RB&A reduces the risks of relying on others by helping organizations to create sustainable and effective governance over outsourcing, offshore and third-party relationships.
We’ve seen over 400 outsourcing contracts from both providers’ and buyers’ perspectives over the past decade. Shockingly, fewer than 20% had an appropriate or sustainable level of third party governance and risk management in place. Even any of these concerns sound familiar to you, then you need the unique services we can bring:
- “Our partners don’t seem to share our business goals, culture, values”
- “I don’t have the metrics to prove our third party’s performance or contract compliance”
- “Our partner may be meeting its service level commitments but is failing to honor the spirit of the agreement”
- “We’re not sure how well our partner is complying with ever-changing regulatory requirements”
- “We have challenges coping with a multi-vendor environment; we’re not in control”
- “We sometimes change direction weekly, not annually. Our vendors don’t understand and can’t adapt”
- “We’re not realizing the financial benefits we’d banked on”
- “I’m still held accountable for critical business processes which are now within the vendor’s control”
- “We aren’t prepared for the new risks involved in Cloud, Automation and Analytics”
What’s RB&A’s Approach?
First, we leverage many years’ exposure to some of the most complex outsourcing contracts in North America and the lessons we’ve learned. RB&A makes organizations more effective, compliant, adaptive and profitable in managing their reliance on third parties. Our passion is making sure that there is structure, good governance and financial benefit whenever an organization entrusts processes, services or key infrastructure to someone else. Our approaches work with outsourced business processes, support desks, IT, logistics and professional services. And we will scale our work to offer triage on the most pressing third party issues in a department, or look at an enterprise-level framework for better governance.
Typically, we start with a “Health Check” – a rapid, well-defined and high-level assessment of maturity gaps in managing individual or portfolio third-party relationships.
We then engage more intensively to plan and execute specific risk mitigation to close those gaps.
And where we find that maturity gaps are pervasive, we will recommend creating a Third Party risk framework with specific, sustainable processes, policies and plans customized to your organization.
When Should You Engage Us?
RB&A offers value at all stages in the life cycle of outsourcing and reliance – from sourcing strategy and negotiation through contact closing, transition and steady-state delivery.
Typical triggers for our expertise occur when organizations have new sourcing strategies, a renewal of existing outsourcing contracts, periods of business disruption or cost challenges, changes in C-level leadership or pending mergers, acquisitions or divestitures.
What Benefits Will You Realize?
RB&A’s structured approach to managing business processes, policies and controls results in tangible and immediate business benefits:
- Enhanced service level performance from vendors
- Less “managing by crisis” and more normalized operations
- Improved financial performance and regulatory compliance
- Greater operational effectiveness and reduced enterprise risk
- More responsiveness, transparency, and commitment to buyers’ success from each vendor
- Better relationship alignment with vendors & service providers and an evolution from task compliance to shared-value partnerships
- Harmonized service delivery by “one team”
- Greater ability to forecast demand, anticipate and adapt to change