How has your company been affected by or overcome challenges on outsourcing projects?

The November BMP featured publication, The Black Book of Outsourcing by Douglas Brown and Scott Wilson, includes the following statement relative to the challenges of outsourcing (but not necessarily offshoring) business processes:

"Outsourcing can be a complicated undertaking, for management, job seekers, and entrepreneurs alike, as revealed in a survey of companies and organizations buying outsourcing services:
- 53% reported they have outsourcing challenges because their companies lack project management skills (i.e., they have no experienced outsourcing governance).
- 58% reported they lack a good process for specifying the work.
- 48% said they did not have the right metrics for measuring performance."

Have you experienced the same conditions? What strategies have worked well and what lessons have you learned when your tactics did not generate the desired outcome?


Statistic source details: Julie Giera, "Outsourcing Management: Align Management Techniques to the Outsourcing model IT View and Business View Planning Assumption," September 30, 2003, www.forrester.com/Cart?addDocs=32555. Three Forrester reports were used to compile this information: the above mentioned report and Stephanie Moore, William Martorelli, Adam Brown, "Midyear 2004 Update: North American Offshore Outsourcing" July 14, 2004, also Stephanie Moore, "IT Trends 2004: Offshore Outsourcing," December 17, 2003.