Valentinos Personal Introductions Agency is a medium-size Company in expansion of their operations and customer ratio. Valentinos Personal Introductions Agency, an agency that provides a matchmaking service for over eight million single men and women in the UK between the ages of 18 and 64, so it might be thought easy to meet someone special. Valentinos is currently facing the problem of finding ways to ensure the continued increase of their market share and profitability. With the onset of outsourcing as a business practice, Valentinos have asked to advise them on their strategy, especially with regards to using outsourcing options. Due to the lack of investment in technology for the past couple years the need for a reassessment of their current performance given their current technology which is some ten years old as compared to potential performance with new more technology trends and innovations. In summary this report aims to provide a clear analysis of Valentinos operations and requirements for improvement to the current operation.
CASE SCOPE
The objective of this paper is to analyze Valentinos existing business processes, this report will help Valentinos management team make a better and more effective decision on whether to outsource and what to outsource to improve the marketing strategy. The report will also help management to recommend efficient strategies to combat the ever changing and developing trends in technology, innovations and marketing trends. The report shows all analysis, evaluation and explanations put forward to support all the claims in this report.
PURPOSE OF THIS REPORT
This report revolves around the analysis of a case study of Valentinos Personal Introductions Agency. Its purpose is to demonstrate proper analysis of all the operational needs of Valentinos Personal Introductions Agency, to evaluate the departments of Valentinos agency and make recommendations where proposed companies services can be outsourced to meet their core functional needs.
SECTION II � Analysis
Analysis of Strengths and Weaknesses of each Department
The analysis and careful study of the respective departments in question has lead me to this interpretation of the agencies functioning departments.
Marketing Department
With my thorough analysis of the marketing department I can clearly state that to my sound and meticulous consideration of the different functions of this said department that it has great potential in terms of its strengths and ability to steer into the future with modern and innovative ideas that can take this agency to effective, efficient and marketable avenues. Some of the strengths of this department are that some of the team members would have had previous strategic marketing and planning efforts which would have offered the agency innovative solutions in the past. It�s obvious by their innovative ideas that they have the tools to improve their marketing activities, such as their quest to incorporate online marketing alongside their many other creative forms of marketing and advertising their product. This department has a strong sense of teamwork/partnership with its continuous quality improvement throughout the years that promotes this great team effort. One of the last strengths of this department is its managements proactive strive for the best of the best from its staff.
Some of the drawbacks to these strengths that this department face and that was disused by the managing director when pointing out the role of this department was that it had only recently setup a new team to deal with the new phase in their marketing strategy of exploring the online marketing benefits. Judging from this fact it is clear that the previous team was either ineffective or not performing well in their respective capacity. Hence the need for an entirely new marketing team to steer their new project goal. Therefore I can only find that their weakness lie in the fact that the team is fairly new not necessarily inexperienced, but just a new team at work, also the managing director mentioned that the department was only just getting familiar with the area of online marketing, which means that this area is not one that the team would not have had exposure in.
Strengths
� Existence of previous strategic marketing planning efforts which offered several innovative solutions.
� Tools to improve marketing activities are available (e.g., Online marketing strategies).
� Continuous quality improvement promotes teamwork.
� Proactive management team.
Weaknesses
� Lack of working experience as team.
� Experience in online marketing is little or non-existent.
Operations Department
Proper analysis of this department has lead to the belief that also like the marketing department the operations department as well has sound, productive and effective operational skills. With this departments well experienced, effective and qualified staff they have been able to deliver quality service to their clients, some of the strengths that attribute to this great success within this department would have to be their quality experienced staff, this department has strategic operational plan which was developed over the years to provide comprehensive and effective service, they have the tools to improve their operating activities, such as they have more than twenty telephone lines to communicate and assist their clients. This department also has a strong sense of teamwork that promotes this great team effort.
Some of the drawbacks to these strengths that this department face that was disused by the managing director when pointing out the role of this department was the lack of innovative ideas to add to the departments current operations. The fact that with the increased customers, the greater the demand for added resources, this is in terms of the twenty plus telephone lines and the ever increasing customer ratio.
Strengths
� Experienced, effective, qualified and dedicated workforce.
� Existence of previous strategic operational plan.
� Tools to improve operating activities are available (e.g., Twenty plus telephone lines and staff, the use of post and also incorporating email messaging service to promptly treat with clients issues).
� Continuous quality improvement promotes teamwork.
Weaknesses
� Lack of innovative ideas that can bring their services into future trends.
� Diminished resources increased consumer demand.
IT Department
My analysis of the IT department clearly shows that the functions of this department it is not being maximized and is not performing to the capacity that it could given the skills and experience of this current department have to take the agency into the future with modern and innovative ideas to effectively and efficiently promote the agency. Some of the strengths of this department are that. This department has a strong sense of teamwork/partnership with its continuous quality improvement promotes team effort. Effectively supports the department in a limited capacity.
Some of the drawbacks to these strengths this department faces are that lack of strategic IT planning effort which would have effectively offered the agency innovative solutions to carry them well into the future. It�s also clear by their lack of innovative ideas that they don�t have the needed IT related skills and tools to improve their IT functions. One of the last weakness of this department is the lack of a proactive IT management team.
Strengths
� Strong sense of partnership by its continuous quality improvement which promotes teamwork.
� Effectively supports department issues.
Weaknesses
� Lack of strategic IT related planning.
� Lack the It related skills and tools to improve operating IT related functions
within the department.
� Lack quality experienced staff with wide IT related skills.
� Lack of a proactive IT management team.
Finance Department
Analysis of the finance department has shown that this department has been functioning relatively well seeing that it has not had new staff in almost twenty-five years. Some of the strengths of this department are their strategic planning efforts which would have assisted in the department�s operation mode these past years. This department has a strong sense of teamwork/partnership with its continuous quality improvement throughout the years which promoted this great team effort. One of the last strengths of this department is its managements proactive strive for the best of its staff considering that most of the staff is well past their prime and that younger more competent individuals could get the job done even more efficient.
Some of the drawbacks to these strengths that this department face would be challenges of workers not being adequately qualified and competent to be as effective in their respective capacity. The workers in this department would also be much slower given their respective ages where all is not under fifty-five years.
Strengths
� Existence of previous strategic planning efforts
� Strong sense partnership by its continuous quality improvement which promotes teamwork.
� Staff that carry a number of years working experience.
� Proactive management team.
Weaknesses
� Lack of competent effective work team.
� Staff that is very close to retirement.
SECTION III � Evaluation of outsourcing companies
Relative Attributes of Outsourcing Companies
Having carefully analyzed the outsourcing companies in question I have come up with a number of relative aspects or attributes that can be used to compare each other�s services. Some of the relative attribute of these various outsourcing companies are stated here, firstly I will address the companies specialism all three companies offer outsourcing services of IT software development and IT systems support. Two of the companies, company 1 and company 3 that are not base in the UK offer both IT software support, IT systems support and call centres. Both company 1 and company 2 offer services in IT software support, IT systems support and finance. Company 1 and company 3 were both given bad points where staff and customer relations is concerned and was said to be difficult to deal with. All three companies have been rated between satisfactory and excellent and have clients within the UK. Only company 1 and company2 have offices in the UK.
Importance of Location
Evaluating the locations of the companies I felt that this was a very important point to consider that is why I mused over it very carefully before making any unsystematic considerations. When considering outsourcing the location of your service provider is a very important facet to look at, when doing this a number of different factors have to be looked at before making that commitment. Some of those factors are:
� Time Zones �
This is very important which should not be underestimated, both regular communication (status reporting; weekly meetings) and impromptu communication (problem solving).
� Geography �
For reason being, our service provider�s locations should be easily accessible, geography considerations matters. Accessible locations mean speed, low cost of transportation and ease of travel for face-to-face meetings.
� Legislature �
Our service provider should at minimum be a similarly historically-based legal system. In the EU most Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries are now full-fledged EU members, that is, they share the identical or harmonized legislature covering everything from trade, labour, and regulatory affairs to consumer regulations. This can dramatically reduce the costs and requirements for administration. Concerns about protection of intellectual property can be eased through common legislature.
� Cultural Proximity �
Another aspect is shared cultural background and heritage, and a largely-shared set of assumptions and human experience can streamline communication considerably. In a business context, this results in an overall compatibility with prevailing business culture and ethics.
� Skill Pool and Cost of Labour �
Market regions tapped as outsource locations often provide a large pool of educated, well-trained and motivated resources with up-to-date skills. The hourly costs of labour vary from region to region, but are still lower than in Western Europe or North America. European-based companies in particular are well-positioned to make use of wage differences in the CEE region before wage levels in Western and Eastern Europe equalize.
� Other Cost �
While labour costs in, countries such as India or China are lower than the CEE average; they are only part of the total cost of doing business. Because the business and overall technical infrastructure in China and India is still developing, these costs are often considerably higher than in other global regions. This applies to support services such as accounting or legal services, IT infrastructure and internet connectivity, and other costs. Since non-labour costs can be high, it can take a large scale and a high degree of utilization to successfully realize overall cost savings.
Each of these aspects needs to be decided upon when considering the location of your outsourcing partner; it is of paramount concern to evaluate them well before making commitment. Consider each and every aspect time zone, geography, legislation, culture, skills, cost because each has its own risk. Choosing only one outsource partner, or even one outsource region, can find the balance of risk being skewed in an uncomfortable way. A balanced outsource risk may be one which considers multiple partners, locations or even regions. Based on the companies in question where their respective base locations are India, United Kingdom and Indonesia, where company 1 has a UK head office, company 2 has six offices in UK and company 3 has no UK offices but has offices in Amsterdam and Netherlands, evaluating all of these aspects and circumstances should help extensively in making this decision.
Client Numbers
Past clients would have a solid knowledge of the outsourcing providers performance level, which would in-tern help you with your decision to outsource their service, also client numbers tell a whole lot on its own, and in evaluation of the companies all of them have had a considerable amount of clientele, what is good here is that with a considerable number of clients you can get a better average rating of their services and can make a more profound judgement of the ability of the outsourcing provider company to do a remarkably effective job in your outsourcing business endeavour.
Years Existence
This area will help you evaluate how successful the service providers have been over the years they have been providing their outsourcing services to other clients and partners. This would also help you determine some of the short term and long term goals for success and whether the strategies adopted by them to provide effective and efficient outsourcing services to their clients were done at the best levels possible while providing innovative ideas, good working strategies, brilliant planning, evaluating and how they effectively instituted their short term and long term strategies, further evaluation of the companies showed that only two of the provided companies for outsourcing had substantial amounts of experience where years of experience is concerned, company 1 and company 2.
Survey Ratings
This area is critical, here you can assess the rating that past companies might have evaluated the outsourcing provider at and you can make your own judgment by their performance, remembering to analyze how the recruitment and retention of how potential providers managed and maintained a skilled dependable staff, and whether they have problems with high turnover and continuous recruiting, which are not only costly challenges but they also disrupt workflow with training demands and a constant reshuffling of team members which is at no means productive. Also evaluating past projects that the potential outsourcing company would have been able to complete and how well was it done and whether it was completed within schedule. However, if concerted and continuous efforts are made by the outsourcing provider to hire and maintain knowledgeable, skilled professionals greater solution efficiency and performance can be attained by the provider. Evaluation of the companies provided for outsourcing proved that all three companies have been rated between satisfactory and excellent.
SECTION IV � Rationale for choices made
Explanation of Decision
After abundant amounts of evaluating and completely understanding all the added complex and different aspects to consider when choosing an effective, reliant, consistent and efficient outsourcing provider, that can bring the added talent, quality in skills and refined abilities, experienced dedicated staff with the tools to effectively improve the organizations operations and provide long term growth and sustainability within the organization. Remembering that Valentinos is already an extremely established company, with a wealth of over seventy thousand active members and new application that are very much acquainted and comfortable with the current ways the agency is conducting their operations. In terms of the Marketing department, they have shown by the vast amount of clientele/members and their past innovations that their current and past marketing strategies have been successful over the years and with their efforts to incorporate online marketing concepts with their current concepts, this shows that they are ready to take their marketing team into the future by adding these functionalities to the agency. I would like to recommend that their services not be outsourced but for the department to continue to work on developing their already sound marketing skills to perfect this already successfully agency.
In respect to the Operations department I would recommend that you eventually outsource in the future a larger team to deal with your clients, due to the fact that your business is expanding in numbers yearly and you would eventually need a team that can efficiently deal with clients concerns promptly without delay. Given your current call centre operations, you would not be able to effectively attend to your client�s immediate needs given the amount of telephone lines you currently have. But, with the choices given and due to the proposed company�s track record of dealing with customers it would not be a wise decision to use any of them seeing that they have not shown that they can provide that personal touch that has made you the world's leading and most popular sort after introductions agency of its kind. What I recommend given the circumstances is that you continue with your current operation in this department and when a more suitable option is available we shall proceed in acquiring their services to free up this department a help you focus on other ways to draw in more clients.
In respect to the IT department I am not satisfied with this department�s performance, technical skill and ability in respect to their current operations, fair enough that the agencies online web presence is already an outsourced service, which lack basic added functionality considering the rate of ever changing technology and new web development trends and considering that a properly maintained website should be regularly updated. I am of the view that this department lack major information technology competence in various areas such as website development and maintenance, application software development technologies, programming skills and technical expertise particularly in C++ and good understanding of SQL coding for maintaining the already functioning database structure, where the data already collected is of major importance to this particular agency.
It is of my reasonable analysis that the operations of this department be discontinued including the website that is being maintained by a third party unit, and is outsourced with company 1. I have evaluated the operations of this company and I am satisfied that out of the three companies. Company 1 has shown some aspects of credibility, based on the company outline, operations cost with them would be fifty percent of the agencies current cost for that department, their current location, being strategically positioned and having their head quarters in the UK is an added benefit to your agency, also they have a wealth of educated English speaking professionals to work with, their average customer rating is well above average compared to the other companies, also their years of experience is well above the other companies proposed and their number of clients is very admirable with over twenty located in the UK. I am very much interested in recommending the use of both IT software services to develop and maintain a more up-to-date website that will include all the database functionality that the current members database system has and the use of their IT support services to maintain and update equipment usage given further dialogue and added information from the said company.
In respect to the finance department I have analyzed that your current finance department have been functioning well within their respective capacity and their ability for over twenty-five years. You have been quite content with their performance over these past twenty-five years, irrespective of their lack of competence they did handled their duties to your standards. I understand that in your opinion the time has come for a new, more vibrant and energetic finance department. I would recommend the use of Company 1, as I proposed to you earlier with the IT department, Company 1 has shown some major aspects of credibility, based on that companies outline, operations cost with them would be fifty percent of the agencies current cost for that department, their current location, being strategically positioned and having their head quarters in the UK is an added benefit to your agency, also they have a wealth of educated English speaking professionals to work with, their average customer rating is well above average compared to the other companies, also their years of experience is well above the other companies proposed and their number of clients is very admirable with over twenty located in the UK. I am very much interested in recommending the use of this companies finance services given further dialogue and added information from the company would give a more concrete decision.
SECTION V � Discussion and Assumptions
Discussion of Assumptions
Analyzing this case study, it is of my belief that the choices made would bring the agency in question the required results in technology, educated staff, productivity, skills and expertise they truly need in ensuring the agencies future stability. The outsourcing provider that I have advised this company to use can ensure given their past experience and clientele, that they get the services that they need well past what is expected. I have made a number of assumptions during this process due to the very vague concise discussion with Mr. Rudolfo, Managing Director of Valentinos. And in my report I have looked at the different departments and where certain aspects of their function was not clearly defined I made assumptions to suit their basic function. I believe that the information provided of the different companies was not totally enough to make an affirmative decision on choosing a company and I think that added information could have been provided for the respective departments.
