随着快速发展和不断变化的市场的最新趋势---许多组织开始转向外包作为解决方案。这使得一家公司可以花更多的时间来适应长期的变化，而外包合作伙伴则负责处理非核心业务。
外包非核心活动有相当大的好处，包括：
· 让内部员工有更多的时间专注于业务的核心活动。
· 提供获得专家的能力，高质量的服务，不需要员工培训和运营成本，投资于新技术等。
· 允许提高外包活动的生产率和效率。
· 精简业务。
· 更快适应变化。
· 减少了与团队管理有关的问题。
· 业务费用总额减少。
· 在麦肯锡的文章 “通过采购外包创造价值”供应商选择、合同谈判、规格管理等外包战略采购活动的演变也越来越普遍。为了使战略采购外包取得成功，麦肯锡强调了三个基本步骤：
1. 只有在这样做才能提供明确价值时，才能外包战略购买。
2. 对这个价值的来源有一个准确的理解，以及如何替代和解锁它们。
3. 选择有能力解决这些价值来源的外包伙伴，然后定义和实施协议，最大限度地利用潜在的节约。
什么是外包？
外包是寻找外部第三方供应商来管理和提供服务的过程。它通常用于非核心活动，当一家企业可能不具备产品或服务的内部技能或专业知识时(这通常与缺乏临界规模有关)，或者需要内部投资，而这种投资不能被优先考虑，或者可能需要迅速获得一些产品或服务。外包允许根据需要扩大或缩小规模。
间接外包是企业维持和支持自身业务所需的商品和服务。
直接外包是指与商业产品或服务有关的货物和服务。
外包的价值？
在一个组织创建了一份潜在外包类别的候选名单之后，它应该决定是否有必要这样做。为了做出决定，组织必须准确地知道外包如何能够在某一类别中提供价值，并选择合适的供应商和交易来利用这种价值。麦肯锡(McKinsey)表示，战略买家--无论是内部采购还是外包--可用的价值杠杆可分为四大核心类别：
· 聚集效应
通过将来自多个客户的需求捆绑在一起，外包供应商通常可以协商出更好的价格，特别是在公司自己的支出太小或不经常的领域，而无法在市场上占据强势地位。然而，为了获取总量汇总的好处，公司必须确保自己的规格和交付要求与外包供应商的其他客户的规格和交付要求完全相似，并确保它们愿意接受供应商的采购决定，例如向成本较低的供应商过渡。
· 专业知识
他们的规模使得外包供应商能够提供广泛的专业知识和实时市场洞察力。获得领先的专业知识不仅在组织没有自己的专业知识的类别中提供直接的好处，还可以帮助他们从最好的方面学习，并在其他领域提高自己的能力。
· 劳动套利
外包供应商提供规模、标准化流程和低成本的组合，旨在降低采购活动的劳动力成本。然而，由于劳动套利往往在交易采购活动中带来重大好处，战略性购买的性质可能会限制所实现的节约。
· 需求和规格管理
在大多数成功的采购机构中，总节省额的40-50%来自内部因素的变化，如优化规格以尽量减少总拥有成本或控制需求。从长期来看，这种节流也往往是最可持续的。获取这些好处需要采购功能和业务的其他部分之间密切和持续的协作，这对于外包供应商来说可能更难。
麦金锡制造与供应链业务合伙人伊利亚娜·菲利亚诺娃（Iliana Filyanova）认为，采购外包涉及一系列活动，从战略到交易。“战略采购包括从市场分析和品类战略发展到战略采购和承包的源到合同（S2C）活动，”Filyanova解释说。外包S2C可以让公司获得他们内部可能没有的专业知识、能力和规模。交易性采购包括日常的请购和支付活动（R2P），如采购订单的创建和管理、发票支付和供应商管理。事务性采购的外包已经变得相当普遍，并可以通过流程标准化、自动化和熟练工人的可用性来提高流程效率和合规性。”然而，尽管采购外包被认为是许多组织的一个有吸引力的选择，菲利亚诺娃也意识到所涉及的风险。“如果公司不适当地界定外包协议的范围和激励措施，它们就有可能在中长期内失去价值。”菲利亚诺娃说。“例如，如果供应商主要关注优化商业杠杆——从谁到来源，以什么价格——而不解决需求和规格杠杆，40-50%的价值可能会丢失。为了有效地影响需求管理杠杆-什么和多少购买-供应商将需要能够管理组织内的变化，并有有效的客户关系，以影响规格和消费决策。
CIPS集团首席执行官马尔科姆·哈里森(MalcolmHarrison)理解采购外包带来的一些挑战。哈里森解释说：“理解你想要做的事情背后的基本原理可能是最具挑战性的部分，但在这个过程中还有很多其他的障碍。”“重要的是质疑是否有足够的内部专门知识，或额外的预算，以带来额外的支持或创新思维。”另一个挑战是确保高级团队和首席执行官参与进来，以确保项目团队能够高效和有效地与外包资源进行跨功能的工作，包括强有力的沟通联系。
“一旦订立了外包供应合同，就必须管理这项合同。外包通常涉及提供复杂服务的合同，为了有效地管理这一服务，应保留了解这项服务的复杂性的资源。合同管理不善以及资源不足和数据不足经常被认为是外包合同未能实现预期价值的原因。“
随着新冠肺炎在全球范围内对世界各地企业的影响，负责采购执行咨询成员方案的高级主任Nic Walden和Hackett集团副校长Melani Flores反思了这一大流行病对采购的影响。“很明显，不同行业的影响是不同的，但最初的影响主要是运营的，”Flores解释说。“重要的是采购新产品，如PPE，以确保工厂能够继续在安全的条件下运作。”这除了对需求变化作出反应外，还与供应商合作，寻找受这一流行病影响的产品或服务的替代品。“沃尔登认为，新冠肺炎大流行与2008年的金融危机有很大不同。沃尔登解释说：“尽管这是一场可怕的危机，但采购实际上得益于新冠肺炎，并被提升到一个更具战略意义的角色。”“然而，现在就说这种流行病在不久的将来会对采购外包产生多大影响还为时尚早。”
考虑到行业的未来，哈里森认为供应链必须保持警惕，并建立韧性，以防范未来几年可能出现的第二波冠状病毒或任何其他流行病。“对供应链的冲击确实会发生，比如火山和海啸，而熟练的、最新的专业人员都知道这一点。大流行可能是最具挑战性的，但风险一直存在于我们身上，受过训练的专业人员明白，韧性是保持组织运转的关键。”
CIPS-如何建立供应链弹性:
-优先考虑高风险来源，深入探讨对你的业务的影响。
-任何从一个国家单一采购的企业都需要调查这是否是最安全的战略。
-审核几层以外的供应商，特别侧重于确定可能在财务上不再可行的关键供应商。
-确保你对供应链中发生的事情有真正的透明度。
-评估投资于提供更好数据的系统的好处，这不仅是为了提高效率和作出更快的决定，而且也是为了提高透明度。
-使用各种预测工具，并与“实地”供应商发展关系。
-甚至与竞争对手结成联盟，以实现所有人的双赢局面。
-确保你有必要的能力和培训/发展你的职能，以满足增加的业务需求。
原文:
With keeping up with the latest trends of a fast-paced and constantly evolving market both difficult and expensive, many organisations are beginning to turn to outsourcing as a solution. This allows a company to spend more time adapting their operations for long-term change, while the outsourcing partner handles the non-core activities.
There are considerable benefits to outsourcing non-core activities, including:
Making more time for internal staff to focus on the business’s core activities.
Providing the ability to access expert, high quality services without the need for staff training and operating costs, investment in new technologies etc.
Allowing increased productivity and efficiency in outsourced activities.
Streamlining of operations.
Faster adaptation to change.
Decreased issues with team management.
Reduced overall operational costs.
In McKinsey’s article ‘Creating value through procurement outsourcing’, the evolution of outsourcing strategic procurement activities, such as supplier selection, contract negotiation or specification management, is shown to have become more widespread. To make strategic procurement outsourcing a success, McKinsey has highlighted three basic steps:
Outsource strategic buying only in categories where doing so offers clear value.
Have an exact understanding of the sources of that value and how to unlock them.
Choose outsourcing partners that have the capabilities to address those sources of value, then define and implement agreements that maximise the chance of capturing potential savings.
What is outsourcing?
Outsourcing is the process of finding an external third-party supplier to take on the management and provision of a service. It is generally used for non-core activities and used when a business may not have the skills or the expertise in-house for a product or service, which is often linked with a lack of critical scale, or an in-house investment is needed which can’t be prioritised or may need to get something to market quickly. Outsourcing allows for scaling up or scaling down according to need.
Indirect outsourcing is goods and services a business needs to maintain and support its own operations. Direct outsourcing is for goods and services relating to the business product or service.
What is the value?
After an organisation has created a shortlist of potential categories for outsourcing, it should decide whether it is neccessary. In order to decide, organisations must know exactly how outsourcing can deliver value in a certain category and pick the right provider and deal to harness that value. According to McKinsey, the value levers available to strategic buyers - whether in-house or outsourced - fall into four core categories:
Volume aggregation
By bundling demands from multiple clients, outsourcing providers can often negotiate better prices, particularly in areas where the company’s own spend is too small or infrequent to give it a strong position in the market. To capture the benefits of volume aggregation, however, companies must ensure their own specifications and delivery requirements are sufficiently similar to those of the outsourcing provider’s other clients and that they are willing to accept the provider’s sourcing decisions, such as transitioning to lower cost suppliers.
Expertise
Their scale allows outsourcing providers to offer deep expertise and real-time market insights across a broad range of categories. Access to leading expertise doesn’t only provide direct benefits in categories where organisations don’t have their own expertise, it can also help them learn from the best and improve their own capabilities in other areas.
Labour arbitrage
Outsourcing providers offer a combination of scale, standardised processes and low-cost locations designed to decrease the labor cost of sourcing activities. With labor arbitrage often delivering significant benefits in transactional sourcing activities, however, the nature of strategic buying can limit the savings achieved.
Demand and specification management
In most successful purchasing organisations, 40-50% of the total savings achieved come from changes in internal factors, such as optimising specifications to minimise total cost of ownership or controlling demand. Such savings also tend to be the most sustainable over the long-term. Capturing the benefits requires close and ongoing collaboration between the purchasing function and other parts of the business, which could be harder for an outsourced provider.
Iliana Filyanova, Partner for McKinsey’s Manufacturing & Supply Chain practice believes procurement outsourcing spans a range of activities, from strategic to transactional. “Strategic procurement includes Source-to-contract (S2C) activities from market analysis and category strategy development to strategic sourcing and contracting,” explains Filyanova. “Outsourcing of S2C can give companies access to expertise, capabilities, and scale they may not have in-house. Transactional procurement includes routine requisition-to-pay activities (R2P), such as purchase order creation and management, invoice payment, and vendor management. Outsourcing of transactional procurement has become quite common and can render higher process efficiency and compliance through standardisation of processes, automation, and the availability of skilled workers.” However, despite procurement outsourcing being seen as an appealing option to many organisations, Filyanova is also mindful of the risks involved. “If companies do not appropriately define the scope and incentives of an outsourcing agreement, they risk losing value over the mid- and long term,” says Filyanova. “For example, if the provider focuses mainly on optimising commercial levers - from whom to source, at what prices - and does not address demand and specification levers, 40-50% of the value may be lost. To effectively influence demand management levers - what and how much to buy - a provider will need to be able to manage change within an organisation and have effective client relationships to influence specifications and consumption decisions. This often appears to be challenging for an outsider, resulting in quickly plateauing savings.”
Malcolm Harrison, CEO of CIPS Group, understands some of the challenges that come with procurement outsourcing. “Understanding the rationale behind what you’re trying to do is probably the most challenging part, but there’s plenty of other obstacles along the way,” explains Harrison. “It’s important to question whether there is sufficient expertise in-house, or additional budget available to bring in additional support or innovative thinking in a new project. Another challenge is ensuring that senior teams and the CEO are on board to ensure the project team can work cross-functionally with the outsourced resource efficiently and effectively, including strong communication links.
“Once a contract for an outsourced supply has been established then this contract has to be managed. Outsourcing often involves a contract for provision of a complex service and to manage this effectively a resource should be retained which understands the complexities of this service. Poor contract management as well as insufficient resources and poor data are frequently cited as reasons for outsourcing contracts not delivering the anticipated value.”
With the worldwide disruption of COVID-19 impacting businesses across the world, Nic Walden, Senior Director, Procurement Executive Advisory Membership Programmes and Melani Flores, Associate Principal at The Hackett Group reflects on the impact to procurement in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. “It’s clear that across different industries the impact is different, but the initial impact has been primarily operational,” explains Flores. “It’s been important to source new goods, such as PPE, to ensure that factories can continue to operate in safe conditions. This is in addition to responding to changes in demand and working with suppliers to look for substitutes for products or services that have been affected by the pandemic.” Walden believes that the COVID-19 pandemic is very different to the financial crisis of 2008. “Although it’s been a terrible crisis for everyone involved, procurement has actually benefited from COVID-19 and has been elevated to a more strategic role,” explains Walden. “However, it’s too early to say how much of an effect the pandemic will have on procurement outsourcing in the near future.”
CIPS - How to build supply chain resilience
- Prioritise high risk sources and do a deep dive into the implications for your business.
- Any businesses single-sourcing from one country need to investigate whether this is the safest strategy.
- Interrogate your supply chains beyond the first few tiers with a particular focus on identifying critical suppliers who may no longer be financially viable.
- Ensure you have real transparency of what is going on in your supply chains
- Evaluate the benefits of investing in systems which provide better data not just to improve efficiency and take faster decisions but also to give greater transparency.
- Use a mix of forecasting tools and develop relationships with suppliers ‘on the ground’.
- Look to form alliances even with competitors to reach a win-win situation for all.
- Ensure you have the necessary capabilities and train / develop your function to meet the increased business requirements.
With the future of the industry in mind, Harrison believes the supply chain must remain vigilant and build resilience to guard against a potential second wave of the coronavirus or any other pandemics over the coming years. “Shocks to supply chains do happen such as volcanoes and tsunamis, and skilled, up-to-date professionals know this. The pandemic may have been the most challenging of all, but risk has always been with us and trained professionals understand resilience is key to keeping organisations afloat,” affirms Harrison. “Any businesses single-sourcing from one country should be one of the first steps as so many were caught out when the virus first hit China.”
作者：Sean Galea-Pace，广东省采购与供应链协会编译
