Smarter Outsourcing: An executive guide to understanding, planning and exploiting successful outsourcing relationships

The root causes of loss

So e-peopleserve effectively ended up as a win/win. But, in our experience, what factors do we think would tend to drive either customers or suppliers into the ‘lose’ category? In the case of an IT outsourcing programme, this can go back to the CEO and board’s historical perception of their in-house IT organization, and of what long-term value, if any, this organization is delivering to the business as a whole. Depending on the circumstances, the sourcing of IT may be regarded as anything from a core source of competitive advantage to a commoditized procurement play offering little incremental value.

For the CEO, the difference is crystallized by answering one fundamental question: ‘What is the underlying stimulus and ...