The Inovis Blog

I am often presented this exact question from both internal sales people, as well as potential customers.  The challenge that this question poses is the fact that a strong outsourcing partner will provide a full set of B2B capabilities and expertise to cover a customer’s current and future needs.  Because these needs differ by customer, the answer to “What is Included” can be different per customer.

So what is included, and how do we define B2B outsourcing if it really is customer specific?  Answer:  A strong B2B outsourcing provider will have well established building blocks that will serve as a foundation for the offering and will then build a layer of services and contractual obligations on top of that to ensure the customer’s needs are fully met.

Examples of those foundational building blocks include:

-          Platform: A highly scalable, highly redundant, hosted infrastructure platform with proven up-time metrics.  This platform will be capable of handling all of a customer’s throughput and translation needs from direct connect through highly complex any to any translations.

-          Methodology: Your outsourcer should provide a time tested and well proven methodology for implementing your B2B Outsourcing project.  This should include the efficient migration of your existing business community and the ongoing management of that community based on your ever changing business needs.

-          Managed Services: This term is often used interchangeably with “Outsourcing,” however for this case I am utilizing it to specifically describe the services that make a full outsourced offering.  The Managed Services built around your outsourced project should include standard support, on-boarding, and development services with appropriate SLA’s.

So that is easy enough, as straight forward as pouring cement and watching it dry . . . right?  Well, that only covers the foundation.  What makes the original question difficult to answer and adds the “curb appeal” to an outsourcing contract is the ability for your outsourcing partner to add customized services and solutions to that foundation to make it “Yours!”

So what is included?  All of the basics plus:

The ability to solution to your specific business environment.  Sure we might use the same translators to support High Tech, Manufacturing, and the nation’s largest equipment rental company; but what gave those customers the curb appeal to contract for our services. . .

-          Add on offerings: the ability to cover all of your B2B needs may require your outsourcing provider to partner with experts in other niche offerings (i.e. Any2Fax services, Global eSignature services).  Home builders contract with experts to provide interior design, landscaping, and the paint that completes the picture.  B2B Outsourcers can provide the value to the customer that  comes under the same outsourcing umbrella contract and offers the same level of accountability and credibility as the core contract.  This allows the customer to rely on their Outsourcer to provide these services without the complications of processing a completely disparate set of RFP’s, contract negotiations, and payment terms.

-          Business Specific Visibility: The biggest challenge with outsourcing is keeping both IT and business users informed about what is going on with their B2B projects.  Inovis in particular offers Industry leading visibility tools that give you real time business views that allow your organization to make real time business decisions.  This is a huge value add for customers as they are able to see what is important to “them” and they are not limited by canned EDI reports.

-          Customer specific Capabilities:  This can include additional contracted services to proactively track and report on mission critical supply chain logistics, delivery of goods, or even the throttling of transactions for partners with limited throughput capabilities.

-          Customizable Support Capabilities: Custom support processes can be added to the foundation to provide “Owner’s Insurance” to the parts of your business that you value the most.  A good Outsourcer can work with your business to define the transactions and business community members that need the most attention and build support processes around those pieces to give you the assurance that things will not go wrong. . .and if they do, the situation will be identified and fixed Before you experience business impact.

So what is included: Everything that a customer needs to run their B2B operations, both from industry standards that build the foundation to customized business modeling that makes the solution uniquely yours and uniquely valuable to your business.