Disciplined multisourcing, not mindless outsourcing, is the way forward: Gartner

Gartner on Wednesday urged global organisations to adopt a disciplined multisourcing strategy in order to achieve business growth and agility. The research firm warned against compulsive outsourcing and embarking on such programmes almost without thinking.

Gartner went on to add that building a successful sourcing operation requires a new approach that goes beyond the traditional view of outsourcing.

"Companies really need to adopt a new approach, something Gartner calls multisourcing, if they are to continue to realise the benefits of outsourcing in the future," said Linda Cohen, vice president and an analyst at Gartner.

Ms Cohen has co-written Gartner's new book Multisourcing: Moving Beyond Outsourcing to Achieve Growth and Agility with fellow Gartner sourcing expert Allie Young.

According to Gartner, multisourcing is a discipline that takes organisations beyond 'quick-fix' cost cutting to enable capability building, global expansion, increased agility and profitability, and competitive advantage. As such, multisourcing requires a new mind-set and frameworks for communicating, interacting with, and overseeing service relationships both inside and outside the organisation, Gartner said.

However, before companies are ready to adopt this approach, they need to put an end to compulsive outsourcing.

"Chaotic and compulsive outsourcing creates as many challenges as it solves. Furthermore, in many cases, the problems are caused by the immaturity of the organisation's sourcing practices rather than being the fault of the service provider," said Ms Cohen.

"Organisations learn too late that managing external services requires vastly different competencies than managing the same, internally provided services," she added.

According to Gartner, the focal point to a successful multisourcing approach is the creation of a sourcing strategy that is tightly linked to the overall business strategy and constantly monitored by an effective enterprise-wide governance system.

Ms Cohen said that to move beyond outsourcing multisourcing companies need to have an integrated sourcing strategy across all services. Enterprises should focus on creating sourcing governance appropriate to the organisation and service needs.

"Remember that it's about building a network of relationships, not just signing contracts and make sure that in evaluating a providers' performance, one should measure and track the things that directly relate to business outcomes," Ms Cohen added.