Product Description

STRATEGIC OUTSOURCING Risk Management, Methods and Benefits Organizations are turning to external suppliers for everything from payroll processing to facilities management. The goal is better quality at lower costs, but too often the results are disappointing-to-dismal -- simply because many buyers lack a clear outsourcing methodology. Using the concepts in this book, managers responsible for outsourcing will learn to avoid typical pitfalls and ensure success. Readers learn how to: ** determine core competencies that should be kept in-house rather than outsourced ** align outsourcing with overall corporate strategy ** use outsourcing to support transformation strategies such as restructuring and TQM ** evaluate, compare, and select vendors ** develop targeted RFPs (requests for proposals), negotiate win-win contracts, monitor how vendors perform, and evaluate financial savings ** handle "recompetition" as contracts end. an especially hot topic MAURICE GREAVER (Washington, DC) is a former corporate CFO and CPA at Haskins & Sells. He now heads his own financial and management consulting firm and teaches the American Management Association's course on Strategic Outsourcing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #422823 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-08
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Book Info
Presents a complete, definitive guide to both the immediate tactical issues & the long-term strategic objectives. Provides everything you need to effectively outsource any activity, function, or process in your organization. DLC: Industrial procurement.

About the Author

MAURICE F. GREAVER II (Washington, DC) is a former corporate CFO and CPA at Haskins & Sells. He now heads his own financial and management consulting firm and teaches the American Management Association’s course on Strategic Outsourcing.

Customer Reviews

Good resource
Great resource. Book follows the outsourcing process from begining to end with tips, suggestions and recommendations along the way

Practical, good advice for outsourcing
This book will lead the reader through a seven-step methodology for identifying, negotiating with, and signing on the outsourcing providers that will best help a company improve its performance and results.

Can a strategic partner help? The author of this book argues that a strategic partner can help if the steps in this book are followed. Some of the steps include:

· Exploring strategic options - a key phrase in which a company links any outsourcing program proposal to its strategy;
· Analyzing costs and performance - this will help a company to evaluate proposals and determine if outsourcing is worth the time, effort, and money;
· Selecting vendors - from setting the qualifications one wants to drafting and sending out requests for proposals to evaluating the responses.

The author stresses that any successful outsourcing initiative begins with careful planning. The first few actions from picking the right team, to pinpointing the outsourcing objectives and targets, are critical to the outsourcing initiative's success.
During the outsourcing initiative, all steps of the initiative, keep employees informed on a continuing basis. The author advises to update employees when:

· The project plans have been completed and share the plans with the employees
· Costs and performance analyses are complete,
· Requests for proposals have been prepared,
· Short-list candidates have been selected,
· A memorandum of understanding has been negotiated,
· And when the contract is signed and the transition begins.

Outdated and High Brow...Not for the Non-Academics or Those New to Outsourcing
If you're not either very experienced in outsourcing already or a college level instructor in outsourcing, I would not recommend this book.

Since it was written, a couple more creative and straight shooting books on "how to outsource" are available, particularly in 2005. I advise you to search and find those books independently as I found them much more enlightening, current and relevant to providing directions on outsourcing's nuts and bolts to true strategic and transformational outsourcing elsewhere. Outsourcing has evolved along way since this book was written. It needs updating or should simply be viewed as a reference book after you've read the recent selections by other authors to be on top of your game.