Making a case for outsourcing

You are a contemporary business manager faced with an all-too-common dilemma: Your available resources have diminished as a result of budget constraints; and yet, the demands for information and services continue to increase at an alarming rate. How will you meet those demands? Outsourcing (referenced hereinafter as the process of contracting with a secondary entity for the purpose of acquiring complementary and/or supplementary products and services) offers a viable solution for meeting the demands of both short-term and long-term program requirements. However, outsourcing should not be considered as the only solution; and may not, in fact, be appropriate for a given requirement. This paper offers a candid examination of the varied aspects of outsourcing geospatial information services, as well as a discussion of the organizational implications that may be encountered when leveraging this resource. Identified and discussed are the mechanisms considered to be critical to the implementation of a successful outsourcing program. The discussion will also focus on the typical root causes of failures in an outsourcing program, and will identify strategies used to combat those potential failures.