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CREATIVE SOURCING

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OUTSOURCING HOME

The movement toward using outsourcing to assist in the development of greater and greater levels of innovation takes three main paths:

• Outsourcing things that have never been outsourced before. It is a crucial and profound business need that creates a truly new and innovative outsourcing story. There is a plethora of new and different outsourced services available all the time, created to meet that need. Some of those include product design and engineering, the management of intellectual assets, software testing, and parts of the research cycle for everything from pharmaceuticals to software. The list goes on and on, and is limited only by a lack of imagination.

A lot of truly new outsourcing deals are taking place in the area of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). BPO is where companies look at entire processes -- procurement or the entire hiring cycle, from new hire to retiree, for example -- and seek ways to outsource as much of the entire process as possible.

• Putting a new spin, or creative approach, to traditional and strategic outsourcing initiatives. Outsourcing is taking on a significant role in assisting innovation in traditional areas, particularly in the world of information technology. Outsourcing mainstays like data center management and applications development is giving way to the more strategic and ultimately more creative areas of Web development and e-commerce.
• New and innovative relationships that foster the growth and productivity of all companies involved. The new paradigm for millennial companies is as a matrix of separate, but interactive activities, coming together as an alliance to offer a product or service. This model will allow them the freedom to realign their priorities, interests and objectives when business conditions and the buyer's objectives change, as they will do, rapidly and continuously.

Future Success Relies on Outsourcing

Creativity and innovation are, more than ever, the fuel for future growth. Meeting the innovation challenge includes changing the corporate culture to make the virtual world a reality, remaining competitive, conducting business on a global scale and keeping up with continuous innovation and improvements.

In this future world, companies look for ways to align with other companies to focus on their business goals and develop relationships with service providers to focus on meeting the myriad challenges that make up success. And while no one can predict the future, it is clear that outsourcing is going be the foundation for innovation. It will be relied upon more and more as the business world develops into a matrix of organizations, each with core competencies, working in partnerships, toward change, creativity and competitive edge.

Certainly that is the message of this special outsourcing section. The following group of insightful and strategic case studies represents diverse industries, objectives and methodologies. But what they have in common is the pursuit of innovation through outsourcing. "These examples show that innovative outsourcing not only saves time and money, but can actually help to reinvent an organization and its place in the market resulting in increased market share and shareholder value," Casale concludes.