Challenging our Outsourcing or Insourcing Thought Processes

I’m frequently asked to support, recover or mentor clients within both the operational public and private sectors as they wrestle with the thorny issue of outsourcing or insourcing their technical, building services, estates and civil term contracts etc. So should we care whether we outsource or insource those primary support business functions? Well to be honest I don’t care, simply because I’m interested mainly in the business driver that’s stimulating the debate in the first place.

You see; as far as I’m concerned the insourcing or outsourcing debate is very often just a smoke screen derived from an inability to manage the former primary business skills with any degree of clarity. Thereafter the debate is frequently raised onto the businesses political agenda with either outsourcing or insourcing cited as being of suitable magnitude to enable the business to recover from either factual or fatuously perceived underperformance on this front.

Exploring the Origins of this Conundrum

As a technically trained hands-on professional I argued fervently against outsourcing in the 1980’s and 90’s when Thatcher’s north American dogma was proactively engaged in decimating both manufacturing and technical training in the UK. Citing that both the business and technical intellect behind outsourcing at the time; was neither balanced nor sustainable in terms of effective service delivery in the longer term. You see; the origins and applied theory of outsourcing in the UK at that time was never driven by fully robust and strategic rationales, because in the greed driven froth of Thatcherism, outsourcing was simply used as a weapon to reduce costs at all cost. For the record it’s important that I record at this point, that never once did I ever argue against the removal of draconian skills demarcation that outsourcing frequently facilitated, simply because I believed then as I do today that my profession is better served by having highly qualified yet flexibly trained technical professionals.

Nevertheless technical training was decimated in the UK as outsourcing became the preferred option of choice on a back drop of mantras such as “the market is saturated with excess skills” or “we don’t need to train anyone there are more than enough surplus skills in the market place to meet our short term needs”. Well the truth of the matter is that we are now starting to pay I very heavy price simply because, we don’t have the best trained and most respected engineers and tradesmen in the world anymore and what’s that is a situation that is only going to worsen from now on year upon year.

Exploring the Outsourcing or Insourcing Reality

Here is the very real and sobering fact that business managers in the UK really need to get to grips with before they embark upon any political sabre rattling in terms of outsourcing or insourcing explorations, i.e. no business can expect true ownership, true responsiveness or to retain any degree of physical asset intellectual property rights from either their outsourced or insourced service providers today. Simply because all technical, building services, estates and civil term support services are provided via short term commitments and hence limited longer term payback potential from the service providers perspective. So as a business you’re simply not going to get a return to the days when engineers and technicians knew your facilities, buildings or process and control systems inside out, simply because there’s no career enhancement, security or longer term payback now for any personal accountability on their part. What’s more never in our modern history has UK plc been so lacking in high calibre technically qualified professionals creating a situation where the current skills gap within the UK is simply staggering. So we all as business managers can forget about acquiring by right; technical service providers who hold the best interests of our facilities at their heart, you see; I’m simply shocked these days by the extremely low calibre of contracts managers, resident engineers, facilities managers, programme managers, technicians, tradesmen etc, etc that I encounter as part of my interim service support and feel incredibly blessed now to have entered my profession at the time that did.

What to do then

Well if you think as a business manager that you change the dynamic of your; technical, building services, estates and civil term support services by simply changing from outsourcing to insourcing or vice-versa then I’m afraid to say you’re very sadly mistaken. You see; the complexity of ensuring that you get the best possible return for your investment is more a matter of (a) understanding your asset base thoroughly, (b) compiling smart effective commercial arrangements and above all (c) building long term and win win relationships with your service providers. There is no such thing as one size fits all when we begin to look at providing smart, efficient and effective technical, building services, estates and civil term support services, the key is qualifying, analysing, testing, validating and managing the entire scope on a minute by minute basis until that is you’re more able to take up more of a back seat. It’s not whether a support function is provided internally or externally that’s important in terms of a business’s overall survival these days, it’s the business intellect that is applied to the management and control of all associated core and non core business support functions, not some form of game play or politically motivated posturing.

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