Hire an Expert Outsourcing Evaluator to Advise You on Do-It-Yourself Options

There are times when your internal team simply won't have the skill or experience to realize that better do-it-yourself options can comfortably replace expensive outsourcing arrangements. If you think that lack of skill or experience might be the case, you are a good candidate for hiring an organization that does outsourcing evaluations to describe what your best internal process choices are.

To avoid potential conflicts of interest, make it clear that under no circumstance will you hire this organization to do any outsourcing for you related to the issue at hand. You should also tell the evaluating organization that you will not hire it to locate outsourcers if the do-it-yourself choices are not chosen.

With those potential conflicts of interest out of the way, you have placed yourself into a happy situation: People who are familiar with industry best practices can evaluate what you really need and how else you might supply those needs. How can you provide a valuable reality check on this thinking? Insist that the outsourcing evaluators add some of your staff members with relevant knowledge and experience to the team.

As an early step in the process, ask your outsourcing evaluators to propose what your measurable objectives should be for either your internal process or outsourcing relationship. Much of the potential benefit you can gain comes from this reframing of what the objectives should be.

Considering an organization that's thinking about outsourcing litigation, the internal legal staff may be focusing on winning cases or reducing the annual cost of payments to litigants. Reducing company expenses in helping those who have been harmed from mistakes already made is a better goal. But it might take someone who isn't a lawyer to spot that way of framing the issue.

That's the sort of new thinking that may help you to see the possibility for new processes. Better goals can shift your organization's mental framework into a more helpful focus.

Before you take the best do-it-yourself option this evaluation turns up, find a way to run some simple tests of how well do-it-yourself may work. Otherwise, you may find yourself undercutting your purposes.

A fashion designer could certainly save a lot of money by using company employees to model the newest designs. But the glamor effects of having just the right models might be critical for creating the desired impression for one-of-a-kind designs of expensive apparel.

Here are questions to focus your attention on ways to avoid unjustifiably expensive outsourcing:

-What are the right objectives for the activity?

-What rules are you using that force unnecessary expenses, whether from outsourcing or from do-it-yourself?

-How can you reduce the duration of outsourcing relationships to increase your flexibility to hire other outsourcers or to do it yourself?

-Who can help you design scenarios to test the appropriateness of your outsourcing and do-it-yourself choices?

-Where can you find ideas for new processes that will eliminate both expensive outsourcing and internal work?

-Which staff members are likely to see good do-it-yourself options that no one has considered before?

-Where can you find expert resources to identify and evaluate the best do-it-yourself alternatives?