Saturday, November 10, 2007

Management Buy-In Key To Outsourcing

By Mark Brousseau

Whether your organization is a financial institution or a corporate biller, one of the most important things you must do when looking at outsourcing lockbox processing is to get senior management to buy into the process early-on, Serena Smith, senior vice president at Fidelity National Information Services said during a presentation this week at TAWPI's Payments Automation: Beyond Capture & Clearing Conference in St. Petersburg, FL.

"What's also important to know is whether senior management is looking for a vendor or a partner," Smith told the audience. "The service provider needs to know what a customer's plans are five years down the road, to help us with our planning."

Smith's co-presenter, John Mintzer, vice president at Citizens Bank, said companies outsourcing their lockbox operations must be committed to following a formal project methodology all the way through the process. "If you don't follow a project methodology, you will be 'committed' at the end," Mintzer joked. What do you think? E-mail me at m_brousseau@msn.com.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Paul Diegelman said...

Senior management "buy-in" and prioritization is key for any significant change (outsourcing included) that an organization is considering. Billers who feel successful at outsourcing are those who can identify the outcomes (quality metrics, SLAs, price, etc) they expect before they outsource, and can verbalize those outcomes to potential partners during the evaluation process.