ASSIGNMENT: Strategic Global Outsourcing and Offshoring
Task Details/Description:
Purpose:
The essence of the individual assignment is to apply various theoretical frameworks and other module materials to a scenario where you are acting as an outsourcing consultant for a company. Your credibility as a consultant depends on you being able not only to provide relevant advice, but also to demonstrate that your advice is based on analysis of the lessons learnt (i.e., past experience and knowledge) in similar or related situations. Therefore, when providing advice, you need to support your recommendations with examples of how other companies have dealt with similar issues. Your examples should come from analysis of the case studies included in the module textbook (The Handbook of Global Outsourcing and Offshoring (2015), 3rd edition by Oshri, Kotlarsky and Willcocks) and demonstrate that you understand the situation/issue and how it has been dealt with in each case. You can also include real-life examples from professional media (e.g. Outsourcing Magazine, CIO magazine, Business Week) and official company web- sites.
Scenario:
You are an outsourcing consultant hired by a UK-based Bank. Three months ago, the bank has merged with another, smaller bank that is specializing in online banking services and since the merger has been struggling to integrate IT systems and services between the two banks. Different IT infrastructures, software applications, and inconsistencies in services that the two banks have been offering to their customers created the needs to standardize the IT infrastructure and centralize provision of IT- enabled services (support functions and online banking services) as a matter of strategic priority. Since the Bank does not have enough in-house expertise to devise such transformation, outsourcing is considered the way forward. The Bank has limited experience with outsourcing, therefore it was decided to hire an experienced outsourcing consultant (You).
As a consultant you received the following brief describing background and key characteristics of the two banks that have merged:
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Bank A
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Bank B
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Business model
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Old, traditional bank, with physical offices in large cities in the UK (costs associated with running these offices are high)
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Relatively new bank ("born in the cloud"); is only providing online banking services, no physical offices for the customers to visit. Employees are based in one facility in a brain-park outside Birmingham.
Extensively use marketing to attract customers
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Outsourcing experience
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Limited outsourcing experience. The tendency has always been to do in-house whatever possible. Lately started experimenting with outsourcing some of support functions: last 2 years have been outsourcing accounting and HR management functions.
Occasionally have been using external marketing agency to
advertise new banking products
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Have extensive outsourcing experience, as some of the functions such as IT helpdesk for the bank's employees, data centre, IT infrastructure and maintenance of online banking services have always been outsourced.
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In-house functions
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Data centre, IT helpdesk, banking-product development, application development and maintenance (still have some
legacy applications to support)
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Call centre, advisory, marketing, banking-product development, mortgage portfolio, investment portfolio and risk management
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Personnel for in-house functions
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300 employees Average age 44 years
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50 employees Average age 27
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Operating margins for in-house functions
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5%
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12%
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You need to provide detailed report with your recommendations regarding how should the Bank approach the challenge of standardizing the IT infrastructure and centralizing provision of IT-enabled services.
Your report should include 3 parts, in total 8 recommendations:
Part 1: Decision-making
1) What sourcing models should the Bank consider? Identify potential benefits and risks associated with these models, from the Bank's perspective.
2) What supplier configurations the Bank should consider? How to approach supplier selection?
3) What alternative types of contracts should be considered and why?
4) What knowledge/skills the Bank needs to retain (or develop in-house if don't have now) and why?
Part 2: Transition and ongoing management of the outsourcing relationship.
5) How to design the transition of IT systems and services from the Bank to the supplier(s)?
6) What governance mechanisms should the Bank implement in order to ensure that delivery of the outsourced services meets Bank's expectations?
7) What formal and informal aspects of the relationship with outsourcing supplier(s) should the Bank develop and why?
Part 3: Future outlook
8) Looking ahead, consider potential areas to achieve innovation, and challenges that the Bank may face.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.
Attachment:- Assignment-Strategic-Global-Outsourcing-and-Offshoring.rar