Purchasing Expands Its Role in Outsourcing

Purchasing Expands Its Role in Outsourcing

  • Submitted By: bimmer
  • Date Submitted: 03/20/2009 12:35 PM
  • Category: Business
  • Words: 373
  • Page: 2
  • Views: 309

Key issues:
Purchasing process plays an important role in today’s outsourcing, but there are some challenges which outsourcing firms are facing. Like how to get the service from here to there, and how to track and measure the new service provider. Also, the cultural issues are more complicated these days in the outsourcing decision. However, these issues could be gotten over by some ways, and the current economy downturn is impacting pushing more outsourcing.

Analysis:
Purchasing plays a big role in outsourcing process and it’s typically done by a group of strategically sourcing people because they have the best skill set to do that. Although the outsourcing process has some challenges, they could be overcome by some ways.
- How to get the service from here to there.
When companies start to consider outsourcing, they should spend some time at the vendor’s site to build the pictures in their brochure. Then companies can outsource with a function like transcription or call centers, and they can simply route the calls somewhere else so it’s easy to do. Then as companies develop some competencies, they could start to outsource more complicated functions and start to realize it’s not as risky as they thought it was. The boundaries would push out.
- How to track and measure the new service provider.
It’s easy to measure the performance with customer surveys/research by telephone or labor-intensive work. It can be done remotely, so it can be done anywhere. Actually, there are many consultancies focus on helping companies navigate the outsourcing process today.
- How to overcome the culture issues for different culture patterns.
The cultural issues are more firm-to-firm and not so much geographic barrier because most firms are globalizing. The difference in a firm between two different locations is not as great as that between two firms. So companies...

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