Almost a quarter of blue chip firms in the UK are
so disillusioned with outsourcing they are hauling their services
back in-house.
Research from sourcing advisory firm Orbys Consulting reveals
that 43% of large companies feel their supplier doesn’t match their
performance expectations and 35% say it fails to meet their
needs.
Many of the companies report declining or static service levels
and have resorted to remedial programmes with their supplier,
renegotiated the contract or in extreme cases brought services back
in-house. Even so, 82% of respondents say they are satisfied with
outsourcing overall.
IT directors could avoid taking such drastic action if they
spent longer identifying their requirements at the outset, as well
as proactively managing the contract, suggests Orbys.
"The fact that overall satisfaction is relatively high despite
the failure to meet expectations, the high incidence of problems
and only partially effective corrective action, suggests a
surprising level of acceptance and complacency with this standard
of underperformance," says Mark Sukiennik, director at Orbys
Consulting.
The research is based on interviews with 82 mature organisations
in the finance, retail and manufacturing sectors, with turnovers of
£100m-plus and multiple outsourcing deals in place.