Smarter Outsourcing: An executive guide to understanding, planning and exploiting successful outsourcing relationships

Table of contents

1. Copyright
2. Financial Times Prentice Hall
3. Foreword: A letter from the authors
4. About the authors
5. List of abbreviations
6. Acknowledgements
7. Introduction: Why you need to do this
   1. What do you mean by outsourcing?
   2. Our definition
   3. Using your M&A skills to best advantage
   4. Six principles for outsourcing success
   5. Our approach in this book
8. Clear deal and strategy alignment
   1. Seeing beyond the trigger
   2. The wider picture
   3. A secret shared
   4. In a cul-de-sac?
   5. The decisiveness to move . . .
   6. . . . plus absolute clarity
   7. How bold do you want to be?
      1. Stage four: Set you and your vendor up for success
   8. A question of emotion
   9. Driving the deal
   10. Talking to the enemy?
   11. Internal v. external sourcing
   12. Technology v. business process outsourcing
   13. BPO v. business transformation outsourcing
   14. A CEO self-test for BTO
9. Mitigating risk
   1. The surrounding stakeholder context
   2. Communicating the nuts and bolts of the deal
   3. Preparing for the exit before the start
   4. Reasons to split
   5. Detailed risk factors: into the schedules
   6. Protecting intellectual property
   7. Managing multiple suppliers: ‘best of breed’
   8. Defining the interconnects
   9. The prime contractor route
   10. Thinking the unthinkable: coping with meltdown
   11. Risk questions for suppliers
   12. Onshore or offshore: risk or economics?
   13. Not a case of all or nothing
   14. Offshore providers’ onshore presence
10. Clear shared value
    1. A ‘free trade’ model – or protectionism?
    2. Achieving a win/win
    3. Building on trust through shared expectations and objectives
    4. The root causes of loss
    5. Staying in line
    6. Avoiding ‘contract squeeze’
    7. Understanding success . . .
    8. . . . and not overselling it
    9. Where has that ‘A’ team gone?
    10. Getting it in black and white
    11. The value of consistency
    12. Procurement v. relationship building
    13. Third-party coaching: extracting value – or destroying it?
    14. Pre-negotiation workshops
    15. Evaluating the business case through M&A principles
    16. Stress-testing the value proposition
    17. Moving forward
11. Value-based negotiation
    1. Procurement – or partnership?
    2. Creating a clear two-way view of strategy
    3. Unasked questions
    4. Lining up the goalposts
    5. Discovery: beware nasty surprises
    6. Understanding assumptions and motivations
    7. Regular project updates – as with M&A
    8. Can you work with these people?
    9. The human factor
    10. Internal SLAs: a step in the right direction
    11. Controllable, not autonomous
    12. From the customer’s viewpoint
    13. Avoiding legalese
    14. Revisiting the value case . . .
    15. . . . even to breaking point
    16. Homeopathy or surgery?
    17. Review – and review again
    18. Alignment for a win/win
12. Moving to the new way of thinking
    1. Openness or secrecy?
    2. Setting the pattern of communication
    3. A coherent story
    4. The role of FAQs
    5. Change + uncertainty = pain
    6. Governance and controls: be holistic – and rigorous
    7. Documenting the start and end state
    8. Contract v. relationship
    9. Avoiding winners and losers
    10. Crystallizing the benefits
    11. The supplier’s revenge
    12. Maintaining the balance of value – and pain
    13. What gets left behind?
    14. Leaving dysfunction behind
    15. Reasonable retention – not too much
    16. Defining and monitoring roles
    17. Making alignment resilient
    18. Linkage with users’ interests
    19. User perception is reality
    20. Using intermediaries for early benchmarking
    21. External industrial metrics
13. Realizing the benefits
    1. Thinking ahead?
    2. Defining the role of the retained team
    3. Staying in command
    4. Ten key competencies – correctly positioned
    5. Clear responsibilities in a shifting environment
    6. Building maturity . . .
    7. . . . aided by continuity
    8. Metrics for improvement
    9. Becoming a well-oiled machine?
    10. Benchmarking BPO: a do-it-yourself approach
    11. SLAs: meaningful outputs
    12. Towards metric-based gain sharing
    13. A hierarchy of measurement
    14. Relationship and contract management: the role of governance
    15. Service beyond KPIs: the willingness to flex
    16. A return to ‘grace and favour’ projects?
    17. Brand damage: consequential losses – by another name?
    18. Ongoing access to innovation
    19. The power to escalate
    20. Managing future risks through flexibility
    21. Mutual executive openness for mutual benefit
    22. The role of ‘trust brokers’
    23. Building trusting relationships in outsourcing: a primer
    24. Suppliers’ executive team: the need for maturity and vision
    25. Towards a joint approach
    26. Managing the investment markets
    27. Executive challenges for suppliers
14. Conclusion: The ultimate executive tool
    1. The sourcing revolution?
    2. At the frontier
    3. Societies in competition
    4. The philosophy of sourcing
    5. The supplier of the future . . .
    6. . . . and the sourcing ‘web’
    7. Creating complementary flexibility . . .
    8. . . . through the new generation of suppliers
    9. Making strategy cut both ways
    10. Hybrid culture – not bastardized culture
    11. From cost, to quality . . .
    12. . . . to innovation
    13. A structure for improving quality
    14. Breaking the gridlock
    15. Shared benefits from innovation
    16. A sharper tool
    17. From deal to life cycle
    18. Underwriting the responsibilities
    19. The future: strategy, sourcing – and shareholder activism
    20. A global shift
    21. Investor vigilance extends from M&A to outsourcing
    22. Shoulder to shoulder
15. Are you ready to outsource?
16. Five key areas to focus on
17. The outsourcing experience