Research & Insight

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

The Seven Deadly Negotiating Sins

Brad L. Peterson, Partner, Mayer Brown LLP

An outsourcing negotiation is a complex endeavor, with interwoven financial, technical, performance, people, and legal issues. However, after boiling it all down, there are seven very common mistakes both vendors and customers make in negotiating outsourcing contracts. This article will help you spot those mistakes. Then you can correct them in your own negotiating team and exploit them in the other side’s negotiation.

When Employee Satisfaction is Key

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

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.

Just What the Doctor Ordered

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

As healthcare professionals strive to focus on their core competencies and become more efficient and cost-effective, they turn to outsourcing as a solution. Buenaventura Medical Group (BMG), a 50-doctor, multi-specialty group with five locations and 100,000 patients, made that decision five years ago. In efforts to stay ahead of their competition, they realized that printing and mailing their patient statements was sorely in need of process improvement.

IT Takes a Seat

Chris Pryer, Business Writer

Managing the infrastructure of information technology is critical to federal government agencies. The maintenance and operation of tens of thousands of desktop computers, the software that drives them and the networks that connect them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, can be likened to the proverbial millstone tied around the neck of government agencies. Outsourcing the management of these computer seats often can combat this drain on resources, saving both time and money.

The New Sodexho Alliance:

Joyce Ahlering

Outsourcing operations themselves do not vary greatly across national borders. But multinational outsourcing efforts are often challenged by geographic distance and differences in national laws and customs. Sodexho Alliance, whose services range from Paris’s Seine River cruise catering to prison cafeteria staffing, has overcome those hurdles. The company finalized its merger with the former American hotel group Marriott on June 18th, 2001 to make Sodexho Alliance a global outsourcing model.

Straight From the Horse’s Mouth

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Straight From the Horse’s Mouth: President Bush’s Outsourcing Initiatives – Will Bush’s campaign promises become more than notions? A February 14, 2001 memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) chief told agency leaders to expand outsourcing and advance eGovernment. It advised: The President envisions a government that has a citizen-based focus, is results-oriented and, where practicable, market-driven.

From Vision to Victory

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

From Vision to Victory – In August 1999, Pennsylvania signed an outsourcing agreement with Unisys for the operation of its mainframe and a number of its midrange computer systems. Curt Haines, Director of the Bureau of Consolidated Computer Services in the Governor’s Office of Administration for the Commonwealth, says they selected Unisys because it was clearly a premier company relative to mainframe computers. He points out that IBM is a major subcontractor for Unisys in this outsourcing agreement but that Unisys is the prime vendor and has ultimate responsibility to make sure it works.

The Whole Kit and Caboodle

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

The Whole Kit and Caboodle – In round figures, the outsourcing contract between the U.S. Treasury and its supplier, Wang Government Services (a Getronics company) will be over $100 million over the life of the ten-year contract. Like the old kit and caboodle American saying, Treasury omitted nothing – it has outsourced the management of its entire infrastructure.

Benefits Cures

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

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.

Swan Saga

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.

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