How can you ensure your outsourcing service provider effectively interfaces with all your other vendors? We looked at proactive and reactive maneuvers to ensure all suppliers work together to meet the buyer’s objectives.
Outsourcing is not just about turning over a business process to a company with expertise and resources in that area. It’s more successful when both parties work as a team to overcome all challenges. Here’s a striking example of an excellent alliance.
Jane Drasites, Director, Benefits Delivery for BP Amoco, swears that the first year in an outsourcing relationship is just like a marriage. Some marriages don’t work very well. When Amoco (prior to its merger with BP) signed an agreement in 1993 for Hewitt Associates to handle its HR functions, it was positive it had found the right mate. Unfortunately, they didn’t go for some counseling before they tied the knot, and the honeymoon didn’t last long.
In any vendor relationship, you can let the vendor manage you and direct you, but I’m not sure that you will get full satisfaction and have your full expectationss met. Companies have to understand what they are expecting and actually make decisions based on that, advises Vickie Pettee, Manager, Global Compensation and Benefits for Nokia.
Deutsche Bank, with commercial banking and investment bank services, aims to be one of the world’s leading investment banks. And it depends on its employees to make that happen. Since it relies on employee competence and commitment to excellence in customer service, Deutsche Bank makes every effort to attract and retain the best talent and to become the employer of choice.
In 1995 Glaxo Wellcome, Inc. discovered a breakthrough in how to achieve its goals regarding human resources functions within the company. It happened as result of the company going through a merger and coming out of it not prepared to handle the volume of HR activity.
When CNA Insurance, a business-to-business property and casualty insurer, paddled fast but still encountered a weight that kept it from soaring toward its goals, it hired the wings of Hewitt Associates as its human resources outsourcer in 1998 and really took off.
SynHRgy HR Technologies, an HR outsourcing vendor in Houston, Texas, monitored the usage of its 500,000 participants last fall. Sixty-five percent of the enrollees used the Web or its interactive voice response (IVR) system in lieu of talking to a live representative, reports Kraig Koester, Midwest regional director for SynHRgy. He points out the outsourcing vendor’s 35 clients range from high tech companies who couldn’t live without their Palm Pilots to unionized heavy industry whose employees work with their hands not computers.
Johnson & Johnson is the largest and most diversified healthcare company in the world. It manufactures world-renowned health care products and provides related services to consumers and pharmaceutical markets, selling products in more than 175 countries. With more than 190 operating companies in 51 nations, the company has more than 99,000 employees worldwide. It’s a human resources migraine, to be sure!
Johnson & Johnson, the largest and most diversified healthcare company in the world. Deutsche Bank, one of the world’s leading investment banks. Boeing Company, a leader in the aerospace industry. Glaxo Wellcome, Inc., a leading research pharmaceutical firm. Rohm and Haas, a specialty chemical company. BP Amoco. Nokia. CNA Insurance. And PSEG, an electric and gas holding company in 13 countries. The roster of satisfied customers of outsourcer, Hewitt Associates, is a Who’s Who of leading world-class companies. Each of those companies recognizes the role their employees play in making their companies successful. They also recognize that their ability to recruit and retain high-caliber employees depends heavily on the benefits programs and quality of human resources services extended to employees.
From the Editor: What is impressive here is Hewitt’s ability to accurately reflect the nature of Columbia’s commitment to provide compassionate as well as effective benefit administration to its employees. Columbia hired Hewitt to provide cost savings so it could concentrate on its core competency. But Hewitt went one step beyond and continued to emulate Columbia’s corporate culture. The lesson here is companies can continue to retain their character even when they outsource…
Outsourcing continues to grow and accelerate, and the benefits and human resources (HR) area is predicted to enjoy a large growth rate in 2000. Bryan Dole, business leader, benefit administration operations for Hewitt Associates, says the most significant development for outsourcing in general, as well as HR and benefits outsourcing, will be greater utilization of the Internet…
Southern Company, an energy utility holding company, knows the importance of the HR department to an employee. Because of the physical and operational diversity of the $35 billion plus company, the electric company thought it might be a good idea to centralize the focus of it benefits administration by outsourcing, in order to improve efficiency for its 32,000 employees.
Though a company may perform a single function it doesn’t necessarily entitle the company to the best-in-class moniker, says Jim McAloon, outsourcing consultant at Hewitt, a human resources (HR) firm.
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