News

« News Home

Parity warns: outsourcing mismatch wasting time and money

June 20, 2005

Nearly 40% of UK businesses do not yet outsource, although they recognise outsourcing as a way to free up resources, take advantage of external expertise and save time and money.

This is according to a survey[1] by Parity, the IT services company. It found that 33% of professionals see outsourcing as a way to draft in expertise not found internally, 23% said it saves time and resources and 24% said it saves them money. However, only 61% said their company currently outsources one or more business processes.

Of those whose companies are engaged in outsourcing agreements, the most popular areas to outsource were IT (20.93%) and payroll (20.35%).

“Outsourcing is not new. Whilst it is encouraging to hear that employees recognise its benefits, it is clear that businesses need to take outsourcing to the next level, thinking more creatively about what can be outsourced,” said Heather Moore, managing director at Parity Business Solutions.

The survey went on to find that, in an ideal world, people would like to outsource many mundane tasks, such as answering the phone and responding to email. Reporting was the most popular choice for a task that people would happily pass on – 20 per cent selected this option. This is a key example of a daily chore that could be removed with the right technology or outsourcing, but is not prioritised for outsourcing by businesses.

“There is no reason for outsourcing to be restricted to IT support and payroll. It is now a proven business model, so organisations could be saving time and money by outsourcing anything from HR to application management,” commented Heather. “In doing this, they can realise the rewards of business process outsourcing.”