Outsourcing in times of crisis: how external relationships deliver real business results

Overview

The difference between loss and triumph in a troubled economy often lies in whether companies look solely to avoid harm with aggressive cost control, or whether they take the necessary steps to boost their market share and improve the bottom line. While the former approach may result in companies emerging from the recession in roughly the same shape as they entered, the latter seems to have longer, more lasting results. Squeezed by increasing financial constraints, many companies are boldly aligning themselves with capable and trusted outsourcing partners who can help them tap into new business-enabling technologies, expand their internal skills and acquire and deliver new services quickly. This white paper argues that shifting some of the IT burden to outsourcing partners– for everything from data centre operations to application development to desktop management – IT leaders can meet their companies’ most pressing financial needs, while strengthening the infrastructure and preparing the business for growth the world economy recovers; cost reduction might have been the original driver for outsourcing, but today the business agenda is broader and outsourcing must provide a route to strategic effectiveness as well as cost efficiency. In fact, CIOs may realise their greatest gains by using outsourcing to sharpen their focus on the business. The key is placing the company’s transformational goals on the agenda at the beginning of the outsourcing engagement.