“Your Mess, for Less!”

Here’s a pithy description of how some companies so mess up their outsourcing efforts:

"Most organisations have practised what we call 'ad hoc, compulsive outsourcing'," said Linda Cohen, a managing vice president of [Gartner] who spoke today at the Outsourcing & IT Services Summit in Sydney. "They say: 'There’s a problem with this function, let's outsource it.' We call this approach 'Your mess, for less!'"

The problem, she said, according to this article on ZDNet Australia, is that, "Over time you can end up with various troublesome functions each outsourced under different arrangements. You get a hodge-podge of dis-integrated services."

The client company has relinquished control to the service providers for those functions, rather than driving the strategy itself.