Today outsourcing, tomorrow insourcing?
My first experiences with sourcing dates some eight years or so back when a large telecom operator bought way overpriced 3G licences and had to sell off non-core activities to evade a chapter 11 situation. One day Joe was a colleague of John and the next day John was suddenly the ‘client’ which did not even offer Joe a cup of coffee anymore unless Joe (now suddenly ‘one of the many suppliers we can pick from’) would agree to a 20% price cut for the same services they delivered the day before. This example of ‘outsourcing’ (‘throw-over-the-fense’ describes it better) was one of the first I was involved in (as a non-executive) and learned me a thing or two about how not to do it. The funny thing in this example is however that the activities that were then considered non-core are now being considered core. Even worse, the same telecom provider has an active acquisition strategy in the area it outsourced less then ten years ago. In other words, is outsourcing just another business cycle? ...