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
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.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Clark explains that, prior to Rockwood, he was selling an insurance product called employment practices liability (EPL), whereby companies can be insured for wrongful termination, sexual harassment and discrimination. These acts were considered to be uninsurable before 1992 because they were things people did on purpose. But the laws changed, and Clark set about creating awareness that there was an insurance product available for these exposures. Even as he sought ways to promote EPL, he was also trying to reduce the risk of writing a company that would turn out to have bad employment practices.
Chris Pryer, Business Writer
Many people don’t believe you can put the words ‘good will’ and ‘tax collection’ in the same sentence. There is a natural tension there. But in the city of New Haven, CT, there has been a breakthrough that should serve as a model for cities all over the country that are struggling to collect delinquent real estate taxes. In 1994 New Haven’s property tax collection rate was languishing at around 86 percent. Since privatizing the collection of delinquent taxes, it has improved to 94 percent for last year’s collection and is expected to exceed 96 percent this year.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Ruesch specializes in business-to-business cross-border payments, basically supplying various payment instruments and foreign currencies for companies that need to pay their bills in various countries around the world.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
The biggest risks for businesses are they take too long to change, they do the wrong thing or they don’t do their job well, says Michel Janssen, chief operating officer of the Outsourcing Center. Outsourcing can mitigate much of that business risk by sharing the risks as well as the gains with the outsourcing supplier. Outsourcing supplies you with someone who is totally focused on your success, continues Janssen.
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.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Believe it or not, before the launch of Windows 95, the ledgers of Microsoft’s European entity, based in Ireland, looked dreadful. Mark Creighton, EMEA Credit and Collections Manager for Microsoft European Operations Centre, says the company decided to bring someone on board to clean it up before the launch of the new Windows product. French & Associates knocked on the door at just that time and was given the task. Their fee was based on a percentage of what they managed to collect, and Creighton (who was at that time part of the French team) recalls that it was far more successful than we ever had imagined.
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.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
With technology requirements aimed squarely at their weakest point, yet with a goal to be the government’s choice to build 21st-century destroyers, BIW made the strategic decision to outsource all of its IT operations to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). We felt CSC would be able to support us in our effort to achieve our goal of being a technology leader and could do it at the rate at which our customer would like to see it done. Bowie admits that BIW had blinders on when it outsourced in November 1996, not realizing the extent of technological advancement that would be required. The original contract spend was about $27 million, and it has now grown to include new services and a value of nearly $50 million over four years. Because its customer was driving certain initiatives, BIW found it needed new PCs for all employees so that they could do design work more efficiently and win more government contracts.
"*" indicates required fields