I recently had the opportunity to represent an outsourced services supplier in one deal and a new outsourced services customer in another. In both deals, the other side provided the paper. The experience left me even more sure that a better way must exist for these deals.
Addressing Complexity
Complexity is the first thing that we must change to facilitate the development of governable outsourcing deals. We have all been taught to believe, axiomatically, that “more information is better information.” Current outsourcing deals generally reflect this approach, drawing “every leaf on every tree” to describe the outsourced and retained services.
More information […]
Why do we create ungovernable deals?
Outsourcing deal documents fail to support governance for many reasons. Chief among them is that the deal paper is simply too complex. These documents go on for literally hundreds of pages, are full of arcane language and do not provide adequate information to permit a Customer to govern […]
Like most outsourcing attorneys, I have experienced the telephone book-sized outsourcing deal. Truth be told, I even created a couple in my day. Being in the relatively unique position of in-house outsourcing counsel, I also had the opportunity to deal with the other end of the process – governance. While these documents were good, sometimes […]
A few years ago, a product came out that could have - and should have - revolutionized much of the way that business information is presented. Called the “Ambient Orb,” the product was simply a sphere that glowed, usually with the stock market. Green was up - the brighter, the higher; red was down, the […]
In E.M. Foerster’s “A Passage to India,” the conflicts between British aristocracy and the Indian professional class was explored. It was a difficult story, highlighting pride, prejudice and institutionalized bias.
These days, however, passages to India (and Singapore, Argentina, Belgium and Thailand, among others) mean something entirely different for hundreds of thousands of people (about […]
Over the past few years, outsourced call centers have become a whipping boy for the trouble with outsourcing. We have all seen the cartoons or the YouTube videos and we have all had similar experiences… A poor customer negotiates a maze of teleprompts and menus, is placed on hold for an extended period […]
Recently, there has been a lot of press coverage over TPI’s analysis of the first quarter’s severe market drop-off in U.S. outsourcing. Many press agencies have picked up the story and, like Chicken Little, are claiming that the sky is falling. Other analysts are calling it, at worst, a temporary blip or a “market correction,” […]
Some law firms claim to be “Champions of the Customer,” a phrase that I always thought was a bit peculiar in the context of outsourcing deals. Thinking about this, I looked up the word “champion” and found the following definition: “a militant advocate or defender.” Is that what one needs to start a […]
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a services delivery model being sponsored by many software vendors. While not generally referred to as “outsourcing,” SaaS has many of the same features, and requires many of the same contractual precautions of an IT outsourcing.
In a true SaaS model, the software vendor and the service provider are one-in-the […]
According to a Deloitte survey cited in an article by Jeana Wong in Channel News Asia, outsourcing is not generating the savings promised. Surprising? No. Actually, to anyone in the business, it is pretty obvious.
Nor are the reasons surprising. In that article, Phua Jer Hong, regional practice leader of Strategy & Ops Advisory at Deloitte […]
Back when I was in high school, I knew a guy who was a great athlete – baseball, football and track letterman. He had all the pretty girls swooning over him (including the one that I was secretly in love with). He seemed unstoppable. I ran into him a couple of years ago at my […]
Much has been written about the failures of outsourcing deals to live up to their true potential. Poor communications, scope creep, and unrealistic promises and expectations top the list. Interestingly, these are all derivatives of poor deal governance – both by suppliers and customers.
Certainly, the governance issues among customers are well understood, even if they’re […]