Power Implant: Outsourcing… or Insourcing | Article
The story of what happens when two organizations buy into a strategic outsourcing vision together.
The story of what happens when two organizations buy into a strategic outsourcing vision together.
Communication of timely, correct information is critical when a disaster like 9/11 strikes. Two Seattle-based outsourcing firms banded together to provide Web-based communication for facilities managers that helped one Washington, D.C. firm weather the terrorist attacks.
Outsourcing suppliers are responsive in a crisis. Forty-five minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Compaq executives were on the phone, putting together a triage of support for its eight financial clients with Recover-All contracts as well as its many other customers headquartered in the twin towers. Tom Simmons, vice president of Compaq Managed Services in Stowe, Massachusetts, says within three hours Compaq had organized a crisis center routing telephone questions to Colorado Springs and opened a walk-in facility near Madison Square Garden manned by its Northeast sales team. A crisis Web site was online that night.
At LaQuinta, the inbound call center has been an outsourced function since 1996. Jackie Burke, Vice President of Reservation Services for LaQuinta, says the company has no reservations — that is, no doubts or misgivings — about its choice of outsourcing supplier for this extremely important function.
Businesses today are looking critically at their companies to understand what is strategic in their organizations. That is what they need to manage to insure their future success. Everything else is peripheral and should go to an outsourcing supplier in the commodity marketplace, says Richard Nichols, managing consultant for Compass Management Consulting Ltd., an outsourcing consultancy in London, England. The company is part of the global consulting group Compass America Inc. which has offices in Chicago, San Francesco and Washington D.C.