Even as outsourcing becomes more and more mainstream confusion remains about its relationship to offshoring says Deloitte, the highly regarded tax, audit and financial consulting firm, in its latest survey on the topic. “The outsourcing market continues to confuse outsourcing with offshoring,” Deloitte says. “Many respondents still see the two processes as inseparable – even […]
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Collaborative Outsourcing and Trust: A New Tack for MSPs
Charles Weaver, CEO of the MSP Alliance, last month wrote about a common problem that managed service providers encounter with their internal IT departments—“inherent suspicions” about the real motives of an MSP. “For as long as I can remember,” he says, “MSPs have struggled with how to disarm the threat of internal IT departments and […]
Reveal Intentions to Gain Trust
There are a couple of sides to trust and fostering trust, one being management competence—both operationally and politically—and another being character. Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback, authors of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader (HBR Press, 2011), have written about the trust aspects of leadership for the HBR Blog Network. […]
Buyer-Seller Chess Games Ultimately Don’t Work
In the ancient game of chess the object is to beat your opponent. A collaborative, trusting strategy has no place in this struggle for ultimate power and domination. Instead, players try to out-strategize and out-maneuver their opponent to get the “win.” It is very common for companies to use “strategic” approaches to win in the […]
Vested Implements Collaboration
I often comment about how outsource and supply chain companies talk the talk about “alignment,” “partnership,” “win-win,” “visibility” and “collaboration,” but often will fail to walk the walk on those terms once priorities or personnel shift, or the going gets tough. The Vested model requires true collaboration as the starting point for achieving all of […]
Use Vested to Mitigate “Vicarious Liability”
Nothing can ever fully insulate a business from “vicarious liability” lawsuits—which can bring a company to its knees in quick order—but a Vested partnership with a shipper, supplier, 3PL or transportation provider will go a long way to avoiding those kinds of issues. TranzAct Inside, a group that provides valuable information and research on transportation […]
Putting Some Vested Skin in the Game
In a Vested partnership it’s important for the company and the service provider to have what I often call “skin in the game,” or basically a commitment to making the deal work by putting their money and resources where their mouth is. A real-world example of this idea was on display in the case of […]
Alignment Gives You a Head Start to Vested
Alignment is key in Vested Outsourcing. Companies like Jaguar and Unipart showed the importance of properly aligning when they created a shared vision more than a decade ago: it catapulted them to the top of the JD Powers charts. And when I read through an excellent eyefortransport report on outsourcing logistics strategy I am reminded […]
A Vested Vision for Procurement
Ariba’s recent Vision 2020 report on the future of procurement has a remarkably Vested outlook on collaboration. The company, a leading provider of business commerce solutions, presents a bold view of the state of procurement in the future, asserting that the procurement function “as you know it will no longer exist in 2020.” In 2020, […]
Taking Sustainable Development to the Next Level
Companies are poised to break through to the next level of sustainability this year, according to Dan Probst, chairman of Energy and Sustainability Services at the real estate services firm, Jones Lang LaSalle. In a recent article he identified four sustainability trends to watch that will help make it happen. Those trends include transparency, global […]
