I live and breathe the outsourcing industry, and yet even I am sometimes confused when in conversation with another industry aficionado. We just don’t seem to speak the same language. Every statement seems to require some level of translation merely to level-set.

No one would debate that English is a marvelous language. It is colorful, exacting, and the lingua franca for business and entertainment. Depending on the source referenced, English is said to have between 4.7 million and 10 million terms, as opposed to German’s 1.9 million and a measly 1 million in French. But does the outsourcing industry have to drive up the number of terms in order to top a few million? Must we live with a disparity in definition similar to the way we tolerate the words for the back end of a car — the English boot and the American trunk? Is the terminology a product of sometimes not so clever marketing spin to differentiate one provider’s proposition from the pack?

I recently reviewed the Web after one of those crazy conversations where definitions got in the way of rational discourse. And, unfortunately, as a result of my search, I found no terms of art other than that of outsourcing — which we all generally agree means that some defined set of business tasks are given to an external third party to perform to a specification for a certain period in exchange for agreed compensation.  

My research levied perplexity upon complexity on what should have yielded a common series of definitions. See if you can sort through my findings.

Since when did outsourcing become “traditional?”
Well, the world is moving fast if an industry less than 25 years old by the most extravagant of antiquarians can be termed “traditional.” Yet, according to some definitions on the Web, “traditional” means lift and shift, and is defined by some pundits as “slightly better, slightly cheaper, and slightly faster,” for which the major agent of change is to take work offshore. So if there is such a term as traditional outsourcing, it begs the question: What is “contemporary” outsourcing? I could not find that term, as hard as I tried. Go figure. It seems that traditional outsourcing is used as the antonym for “transformational” outsourcing, which, according to my research, is the outsourcing version of tofu — absorbs whatever spin the proponent cares to give it.

Will the industry put me out of this misery?

Let’s agree on a glossary that clearly and succinctly describes the arsenal of global services tools, and what is likely to be the result. Here are just a few suggestions:

Take towers and bundles out of the vocabulary. If delivery encompasses more than one corporate function, such as HR or finance and accounting, let’s call it what it is — multifunction

The hierarchy is clear — functions include processes; processes are made up of tasks. Let’s call order to cash a process. The outsourcing of more than one process is single; add purchase to pay and the scope becomes multiprocess within the realm of finance and accounting. Add HR processes to the mix and the deal is multifunction

Forget about transformational outsourcing. Companies make a conscious decision to use outsourcing — whether  external or internal — to change the way they perform or organize or locate work, which may result in a change in financial performance, or speed to market. Outsourcing is merely one tool in the arsenal, not an excuse to complicate the change process with simultaneous process, technology and delivery modifications with which very few companies can cope well. Let’s concede that outsourcing can encompass a change in process and technology in the same package, either simultaneously or in sequence, but admit that there is no evidence that this scope in and of itself is any more “transformational” than the (traditional) approach to outsourcing.