Research & Insight

Research & Insight

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Getting Hitched

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

How can you minimize risks when selecting a fairly new company as your supplier? Here’s what BP and Bank of America did when they outsourcing their HR to Exult.

We’ve Only Just Begun

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

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.

Delivering the Difference

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

If you’re a patient in the emergency room, you definitely want that hospital or trauma center to have all the necessary supplies on hand — from IVs and blood plasma to bandages and syringes. But the hospital can’t keep everything on hand; it’s in the patient care business, not inventory warehousing. So the doctors and nurses rely on medical distributors to be sure they have what’s needed — or can deliver it in a couple of hours for an emergency. Many of them depend on Owens & Minor, Inc. (O&M) and, in outsourcing their supplies process to O&M, they enjoy the added advantage of reduced costs.

Flooded with Possibilities

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

No doubt, you’ve seen the ads with the cupped hands ready to cradle your life. With the accompanying slogan, You’re in good hands with Allstate, one would naturally assume that customer satisfaction is a high priority with this insurance company. When it comes to outsourcing, though, you can bet that Allstate is in the good hands of its supplier, EDS. Larry Moser, Senior Marketing Manager at Allstate and Product Manager for its flood and mobile home lines, recalls that a decision was made in 1986 that Allstate would join the Write Your Own Flood Insurance Program. He says the company subsequently looked at its processing operation and realized that writing flood was a lot different from its other lines (auto, life, property) and decided to explore what opportunities there might be for the processing of the flood business.

Downtime Detour

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Imagine that you own a retail gas store and the cash register goes down. You can’t sell gas or Twinkies. Now imagine, just for a moment, that you own over 1700 retail gas stores where this could happen. ARCO, a West Coast gasoline refiner and retailer, actually owns that many gas stores and a large convenience store network. Downtime can be disastrous, so ARCO outsourced its point-of-sale terminals to outsourcer, Getronics. When the Getronics help desk receives a call from one of the retail outlets, the staff diagnoses whether the fix will require a technician. If so, they must obtain the needed part from a depot, dispatch a technician to the site to install the part, and have it up and running within four hours from the time the call was placed — no matter how remote the location might be. It’s truly an extraordinary feat in logistics.

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