I was talking to an ex colleague the other day, who now is a part of a shared services set up of a leading global multi business MNC. What he said was quite interesting- having adopted a decentralized approach to outsourcing in its early days, the company had found itself with nearly a 1000 vendors. For the last 2 years, the management had brought it down to a few hundreds with the mandate to bring it to under a 100. Not only that- there was a conscious move to take back into the company key areas which the company felt would be strategic, rather than outsource it.

This trend is interesting and in some ways unintuitive, especially at a time when several captives are trying to sell out.

My takeaway was that, the scale and also existing thinking and needs of business all play a part in the outsourcing strategy that a company may adopt.
While generalizations are good to understand the big picture, they do not sometimes help understand on the ground realities.

I would welcome views and experiences of other companies.

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