Outsourcing: Reduced Costs – Reliefs in Taxes and Tariffs, that’s it? 
In former times, cost reduction and reliefs in taxes and tariffs were the main reasons to decide for sourcing partners. With unskilled sourcing partners, however, projects sometimes were totally mismanaged and produced no results.

Nowadays, the cost factor is still relevant. In addition, however, the flexibility and especially the professional competence of specialized sourcing providers prove to be the key for successful projects. Customer satisfaction analyses show that outsourcing partners do a great deal better than in former times.

Imagine you plan a gathering with all your friends and colleagues. You decide to hire an event catering that serves delicious, seasonal dishes and cares about the showstoppers to cast the best light on you as the host. Your conclusion: The guys from the catering service exactly DO know how a memorable celebration should look like

Outsourcing: Win-Win Cooperation?
This simple example shows that outsourcing projects may generate win-win cooperation. It is not always that easy, though. In order to make the win-win situation come true, both the company and the outsourcing partner have to contribute a considerable share. Both sides have to take a step towards one another, “in order to engender a peer-to-peer relationship”, as Mr Sebastian Pöhlmann states. Sebastian Pöhlmann is responsible for the international business development at Specific-Group. “One can imagine that especially in the field we are acting in, it is the task of the outsourcing provider to produce the outward confidence, to inspire the contracting company to delegate the responsibility.

Above all, outsourcing has to be a people’s business that relies on the ability and the efforts of the employees.”

Bridgeheads
The close cooperation between the contracting company and the outsourcing provider is vital for the successful implementation of projects. To ensure this, Specific-Group relies also on subsidiaries in the markets they are acting in.

“The people on the spot have proved to be important bridgeheads to the contracting companies”, Sebastian Pöhlmann reports.

“Obviously, a team of skilled members, equipped with the right methods is essential. We put great emphasis on agile software development methods. Our teams, however, are flexible enough to implement tools of waterfall based project management methods as well.”

Diversified knowledge
Besides the IT knowledge, the members of the teams must have in-depth knowledge of the sectors they are working for. “Technology and department knowledge is converging, it is not sufficient anymore to provide mere IT consulting. People with this diversified knowledge are scarce and therefore we hire people from different parts of the world.”

Specific-group is totally aware that the tasks for each team member are getting more challenging. Employees have to adapt to ever changing situations and different personalities of the contracting company. As a matter of course, Specific-Group supports its teams by providing the knowledge and the skills that are necessary and keeps an eye on the employees’ satisfaction, and… it seems to work:

Exciting challenges
 “…Exciting challenges,…Managers that keep their doors open and provide a fair feedback…, Healthy work-life-balance is not a mere catchphrase…” these are just some of the statements of former and actual staff members of Specific-Group on kununu.com.

On the other hand, it is obvious that in teams with different cultural background communication is not always that easy, especially when it comes to human interactions and expression of feelings.

Flexible working times
“The number of models of flexible working times is increasing while the duration of service is decreasing. It is definitely essential to provide challenging opportunities for the employees and generate projects that are able to keep up the interest. Our teams are colourful mixtures of nationalities; the spirit of having the same goal, however, lets boundaries become blurred”, Mr Pöhlmann states.

It seems that once again a quote of Steve Jobs proves to be true: “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”

This team of people have to consist equally of members of the contracting company and the service providing company, all members having the same aim: The solution of the problem.

Specific-Group provides IT services, especially in the financial services sector. With more than 200 employees spread over companies in 5 countries Specific-group offers flexible shoring models for each request.