Outsourcing is hardly a new concept. It
allows us to effectively hive off non-core, yet still important, activities and
outcomes to a specialist service provider, freeing up a company’s time, and
ideally also budget, to focus on what we specialise in. We gain both time and
money: basically oil and gold today.
But, like so many things, you can’t keep
doing things the way they have always been done and expect to get better or
different results. So, I wonder if it isn’t time to look at rethinking and transforming
outsourcing to serve us more effectively, and to really buy us time.
In today’s “cult of busy”, we wear our
busyness like a badge of honour. But perhaps we should start doing less and
thinking more. Indeed, the “time is money” mantra so many people and businesses
cling on to has its origin in the Industrial Revolution. The greater the number
of hours the production line ran, the greater the output, the greater the
profit.
And, like so many other things we still do
today, such as working in a central location from 9 am to 5 pm, for instance, this
constrained way of thinking and working is holding us back from evolving into
future-ready organisations. It’s also not sustainable to work this way given the
rate at which the world is changing. The Industrial Revolution production line
is starting to wobble and increasingly needs to be patched and supported, using
up even more of our time and resources.
We will never have enough time while we are
focussing on old ways of doing things. Instead, we need to radically change the
way things have always been done. Enter outsourcing. Back in the day, we started
with outsourcing actual labour, such as cleaning services, logistics and
delivery, data entry, etc.
Next, we happily outsourced technology and
entire processes, such as payroll fulfilment. Individual companies don’t have
to invest in the technology and expertise in-house to ensure that this
important, yet non-core, activity is completed accurately and on-time every week
or month. And cloud computing is essentially outsourced software. The programs
are there when we need them, in the volumes we need at that moment, but we
don’t have to worry about things like upgrades, or supporting the underlying systems.
Perhaps it’s time to push outsourcing
itself to the next level. To date, we’ve typically outsourced processes lock,
stock and barrel, without paying attention to the ongoing relevance of the underlying
process itself. If we were spending too much time entering data into a system,
we would outsource that function to someone who could do it faster and cheaper.
We wouldn’t consider reviewing how we
achieved the outcome, the important thing is that it was done. But as
traditional ways of doing things date, and become less appropriate, returns
start diminishing. In other words, you start gaining less time and saving less
money.
This, I’d argue, is a legacy of a
command-and-control management structure where the focus is on the oversight of
getting the job done by following the approved steps, rather than disrupting
the way things have been done. What if we were to outsource thinking about how a
specific process could be done better, as well as the tools needed to do it. If
you have read my column before, it will be no surprise when I use the example
of basing budgeting around spreadsheets. Do we continue to do that because that
is the way it has always been done, shipping spreadsheets from pillar to post
at budget time, or do we stop to consider how this constrains our business from
moving forward?
Instead of outsourcing an outdated process,
lock, stock and barrel, we could, and perhaps should, outsource the process
itself. For instance, in my data entry example above, we could outsource the
task to an automation service provider that totally rethinks how our objective
is achieved. Suddenly the economies and efficiencies that outsourcing promised
us are a reality again. Now consider how you could apply this internally too.
Instead of delegating a task to a subordinate, how about “outsourcing” it to
them in the empowered fashion – allowing them to figure out how best to achieve
the outcome.
So, consider, what other supposedly “core” competencies
are you holding on to unnecessarily? How do we level up on getting rid of non-core
responsibilities that are keeping us so busy? For instance, are we using the
right tools and processes for the job at hand, or are we using tools and
processes because that is the way things have always been done?
Question everything. Ask why things are
done in a certain way and whether there is a better way to do them. A good
place to start is with the processes and activities your people hate. There is
no reason for the budgeting process to take months. It should take weeks. But
if there is friction in the process it’s going to get bogged down and if your
people hate doing something, there is usually a good reason for that.
And finally, default to transparency, the
antithesis to command-and-control. Transparency encourages ownership,
empowerment, collaboration and buy-in. And these are the things that drive
businesses forward, ensuring the sum of the individual parts contributes to a
greater whole than can be achieved by a dated, top-down, keep people in the
dark, approach.
As published in Accountingweb - August 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment