News

Tool can help build outsourcing plan

• By Lana Gates
• March 24, 2003

Program management consultant Robbins-Gioia LLC, Alexandria, Va. (http://www.robbinsgioia.com/), has started shipping a suite of tools, processes and expertise designed to aid organizations in managing multiple outsourcing endeavors. Simply called Vendor and Outsourcing Management, company officials said the end-to-end solution was developed in response to requests from Robbins-Gioia clients, which include mostly government and commercial entities.

Officals said the new offering can help Robbins-Gioia consultants better work with clients prior to starting a project to determine an outsourcing goal. The company said the tool can first help clients baseline how projects are currently undertaken, then help them build a scoring model that can aid in selecting the best outsourcing vendor for their needs, and finally help them establish an appropriate management structure.

“It is not unique to have project management involved in outsourcing,” noted Patricia Davis-Muffett, Robbins-Gioia vice president of marketing. What is unique in Robbins-Gioia’s solution, she maintained, is having project management involved in outsourcing as a separate entity.

The benefits of such a solution include earlier issue identification and resolution because the project management office is motivated by resolving issues, accountability directly to the end user rather than to a third party, and an objective opinion about vendors’ performance levels.

Vendor and Outsourcing Management is set up so that, if they wish, clients can take advantage of only the pieces they want. For instance, clients can choose to use Robbins-Gioia’s services only for vendor selection, or only for performance management, or for the entire end-to-end outsourcing and vendor management solution.

However, “we prefer they come to us when just looking at outsourcing because then we can really help them set up that management infrastructure up-front,” Davis-Muffett said. “That is the ideal scenario.”