Outsourced relationships can often be punctuated with opportunities for controversy. Having dealt with improving the performance of over 500 outsourcing relationships, evidence continues to teach us that more than 50% of these high-value contracts fail to achieve their expected outcomes…

It has never been more important for your project to have a robust, tried and tested procurement strategy that you can rely on. Agreement on a roadmap for the way you conduct your procurement project is essential to ensure all…

You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been, as they say. So, by taking a look back at the origins of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and how the outsourcing market has evolved and…

In our recent blog ‘Roadmap to More Successful Strategic Outsourcing Relationships’, we discussed a top-level view of the steps any organisation should take to improve their chances of project success when working with outsourced partners, then pointed to our white…

Benjamin Franklin is famously quoted as saying “… nothing is certain except death and taxes”. I would go so far as to add one more to that list: ‘change’. While resisted by many, feared by others, and exploited by some,…

Projects rarely run strictly according to plan. The longer your strategic relationships must last, and the higher the number of individuals, teams and departments involved, the greater the opportunity for things to veer off course. It’s at this stage that…

The last few weeks have been really challenging for outsourcing firm Interserve. A quick look through recent BBC headlines on the business says it all – ‘Crunch week for Interserve’, ‘UK outsourcing giant faces crunch vote’, ‘Interserve on the brink’,…

To promote better productivity through more collaborative problem-solving it would be useful to shift perspectives, so that when things go wrong people recognise that it’s not always the other person’s fault. Often issues are multifaceted, and the longer that they…

Outsourcing is a tempting proposition for any company that feels the strain of a bloated workforce and high service delivery costs. After all, the theoretical arguments in favour of outsourcing are compelling – you leverage the expertise of an external…

Wouldn’t it be nice if client-vendor relationships always followed a clearly defined path with all parties focused on doing their best to live up to the business outcomes they agreed to at the outset? I can almost hear you nodding…

Outsourcing any aspect of your operations is rarely a walk in the park. For anyone who’s ever been through such a project, the challenges, misunderstandings and potential for clashes when handing responsibility to a third party are likely to have…

Problems can arise at any point within a major strategic partner service delivery relationship. Life with a strategic partner is very much like a marriage – after the first year or so, when the honeymoon period has become but a happy…

With Brexit, local elections, superpower posturing and international poisoning scandals to push the news media forward, the troubles caused by Carillion will seem like a long time ago to most. But, for the company’s employees, its suppliers whose businesses relied…

Not every project can be handled in-house. There will be times when the resources, skill-sets and specific expertise of strategic suppliers will be needed and your business case will help you come to that conclusion. Once you have come to…

Since the revelations of the Labour Conference in September, analysts and pundits have been asking some important questions. They include, in this austerity lashed economic climate, where does Labour believe the potentially hundreds of billions will come from to pay…

An increasing number of organisations and institutions are exploring the benefits of moving from their large single-supplier outsourcing relationships to the multi-supplier variety. Gavin Hall has outlined that in his experience, which reflects our own, the enhanced value and specialist expertise,…

The Conservative government has, for the best part of a decade, been fixated on the debt the country has got itself into. In his Spring Budget, Chancellor Philip Hammond announced that national debt stood at a figure of nearly £1.7…

Reports suggest that it has not been a good year for global outsourcing giant Capita. What with the company’s first profit warning in September, reported project issues and what seems to be a weakening market across some of its core…

In November the National Audit Office (NAO) released a new report on contract management, and because we found it so insightful we’ve decided to dedicate a few articles to the subject and to the findings of the report. This particular…

If your outsourcer’s shares had taken quite a beating, with the company’s value dropping by a quarter or more over a matter of days, you might be encouraged to start asking questions of those in the know as to whether…

It has never been more important to ensure that your complex service delivery (outsourcing) relationships succeed. But how can this be achieved in an environment where it seems so commonplace that external service providers fail to achieve expected business outcomes.…

When setting up any transformational programme or partnership, one preliminary aspect that can’t be overstated is the need for stakeholder communication and collaboration. Unfortunately, there seem to be many in the NHS procurement community who believe that the Department of…

Traditional Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) looks to reduce costs for a client by migrating their more repetitive tasks to resources located in more cost-effective regions of the world. We are talking about outsourcing to the likes of India (where around…

The collapse of UnitingCare – the multi-million pound collaboration between an NHS consortium and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG to provide ‘older people’s and adult community services’ in the region – has had an unprecedented impact on the sector. It has…

With the recent announcement from the BBC that the NHS’s major complex projects management and procurement support force – the Strategic Project Team (SPT) – will be “closed down”, questions are now being asked and lessons must be learned in…

The NAO have reported that “A third of major government projects due to deliver in the next five years are rated as in doubt or unachievable unless action is taken to improve delivery” NAO Controller and Auditor Amyas Morse believes…

Service integration and management (SIAM) has continued to be something of a buzz-acronym in managed service and outsourcing circles. The way it’s talked about, you might be forgiven for thinking that it’s a silver bullet which in one fell swoop…

In their ongoing drive to reduce costs while attempting to improve services, the government has long believed shared services to be the answer. Annual savings in the region of 20% are commonly cited by those using shared services centres to…

In recent years we have recognised that there has been a marked shift in the way UK supplier managers have been interacting with their provider partners. Where in the past those looking to outsource may have been more focused on…

If you were offered an opportunity to save your council tens of millions of pounds you might be tempted. The question is, what time and resources would you invest into scrutinising the shared services deal? How much due diligence would…

Despite sticking to the letter of their contract, we see £500m of Atos contracts under review by Whitehall. Time and again you will hear us discussing the benefits of a well-worded contract, of the need for it to be clear,…

In the face of growing perceived threats to security and defence the e-Borders project was conceived to “create a joined-up modernised intelligence-led border control and security framework” tracking passengers as they travelled to our shores by air, rail or sea,…

Currently doing the rounds are rumours that 2016 could see a significant drop in demand for outsourcing services in the UK. Instinctively, when you see headlines like this, it’s reasonable to apply a degree of scepticism to such talk, but…

A mutual decision has been taken between The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group (CPCCG) and UnitingCare to end their five-year, £800m health services contract, after just eight months. It’s the latest in a long line of major outsourcing relationships…

2015 was a tumultuous year for the outsourcing industry. Somerset Council finally decided to end the remaining elements of their ten-year contract with strategic partner Southwest One, two years early. Cornwall Council won their case against BT to terminate their…

With the New Year comes new challenges for Cornwall Council as it starts to regroup after its dispute with BT, over their 10-year £300m outsourcing contract, came to a dramatic end before Christmas. But what led these two parties, so…

In December of 2014, we waxed lyrical about the importance of an ICF Team. We even went as far as to say that it’s the number one lesson that organisations would do well to learn in 2015. Truthfully, we haven’t…

When faced with the task of sourcing a new provider for an important and complex project, there are many points that need to be seriously considered. However, in our experience, there is one key area in particular that is consistently…

Far too many outsourced relationships fail to achieve the expectations of at least one of the parties involved in the process. And, no doubt, this was a driver behind the creation of the first International Standard for outsourcing – ISO…

A date has been set for Cornwall Council to meet BT in the High Court. On 1 December 2015, both sides will have the opportunity to explain just why the ten-year £300m outsourcing contract that bound them together was ended…