Outsourcing Questions Answered
             

The simple answer to the question of “What is too important to outsource?” is “Whatever makes your business unique”. To put it another way, “Whatever gives your business its competitive advantage?” Everything else should be considered non-core and then the question is can I do this function using in house resources better, more cost effectively and with less risk than an external service provider?

It is often wrong to assume that there is more risk getting an external provider to perform certain business activities than keeping them in house. A good analogy is that most people in their personal lives choose to outsource the diagnosis and treatment of life threatening situations to medical practitioners, rather than keeping it in-house, because we rightly believe that an external service provider offers less risk than doing it ourselves.
            
In my experience, the major risks involved in outsourcing critical projects is that the activities that the outsourcer is contracted to perform become disconnected from the critical business outcomes they were originally set up to support. This typically comes about because the traditional outsourcing model as depicted in Figure 1 below has seen enterprises retain responsibility for business outcomes, whilst giving control of the activities that determine these business outcomes to an external outsourcing company.
            
The problem with this approach is that businesses are rarely static and over the typical length of an outsourced project, businesses change and evolve, leading to a disconnect between the outcomes a business requires over time and the activities that an outsourcer is contracted to undertake.

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外包问题的解答

 对于“什么事情重要得不可以外包出去？”这个问题，可以简单地回答“任何能使你的企业与众不同的事情。”换句话说，“任何能使你的企业获得竞争优势的事情。”任何其它事情都应该被认为是非重要的。然后下一个问题就是，我能不能做到这一点：与外部服务提供者相比，把企业内部资源利用得更好、更有效，而且风险更小？

 人们通常错误地认为，请外部服务提供者进行某些企业活动要比由企业内部自己进行承担更大的风险。一个很好的比喻就是，大多数人在个人生活中情愿将威胁生命的病情的诊治工作交由执业医生去做，而不是自己处理，因为我们理所当然地相信，外部服务提供者所呈现的风险比我们自己做的要更小。

 根据我的经验，外包重大项目所涉及到的主要风险是，外包者根据合同所进行的活动与原先设置这些活动所要达到的重大商业结果相脱节。这一情况具有代表性，因为，下图1所描述的传统外包模式认为，各企业在把决定商业结果的活动控制权交给外包公司的同时，这些企业却要对商业结果负责任。

 该种方法存在的问题在于，企业很少是静态的。在项目外包出去的特定时间内，企业会发生变化和发展。这就导致了企业所要求的在一段时间之后出现的结果和外包者根据合同所进行的活动之间发生脱节。