The procurement function's role in strategic outsourcing from a process perspective

Outsourcing has grabbed headlines in the past few years. Some proclaim it as a necessary, effective and inevitable strategy to reduce costs, focus on the core business, maintain competitiveness and obtain needed capabilities. Others see outsourcing as a threat to jobs, companies, industries and whole economies. Barring a substantial reversal of current trends, outsourcing is here to stay. With that in mind, the authors undertook a research to understand the trends in outsourcing, how outsourcing decisions are made and how companies can be more successful in achieving their goals for outsourcing, and to clarify the role of procurement in strategic outsourcing success. Data was gathered from 165 procurement executives or their functional peers across 22 industries globally. This paper is a part of this research and aims at building an empirically validated outsourcing process model and discussing the procurement function's role in different phases and activities of strategic outsourcing.