about understanding each other's issues and concerns and coming up with solutions which will work for both parties. Culture and interests may vary, but shared understanding of objectives must be established in order to develop an outsourcing relationship that's both enduring and profitable to service buyer and provider. The main thing is for buyers and service suppliers to keep the best practices in communication in mind to avoid issues.

About the Author:

Microsourcing is one of the leading Outsourcing Companies in the Philippines.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Studies on Communication Problems and Best Practices in Outsourcing

How to early determine if your service provider is in trouble

Author: Kelly Boyer

Twenty five percent of existing BPO service providers will stop to operate in 2012. This is reliant on a recently published Gartner research which is part of the Special Report entitled'Assess and Manage seller risks to guard Your Business'. This is attributed to the current depression, lapses in outsourcing contracts, and not being able to acclimatize to standardised delivery models.

With these elements in mind , Gartner observed that BPO buyers must take caution before venturing into any new outsourcing contract, and should be privy to the six alert signs meaning that a service provider is not stable enough to maintain a long-term outsourcing relationship :

one. Unprofitable outsourcing deals - According to the study,'Some BPO suppliers are carrying unprofitable contract portfolios, largely springing from too-much, too-soon pursuit of deals, without a lot of thought as to the way to transition them to a standardized, rationalized, worthwhile state of ongoing operations.'

2. Incapacity to get new projects - it's a good sign if the service provider has the power to continually take on various necessities of different clients.
3. 4. Incapability to bid on new BPO deals because of lack of enough funds - Some service providers cannot take on new BPO contracts because of shortage of enough capital. Likewise, the so-called'lift and shift' methodology in which a business process is moved offshore to reduce costs because of lower wages will at last create issues for service suppliers that depend on it because they continue to need capital for the resources needed to do that outsourced task.

Exposure to banking / financial industry - With the present finance crisis, those service providers with cash coming from the finance or banking sector will be in a tight spot. If the outsourcing partner has more than 85 % of money from the banking sector, the buyer should know if this will have an impact on their business operations. Increasing levels of contract cancellation and insourcing - Gartner says that before signing an outsourcing contract, buyers must come up with a plan on what to do when contract ends.


During these troublesome times when outsourcing has become an avenue for corporations primarily to chop costs, it is crucial to pay very close attention to your outsourcing partner. Know the warning signs and be constantly conscious of what has happened in the BPO industry. Have a clear picture of what you need to achieve before signing any outsourcing contract.

About the Author:

Microsourcing is one of the leading Outsourcing Companies in the Philippines.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - How to early determine if your service provider is in trouble

IT Outsourcing: Putting your Best Foot Forward

Author: Ripple Effect

There has never been a time where a foot forward in business has been more vital. Efficiency is most certainly the key to maintaining a successful business, and through the use of IT solutions, project portfolio management, a key component in business, can be made easy.

For the data center manager dealing with budget cuts, IT process improvement projects can get derailed for being too expensive or of lesser importance. Additionally as a result of a down economy, IT budgets are being slashed, with the predictability that heads have been cut and non-critical projects have been put on hold or cancelled. In this environment, some management teams have elected to cut funding for process improvement initiatives, including IT project and portfolio management services efforts, which can place them at a disadvantage both during the downturn and especially during the recovery.

What management needs to understand is that having effective and efficient processes aids IT during a downturn and readies organizations for when the economy improves. Efficient and effective processes are needed not just to control costs and risks, but also for IT to consistently deliver services that meet the needs of the business now and in the future.

The fundamental doctrine of PPM such as visibility and centralization of data will continue to drive value, but there is a new trend is emerging as PPM transitions from powerful concept to real-world practice.

PPM applications have fundamentally altered the project landscape. By integrating project information in one place, PPM changes how organizations approve, plan and deliver projects. From a bottom line perspective, PPM enables organizations to improve their return on project investments.

Project Consulting Group (PCG) has investigated to find that SaaS continues to move from interesting to viable to a competitive threat. PPM solutions are ideally suited to run as SaaS applications. There are several reasons why SaaS is so well suited for PPM: rapid deployment; team collaboration; reduced risk of failure; tighter vendor/customer relationships; reduced cost of implementation and support. But perhaps the biggest reason is the rapid innovation cycle. It's at least twice as fast to deliver innovations to customers in a SaaS model, and as a result PPM using a SaaS model is evolving rapidly.

PCG found that PPM as a SaaS solution has allowed for a new trend to emerge where there can be no risk involved for the user. It embraces new methodology that results in PPM with no risk and is allowing organizations large and small to resume their IT projects that have been put on hold or eliminated entirely due to budget constraints and simply just not having enough sustainable funding.

The deployment of PPM as a SaaS application can be one alternative to leverage an organization’s resource constrains because Saas solutions have little to no technical implementation (servers, data bases, etc) and get up and running in next to no time. With a PPM Saas application, the provisioning of new hardware and software is incremental and highly efficient, and means that there will be less overhead to support a customer. Perhaps even more importantly, the human resources required to implement and run any PPM Saas application would already in place, trained and could be leveraged. What this translates to is that once you decide to implement, the entire technical aspect of the implementation should take just a few minutes. Additionally with a “PPM with no Risk” model, the responsibility of funding the IT project falls on the service provider.

A key factor in the success of any comprehensive IT project is making sure the project teams work well together. There are many different levels of team collaboration. There are big teams that are broken up into smaller teams; then there are teams that cross boundaries within organizations; and lastly there are teams that cross boundaries across organizations. And it is a well established fact that communication is one of the core factors of project success or failure. SaaS applications are designed from scratch to operate securely over the web, which means that teams within and across different organizational boundaries can easily access the PPM applications and information from anywhere at any time.

SaaS implementations involve virtually no technical component to the implementation, minimizing any risks. However the technical aspect of any software implementation is only part of the risk. Two other big risk areas are in business process change and end user adoption. SaaS applications are designed to be highly configurable, which makes them more adaptive to the needs of unique business processes. In other words, users don't have to write code to automate business processes. Finally, the SaaS business model depends on end user adoption for financial success. That translates into a laser focus on the user experience, which in turn leads to greater adoption.

PCG understands that while the economy has limited many companies’ financial ability to invest in IT; most are still charged with cutting costs and doing more with less.

PPM is becoming an increasingly obvious choice for organizations faced with shrinking budgets and customers that demand more for their investments. PPM enables the process of aligning project portfolios with strategic objectives, so that companies will be able to react more easily to rapidly changing competitive environments. At the same time, IT can be seen as an agent for positive change and not simply a cost center.

PCG is seeing a lot of companies today adopting a very innovative model to streamline IT processes called Project Delivery On-Demand. The model is designed to deliver a range of PPM implementation options which dramatically reduce investment risk and overcome budget constraints associated with getting started and achieving the highest quality, quantitative PPM decision making capability.

Project Delivery On-Demand is considered a comprehensive outsourcing service model that provides a proven framework for assimilating people, process, technology and culture resulting in cost reductions and an improved capability to execute on strategic growth objectives.

The need to achieve a cost savings has historically been a key factor in outsourcing any peripheral service or capability. In addition, outsourcing enables an organization to focus its limited resources on its primary activities. Traditional "on premise" PPM applications are expensive and they consume valuable resources. Upfront license fees can be substantial, and the costs of implementation, support and upgrades can be daunting. Implementing Project Delivery On-Demand and offering the PPM as a SaaS application is not only less expensive; it allows organizations to focus their limited resources on more pressing objectives.

PPM has emerged in recent years as a next generation practice that builds on the disciplines of project management and program management. With an enterprise wide perspective, PPM incorporates other techniques and practices and fundamentally changes the ability of an organization to manage projects as investments that should have a predictable return. This new discipline requires a new set of tools and technologies, technologies that are leveraging SaaS as a delivery model for PPM. Additionally it seems that innovation cycles are accelerated, which means that PPM capabilities are improving at rate that is significantly faster than traditional on-premise delivered software.

About the Author:

By E. Marks, Industry Consultant and Book Author

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - IT Outsourcing: Putting your Best Foot Forward