What are the pros and cons of outsourcing part of your business processes or activity?
Answers
Outsourcing is a great option for any business. This approach can save you time and money vs. developing a process internally. Please check a blog I posted on the Proformative site on 3/9/2012, entitled "Vendor/Contract
The Pro's and Con's list regarding outsourcing business processes is extremely important to investigate when venturing into an evaluation like this. When viewing a financial environment, a number of non-core transactional processes are eligable for outsourcing (with strict SLA's for performance) but it is crucial to retain a certain % of each process as those parts will be more strategic and core to the direction of your business.
There are many outsourcing options for each functional area. It's easy to get caught up in the best and worse case scenarios in justifying or declining. Cost savings and customer defection seem to monopolize the discussions. I recommend getting your questions closer to the interaction points (sales data and fulfillment, cash transfer time, etc.) Each functional area has its own concerns so addressing them with any integrity in a comment would be tough to do. As Regis suggested, I recommend reading his blog as a starting point. There are also good books and articles out there.
business process firms like to think they are an extension of your organization because in most cases the "entire process" end-to-end may not get completely outsourced; to get the full-value of the relationship, you should negotiate any analytics they could glean from managing the sub-process for you. example if they are doing your A/R Order-to-Cash, they should be able to segment the "demographics" of your customers, review the improvements in collections relative to their process, and come back to you with "insights" that may help to improve your A/R policies and ultimately improve WC / cash flows.