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

. . . plus absolute clarity

Those that go forward need more than guts if they are to succeed. As we pointed out in the introduction to this book, they also need absolute clarity over their objectives, throughout the short, middle and long term. Strategic outsourcing is not a tool for the foolhardy, but the brave.

So the board needs to understand its objectives clearly and unequivocally. The Irish mortgage lender First Active decided that its unique selling proposition would be to achieve an approval decision on every mortgage – whether yes or no – within a maximum one working day of eight hours, compared to the local industry norm of eight days to two weeks. This meant re-engineering its entire technology infrastructure and credit referencing ...