Industry: Pharmaceutical, U.K.-based
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Process: Finance and accounting |
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Function: Credit and collection |
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Buyer source operation location: The U.S.A. |
Key skills/knowledge required
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Staff/Resource Skills
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Language, oral: Very important, U.S. English required |
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Language, written: Important, English required |
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Client industry knowledge: Important, U.S./U.K. pharmaceutical industry knowledge required |
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Client regulatory compliance knowledge: Very important (e.g., must understand/support SarbOx requirements, etc.) |
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Analytical and modeling skills: Limited importance |
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Country/Region Regulatory Environment |
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IP protection: Somewhat important |
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Legal market maturity: Important, must understand U.S. privacy laws |
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Regulatory environment: Very important; local enforcement of relevant U.S. regulatory mandates required |
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Country/Region Infrastructure |
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Physical infrastructure: Somewhat/limited importance |
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Network/telco infrastructure: Very important; require xx% uptime |
While specifics of the metrics will vary significantly not only across the buyer, source country, host country, process and industry, they will also vary depending on the specific buyers’ situation. The key is to develop a standard assessment and framework to use at least as the starting point for the assessment. Structure, always important yet often lacking in outsourcing sourcing efforts, becomes even more critical when more complex services are sourced globally.
Designing a Global Services Management Model
Organizations must also develop a different and more enhanced retained organization, as well as outsourcing management and governance models and processes, as their outsourcing efforts become more globalized. Leading organizations are moving toward managing and governing their outsourcing efforts — local or global — more as an integrated portfolio than a set of discrete transaction and relationships. This is necessary not only because of the growing pervasiveness of outsourcing in support of and enabling core business and IT activities, but also because of the complexities of support with a global services footprint.
One aspect of this global service management model is that it often operates more on a regional than a home office/external delivery location model, as was more common with earlier offshore outsourcing efforts. A buyer organization, for example, might develop a global governance model and team with centralized and standardized financial management and contract administration capabilities. This centralized group would be responsible for strategic/executive level client and service provider facing responsibilities. It would also interface with a variety of captive centers that would exist on a regional level based on where the organization operates (e.g., Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific).
These centers would own three primary activities:
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Perform some amount of internally maintained buyer operations in a shared-services fashion |
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Act as the primary interface in those regions back to the global governance group |
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Interface to and manage any third-party service providers in those regions. In this way, the buyer can enable a degree of specialization as well as proximity to best determine regional needs, select the best countries and locations, and then manage those third-party operations |
Operating under this regional model would also provide the outsourcing buyer greater consistency, economies of scale, and more efficient management operations than managing each relationship with each remote location and service provider from the “home office.” Strong regional centers can also help protect buyer organizations against geopolitical, economic, and natural risks that can have a greater impact on the country/subcountry versus the regional level.
With increasing globalization, buying organizations need to develop and enhance processes, models and frameworks to adequately assess the attractiveness of various global locations and service providers for different types of outsourcing. As the global outsourcing market matures, the ability of the buyer to successfully and accurately identify, source and manage global services sources — across its own diverse global operations — will become an increasingly competitive differentiator.
