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

Homeopathy or surgery?

So the CEO and board overseeing the negotiations for a major outsourcing agreement have to undertake a fine balancing act. On the one hand they need to keep an eye continually on the original objectives, and revisit and retest them for alignment to the current prevailing conditions, to the business’s shifting needs in the light of those conditions and to the status and direction of the project negotiations themselves. On the other hand they need to recognize the need for shifts in those objectives, while ensuring that the project has not taken on a life of its own. They must also understand and track the motivation of the various parties involved – ranging from suppliers to unions to their own advisers.

The ability to recalibrate ...