Originally Posted by
Howard Long
Welcome, people, to the joys of outsourcing.
Generally, outsourcers promise the world in presales, then the bean counters get involved, the outsourcers are cut to the bone, ergo they deliver the absolute minimum covered by the contract. And if you want anything more you will have to pay though the nose as you can be sure it'll be a fundamental change to the contract requiring renegotiation.
Oh, we can be absolutely certain that any number of highly paid MBAs and accountants will have been involved in contract negotiations prior to contract signing. But even more certain will be that those same MBAs and bean counters won't be around when it comes to figuring out whether those projected RoI's were achieved. Funny that.
I've worked on both sides of the fence prior to my retirement in a technical role for outsourcing. Once the bean counters got a hold of it, you could kiss goodbye to any versatility or goodwill in any contract. So, two or three or five years later, you go through another round of tendering and negotiation, and it's Groundhog Day.
Question: has anybody ever seen Willy Walsh in any of the lounges? I wonder where he dines?
Cheers, Howard
As someone who owns a few outsourcing relationships and worse still is a beancounter by training and profession, it doesn't have to be like this.
It is possible to run a contract where both parties engage, where neither party feels screwed and where you get better outcomes than you ran it in house.
It is not the fault of outsourcing that everything is bolloxy right now - it is the fault of whoever defined the service offering which I presume is BA. BA is not and never will be a catering company any more than I would dream of my company running its own cleaning services or paying people to sit around watering the flowers so I don't see the problem with outsourcing.
It is harder to absolve the beancounters but god knows IAG probably need them with Iberia leaking cash at a quicker rate than GF patrons exiting the lounge for plane food. No wonder costs are being looked at but only time will tell as to whether marginal savings in catering start to drag on the revenue line as people move elsewhere.