We hear all the time about relationship and performance issues between the client and the service provider. That's because service management and governance practices are relatively immature. At least that's what our findings point to.
TPI conducted market research through its Governance Excellence Program and found out the following:
-
Sixty percent of the teams deployed to manage outsourced contracts had no prior outsourcing experience
-
Forty percent of the respondents said they provided no initial training to the team staffed for managing the outsourced contracts
- Only 20 percent of the respondents felt that sufficient training was provided to the outsourcing management team.
While outsourced relationships have certainly grown in size and volume over the years, we find that there's a significant lag in maturity of managing relationships and contracts to results. There's also considerable loss of anticipated value from such contracts simply on account of the fact that no one is managing the contract to performance and expectations tightly.
Institutionalization of strong service management and governance disciplines and processes appears to be a "past due" requirement. The pain can only increase as time elapses given the increasing momentum and growth of the outsourcing industry. To fill the void, we, at TPI, have started offering ongoing "Governance Services" to our clients - a service that implements the discipline leveraging the intellectual property of the firm and executes the processes on behalf of the clients using an automated tool.
The onus is on individual industry participants to take action. Act fast and prevent further loss of value.
