Repatriate, Re-compete or Renegotiate?

In a recent interview with the COO of a California-based bank, as part of an application strategy engagement, he asked if Alsbridge had any data on the number of contracts where the client repatriated all the services. The COO’s original inquiry actually raised a much broader set of questions. So our initial question set was how many deals were:

• Repatriated in their entirety?
• Renegotiated before the end of their term?
• Re-competed before the end of their term?

The key was to find recent case studies with enough data to categorize the relationships and discover what really happened. That led us to the Outsourcing Center (http://www.outsourcing-center.com/), which evaluates over 100 relationships a year as part of the selection process for the Outsourcing Excellence Awards. One portion of the judgment process for this award is an hour long, structured interview by the Outsourcing Excellence Awards Editor, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, who asks each applicant the same set of questions.

With her help, we identified 65 companies she interviewed during 2008 through 2010 that were involved in either a repatriation, re-competition or renegotiation. The 65 companies had a total of 81 buyer/provider relationships that fell into one of the three categories.

As we began reviewing the information on each relationship, it was clear there were more than three categories, which ultimately morphed into six:

• Repatriate all the services
• Repatriate part of the services
• Re-compete some or all the services in the original scope
• Renegotiate the contract before the end of the term
• Renew or renegotiate at the end of term
• Terminate the existing relationship early, then re-compete or repatriate

The facts uncovered several "AH HA's!" about the keys to success in outsourcing and the truth about the three R's of outsourcing.

For further details download the complete whitepaper below.