Outsourcing: Its All About Relationships

By ara c. trembly

Not many years ago as a single guy, I was a devotee of the online dating scene, scouring the personal ads regularly for just that right combination of brains, beauty and bodaciousness in a woman. The prize, my enduring happiness.

You’d think that someone with my technology background would just enter a set of variables and, voil?, there would appear my ideal mate, but if you’ve ever tried getting the truth from a profile in a personal ad, you know it is a matter for broad interpretation at best.

For example, one woman enthusiastically described herself as a “petite” redhead of approximately my vintage (photo suspiciously missing). The in-person meeting, however, revealed a pleasant, very round lady (admittedly short of stature) who looked disturbingly like my mom. Not good.

And the problems with women didn’t end with the initial confirmation that we were both–at least for the most part–telling the truth about our basic stuff. As a single parent, I was very much concerned that anyone I dated be comfortable with having my then preteen son around at times. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded when one lady assured me that would be no problem at all–since she was devoted to taking care of her two cats. I had visions of her leaving a bowl of milk and a pan of kitty litter out for him.

Having endured many such bizarre and often amusing encounters over several years, however, I came to realize that the devil was, indeed, NOT in the details. To be sure, some details were more important than others, but the real trick was to find someone I could envision enjoyably spending time with beyond the parameters of a standard date–and just as important–who would feel the same about spending such time with me. It is on such win-win scenarios that solid relationships are built–be they personal or business.

And that brings us to the subject of outsourcing, a prickly relationship paradigm that has arisen in our industry as carriers in particular look for ways to boost efficiency and cut bottom line expenses. While much attention is focused on outsourcing information technology functions, insurers also are considering farming out discrete business functions and even infrastructure concerns. Regardless, however, the conclusion of a recent Deloitte Consulting LLP survey is that outsourcing is “falling from favor with the world’s largest organizations.”

According to New York-based Deloitte, such organizations “are bringing operations back in-house and exploring alternatives… Ironically, dissatisfaction in areas that traditional outsourcing was expected to improve, such as costs and complexity, was found to be the primary reason behind participants’ negative responses.”