TLMT341 Procurement Outsourcing Strategy

It is a concept that has evolved from a manufacturing perspective to a strategic perspective, which views the concept as a way for organizations to focus and be more competitive. The basic premise of outsourcing is that a specialist organization can perform a particular service more efficiently than can internal operations because a specialist organization has an inherent advantage in producing and delivering a service. Superior technology, management skills, or economies of scale may contribute to this perception. The type of sourcing relationship depends on whether a long-term or short-term need exists. To save funds used for benefits for regular employees, temporary workers are hired. In this case, the organization (outsourcer) provides all necessary resources except the workers, who are provided by the vendor. For long-term services, the vendor has full responsibility for delivering the service; the outsourcer provides only a liaison.

Procurement is a collaborative work between the supplier and the client of the products or services being supplied. This report will take some critical anlysis of article findings such as Razavi et al. (2016) argued that supply chain relationship is built on trust, communication, interdependence, and cooperation between the involved parties. The authors have used a model of Structural Equation Modelling to explain the relationship between the supplier and the customer. Amemba et al. (2013) sought to explore how public institutions and especially the government can be affected by the challenges inherent in their procurement practices. Among the challenges identified by the researchers include ICT adoption, complex procurement process, and ethics and supply relationship

The state of Virginia/ Northrop Grumman outsourcing case demonstrated that outsourcing requires strong management of the vendor, clear lines of ownership, and review of performance metrics to ensure there are no breaches of contract (Lebeaux, 2009). The organization needs to ensure that they have an individual that can provide oversight and management for the outsourcing company, otherwise deadlines will be missed and performance will be

It is quite challenging to discuss about procurement management without stating the importance of its strategies. There are four main basic procurement strategies that serve different functions within a procurement management. To begin with, a “Partnership” strategy focuses mainly on constructing mutual commitment in long term relationship with suppliers. While a “Secure Supply” strategy aims to secure short and long term supply while reducing risk from suppliers. In addition, a “Category Management and E-Procurement solutions” serves as a tool to reduce logistic complexity, improve operational efficiency, and attempts to reduce the number of suppliers. Lastly, a “Competive Bidding” strategy emphasizes on obtaining the “Best Deal” for short term transactions with suppliers.(van weele) Each of these four strategies involves a unique purchasing methodology, which implies that the complexity is embedded in an individual strategic implication. Therefore, it requires different tools to accomplish the specific strategical characteristics. A business entity may need to support and execute procurement decisions with other strategic apparatus with analytical methods, including market analysis, uncertainty analysis, price forecasting, supplier relationship and along with others.(Harvard)

(Pearlson,2001). Cost is the most important factor when the enterprise make a decision of insourcing or outsourcing. If the company produce the products or service on its own, there are costs more than producing, which can include investments of researching, training, and equipment.The investment of insourcing can be a lot more than the outsourcing because of economies of scale.Outsourcing providers can gain significant savings from economies of scale, which client companies usually can’t get on its own(Pearlson,2001). This benefit could be magnified in IT outsourcing.In the case of Project Harmony, as a food company, Campbell soup was a lack of sufficient scale within their own IS departments and IT technical expertise, so the saving between outsourcing and insourcing was significant.To conclude, cost reducing is the first of core benefits of outsourcing due to economies of

Timely knowledge regarding their supply chain helps the company in resolving the problem, which ultimately leads in attracting customers and gaining competitive advantage. It is observed that Tesco can easily get the competitive advantage by considering the element of collaboration at the time of formulating their strategies particularly regarding the supply chain activities for the reason that it would assist them to perform their activities in a more effective manner. However, it is a prior duty of the top officials of Tesco to encourage the collaboration technique in order to enhance the productivity and efficiency of their business operations to the utmost level. It is noticed that most of the large-scale organisations are quite keen to consider all possible measures through which they can easily enhance their business operations without any problem just because of the serious competition in the retail market. Furthermore, it is found that the Tesco supplier network and Supplier innovation group help the organisation to approach the right supplier for right place that ultimately improve their logistics operations and differentiate them from their competitors (Jaffeux & Wieser,

25. What are the merits of outsourcing the performance of certain value chain activities as opposed to performing them in-house? Under what circumstances does outsourcing make good strategic sense?

The vendors are investing in their employees by various training programs on different technologies. This gives a chance for the vendor to provide the outsourcing services to a company with the help of the well trained employees who are ready to work on the projects. Before outsourcing some of its products and services to a third part vendor, the company has to analyze all the factors that might result from the outsourcing decision, the advantages and disadvantages of the company both in short term and long term due to outsourcing. According to Aubuchon, outsourcing some of its products can be a good thing for a company and the judgment to outsource the services must not only based on the cost factor, but the company has to take all other significant factors into consideration (Aubuchon, 2014).

In business, the outsourcing involves the contracting out of a business process to another party. In this case, USTech has outsourced its product to TaiSource. As a result, USTech enjoys TaiSource’s world-class research, design, and lower manufacturing costs. USTech gets the benefits of direct sourcing in China without the hassle of coordinating it. But this behavior has some inherent limitations. USTech is afraid that TaiSource could reap its confidential information and start its new brand in Mainland China. Therefore, a global enterprise should weigh the pros and cons of its outsourcing strategy.

The origins of many outsourcing endeavors begin as part of a strategic planning session during a period of lean years for a company or anticipation of a prolonged impending down-cycle. This is a time-period when the organization does not have a viable competitive product to offer in the market or the

Different companies or organization uses outsourcing by transferring portions of work to outside suppliers rather than completing it internally to reduce cost. Outsourcing is very effective if used properly and gives a company short term or long-term effect. Outsourcing is currently relatively popular with both profit-seeking and not-for-profit organizations. Outsourcing can depend on many factors. Today, some of the world’s largest companies and biggest employers are the product of this outsourcing trend: Sodexo in food service; IBM in information technology; Wackenhut, now known as G4S, in security services; UPS and FedEx in logistics; Foxconn and Lenovo in computer manufacturing. Instead of the Rouge plant, the new model of industrial organization has become Nike, which outsources the making of all of its shoes, clothing and sporting equipment so it can concentrate on design and marketing. Total number of U.S. jobs offshore outsourced in 2013 was 2,637,239 and most of them were in India and the job description was manufacturing.

Outsourcing is the contracting out of an internal business process to a third party organization. The term "outsourcing" became popular in the United States near the turn of the 21st century.(6) Outsourcing is big business today even for small businesses. Like every business decision we are faced with the advantages as well as the disadvantages of relocating part or all of a business. Outsourcing is one of the fastest growing trends in business as large-scale organizations have latched onto outsourcing due to the almost immediate savings and quality improvement. (1)

Managing the relationship between various parties is becoming crucial as the industry is moving from fragmented and adversarial ways of working. Under less- adversarial procurements routes and contractual arrangements such as partnering, it is essential that the parties extend commonly beneficial objectives and a high level of commitment, corporation and trust. When quarrels do occur, without

One of the most important forces of outsourcing is that organizations do not have gain the needed and required sources internally. And they have a difficulty in integrating and attracting expertise, where outsources own capabilities on a global level, modern technologies and other required resources. Also, by outsourcing the cost of keeping employees and consultants for short term is reduced. Furthermore, outsourcers are able to offer better career opportunities for business IT staff if they decide to transit to the outsourcer. As the manager of BP Company viewed the main reason of BP Company outsourcing is that "it has become increasingly apparent that service companies provide us with technical skills and ideas that we could no longer develop inside our own company" (Kremis, 2006).

Competition is fierce in today’s world and a business must work smarter versus harder. Many big name chain stores have achieved success but none like that of Wal-Mart. The following is a review of the Wal-Mart customer and his or her expectations of its procurement process. An additional review of how these expectations affect Wal-Mart’s strategies, policies, and procedures at both the domestic and global level is also included.