by Ben Schmidt
Mattern is pleased to present a 4-piece series discussing outsourcing suggestions and tactics to ensure your firm has a favorable and efficient outsourcing venture.
This week’s topic concentrates on the need to revisit your contract to stay current with the latest changes and how to go about handling this process.
How not to get in a rut
We’ve found that just like any relationship, even a successful one, things can get into a rut. To further the analogy, a good home-cooked meal with your family every night is great, but occasionally, it’s fun to eat out.
In the outsourcing world, some of that same logic can apply. Providers will give you the services you require and do their best to do them well regularly. But all businesses—your firm and the service provider—change over time and your services must adapt.
Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency
So, every few years it’s good to force your service provider to take a good hard look at your services and reevaluate your solution. It isn’t difficult to see that the contract you signed 5 years ago isn’t necessarily going to work for you today.
You may be thinking, if they’re providing you services day in and day out, shouldn’t they be driving efficiencies the entire time? The short answer is yes, and for the most part, they will look to do what they can. But, you also must put on your cynic hat.
A full reset
Your provider is running a business too. It’s not always in their best interest to drive the hard changes. You need to drive them too. That’s why it’s a great opportunity to do a full reset when the contract term is up. It gives you the opportunity to dig in to how things are running as well as give your provider the opportunity to show what they can do for you.
To view the entire series on outsourcing, check out the rest of the posts:
“Outsourcing Part 2: Open RFP Process to get the Best Outsourcing Deal”
“Outsourcing Part 3: Educate Yourself Before Renewing Your Outsourcing Contract”
“Outsourcing Part 4: I’m Happy with my Service Provider but Can I Do Better?”
