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African Development Bank, a multilateral development bank based out of Tunisia sought Tata Strategic’s help in formulating an outsourcing strategy that would optimize its support processes and enable it to focus on its core business processes and expansion plans.

The Tata Strategic team developed and used a framework to objectively identify processes that lent themselves better to potential outsourcing versus ones that were core to the operations of the bank. This was supported by a detailed benchmarking study with outsourcing best practices in similar organizations globally to identify potential opportunities. The approach helped the team identify opportunities in diverse services ranging from facilities management to IT application development and infrastructure management, and choose upon the modalities for implementation (e.g. piecemeal outsourcing vs. large basket outsourcing; on-shore vs. off-shore vs. near-shore). Once the opportunities were identified the team developed a detailed implementation plan that included a thorough cost benefit analysis and a risk mitigation plan. 

What followed was the most challenging phase of the project - syndication of the recommendations with the various levels within the organization. The team spent close to two months having detailed syndication meetings with the vice presidencies, the steering committee, the President, the staff council and the Board of Directors – laying down objective arguments in favor of the recommendations.

The commitment and persuasiveness of the team drew praises from the highest echelons within the bank and led one of its senior consultants to comment: “I worked for 24 years for the International Monetary Fund, directing the same types of activities currently being reviewed here at the Bank for potential outsourcing. Based on what I have observed of Tata’s approach … over the past few months, I now regret that we did not have a similarly well-structured and aggressively thorough process in place when the Fund decided to undertake a similar effort on its own almost ten to fifteen years ago. In retrospect, it probably would have made a substantial difference in how we approached outsourcing in general, and may well have significantly expedited our eventual decisions by providing a more objective, policy-based basis for doing so.

Impact

Given the diverse nature of the organization a major challenge for the team was to build consensus for the outsourcing exercise which it managed successfully by talking to stakeholders at various levels in the organization and addressing their concerns. The work done by Tata Strategic has made it possible for the senior management to make a stronger case for outsourcing and it is now in the process of seeking final approval from the board of directors for implementation.