I am a big proponent of outsourcing for several reasons:
- It reduces capital requirements
- It simplifies management
- It allows management to focus more time on the critical factors to grow the business
Of course, the key to successful outsourcing is the ability to identify what the non-critical factors are. Most management teams never really think about what is or is not critical and never seem to get around to outsourcing and simplifying management of the business.
From the earliest days in telecom, the engineers who ran telcos always considered the network a critical component of the business and fiercely protected their ownership of this hardware and infrastructure. I have always thought that network operations should be outsourced because network rarely gave you a competitive advantage.
Yesterday Sprint announced that they are outsourcing their network operations to Ericcson. Ericcson is the largest network outsource company in the world and currently operates the networks for 275 million international wireless subscribers, including portions of the Vodaphone and Digicel networks.
Now one could argue that Sprint is poorly managed and should not be cited as an example of a good management decision. Hey--everybody makes a good decision once in awhile. Notice what Sprint made clear they were retaining--customer experience, customer technical support and services review. These are the differentiating factors in modern telecom. I think Sprint thought out this switch to outsourcing thoroughly and made the right decision. Might even consider buying the stock!
Now if Sprint can outsource its huge (huge!) network, maybe you could switch your business to the web version of Quickbooks, Google mail or Salesforce.com. It's not that hard. You can do it... and, by the way, maybe your company email will even work:) After that, look into AWS.
(I just noticed that Amazon Web Services use the TypePad blogging service. One of the most technologically sophisticated companies outsources for blogging technology. Might be a lesson there!)
I found the news about Sprint on Fierce Wireless, an excellent telecom blog.
Miami, FL
