Driving High Performance through Outsourcing: Achieving Process Excellence in Transportation and Travel Companies

Transportation and travel services companies are using outsourcing to make significant and rapid gains in process excellence. For these companies, short-term gains are augmented by long-term strategic advantages.

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Companies in the transportation and travel services sector are drawn to outsourcing for its demonstrable benefits, including significant cost savings. Yet there are concerns that outsourcing entails a loss of in-house expertise when experienced, knowledgeable employees transfer to the outsourcer. Accenture research across this and other industries, "Driving High Performance through Outsourcing: Achieving Process Excellence," investigates the reality.

The response from transportation and travel services companies is definitive:

• Outsourcing significantly raises process and function expertise in most (96 percent) companies.
  
  
• Virtually every company (98 percent) reports an improved business process after outsourcing in at least one category. Improvement categories are efficiency, effectiveness, cost, quality and accuracy—with 19 percent reporting improvements in all categories.
  
  
• Outsourcing maintains and builds process capability.
  
  
• The weak become better, and the good become great. Respondents ranked their processes pre- and post-outsourcing—59 percent raised their capability ratings.
  
  
• Process capability grows rapidly and reaches everyone. Over 74 percent reported process capability improvements within six months.
  
  
• Employees become more productive after they transfer to outsourcing company.
  
  
• Outsourcing delivers benefits beyond expectation. Over half (56 percent) felt that outsourcing gave the company a competitive edge.
  
  
• Building process capability is a main benefit of outsourcing.

The main benefits from outsourcing are gains in process excellence, an enhanced ability to focus on the core business and reduced costs.

Survey results document that there is everything to gain and little to lose in an outsourcing decision. Contrary to concerns about a loss of expertise, outsourcing raises the typical company's access to expertise and knowledge, resulting in a higher overall capability in the business process or function. The only thing lost is cost. Transportation and travel services companies benefit from functional and enterprise-wide change that positively impacts process performance.

Contact us for an in-depth presentation of the research results and a discussion of how they can be used to drive high performance in your business.

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