John Higgins, Senior Consultant
In difficult economic times, corporations seek to improve their financial performance. One way to do this is to understand value creation. This is a technique that helps companies improve their product quality, financial performance, customer satisfaction or time to market.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
In contrast to an ailment like diabetes or asthma, where there are significant numbers of patients and the prevalence of the ailment is quite high, Accordant Health Services focuses on complex, chronic diseases that require ongoing, specialized care whose patient population prevalence is low. Although Accordant currently handles disease management for approximately 10,400 patients across numerous health plans, this constitutes less than one percent prevalence among the total patient population of these health plans.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
A frontline measure of how government meets the needs of its customers is how successful it is in answering its telephones promptly, accurately and courteously – so states the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) in its August 2000 report on customer service. The report found that federal agencies need clear goals and committed managers.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
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.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Last month Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, was giving a presentation to stock analysts when the ground shook. No, it wasn’t the power of the newest version of Microsoft Office he was displaying. At that moment Seattle, Washington was hit by a massive earthquake which caused billions of dollars in property damage.\x0d\x0a\x0d\x0aProperty owners prescient enough to have purchased earthquake insurance are now rebuilding with the funds they received from their insurance policies. The insurance companies have enough cash on hand to pay off their policy holders because they know how to underwrite risk.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Outsourcing means never having to buy the stuff yourself. Or even know what to buy.\x0d\x0aOne of the major benefits of outsourcing is the vendor makes sizable capital investment in assets that buyers need but do not want to purchase. Making the wrong decision can be very costly. So is the job of keeping up in a changing world.
Chris Pryer, Business Writer
Few assets owned and maintained by the government illicit as much passion from taxpayers as the condition of paved roads. But even as the need for more and wider thoroughfares goes largely ignored due to shrinking budgets and changing political climates, state and local governments across the nation also are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain preexisting transportation infrastructure. And it doesn’t stop there. The management of buildings, building-maintenance equipment, real estate, vehicles, office equipment, etc., is becoming a burden governments are discovering is more than they can bear. As a remedy, many are turning to asset management outsourcing.
Chris Pryer, Business Writer
Today roads, and the maintenance they require, are as important as the vehicles that traverse them. And if you’ve paid any attention to today’s news — or your daily commute to work — you are probably aware that roads, like much of America’s infrastructure, are literally going to pot. Local streets, county and state roads and highways, even the nation’s mighty interstates — they are all crumbling under the sheer weight and volume of our ultra-mobile society. State and local governments are hamstrung with the challenge of meeting other fiscal responsibilities (mainly social services) that have greater priority, as well as funding much-needed street and road maintenance and expansion. These projects take a lot of time — and money. To save both, governments are looking to the private sector to do the job of maintaining streets and roads.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Supply and demand. This mission-critical component of business has shifted from price and availability to collaboration. Meta Group predicts the SRM market will be $32 billion by 2003. SRM tools enable supply planning so that there is instant visibility across the extended supply chain, allowing companies to drive inventory out; with collaboration, order management becomes a match between demand and capacity.
Chris Pryer, Business Writer
For government agencies across the United States, the ability to deliver services to their citizenry is being sorely taxed (no pun intended). Budgets are being strained beyond limit. Quality — and quantity — of services is deteriorating. And the varieties of the prevailing political climate can wreak havoc on long-range planning and consistent and coordinated operational systems. Add to this the fact that many government agencies’ entire existing infrastructure for delivering services is suffering from such maladies as outdated technology, a stagnant work force and the typical bureaucratic red tape that is government’s calling card, and you have a recipe for guaranteed underachievement.
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