Keywords: outsourcing suppliers, combination of suppliers, development and integration of suppliers, the outsourcing business of enterprise resources developed rapidly worldwide in the 1990s. With its rapid development and wide influence, the word "outsourcing" was once considered by Harvard Business Review as one of the most important management concepts in the past century. Outsourcing is considered to be helpful to enhance the competitiveness of enterprise supply chain core business. Saving cost and enhancing core competitiveness are two important driving factors in the outsourcing decision-making process of enterprises. The research of enterprise resource outsourcing has also developed rapidly. At present, many studies focus on the importance of outsourcing, outsourcing decision-making research, and outsourcing research in practical fields such as business process outsourcing, information system outsourcing, supply chain outsourcing and human resources outsourcing. When an enterprise makes an outsourcing decision, it will inevitably involve cooperation with multiple suppliers. From the analysis and selection of suppliers at the beginning to the evaluation and management after cooperation, it is closely related to the correctness of this outsourcing decision and whether it can achieve the expected goal. However, at present, enterprises often ignore the cooperative role between enterprises, and more consider the selection and evaluation of suppliers from the perspective of saving costs and maximizing benefits. In this enterprise, any business can be outsourced, and even an economic society of virtual organization can be established. This paper focuses on how to effectively manage outsourcing suppliers and how to establish a deeper relationship with suppliers.
The basic concept and Outsourcing reason of outsourcing is to transfer some business activities and decision-making responsibilities inside the company to suppliers outside the company. The connotation of outsourcing can be understood as a management mode for enterprises to integrate and use the best external specialized resources to reduce costs, improve efficiency, give play to their core competitiveness and enhance their adaptability to the environment. The extension of outsourcing can be understood as follows: outsourcing is an organizational form for enterprises to obtain external resources, so that organizations can obtain substantive services or products from other enterprises; Outsourcing is in the middle of production transaction and vertical integration, is the product of the development of supply chain management to a certain stage, and is a type highly trusted by both supply and demand sides; Outsourcing will have a certain impact on the strategic ability of enterprises, which is a high-level strategic decision; Outsourcing relationship is a contractual relationship. Because of the different needs of organizations, organizations adopt outsourcing forms and methods. At present, the most popular outsourcing forms mainly include: information resource outsourcing service, marketing outsourcing, human resource outsourcing and so on.
Outsourcing is an important tool to achieve the strategic objectives of enterprises. First of all, it can improve the company's financial performance, help enterprises to know more about the cost structure and strengthen cost control, so as to achieve cost-effectiveness. For example, simplify and control operating costs and attract funds from external investors. Secondly, outsourcing non-core activities, product restructuring, so that enterprises can put their internal resources into areas they are better at, so that the company's business activities are more focused; In addition, outsourcing usually chooses enterprises with outstanding advantages in this field, so it can provide enterprises with resources and capabilities that cannot be provided internally. Finally, outsourcing will also promote competition among suppliers and share risks with them, effectively improve the quality of products or services and enhance the operational flexibility of enterprises.
However, there are many risks in outsourcing decision-making, including: uncertain risks, such as not correctly distinguishing core business from general business; Operational risk, in practice, the product quality may decline or lack improvement after outsourcing. Investment savings did not reach the expected plan, and business information may be leaked or stolen. The weakening of enterprise's internal ability leads to the withdrawal of employers from related fields due to outsourcing, which affects the implementation of enterprise's future strategy and changes the management ability and professional skills of employees. The negotiation ability of enterprises is weakened, including the difficulty of changing suppliers, the ability to adjust contract prices, the ability to control and improve quality, and the impact of terminating contracts. The weakening of enterprise's innovation ability hinders the enterprise's understanding of business technology development and technological innovation ability.
The content and classification of enterprise outsourcing resources determine enterprise resources and outsourcing objectives, and distinguishing the core and non-core businesses of enterprises is the key to successful outsourcing. Outsourcing enterprise resources can be divided into three levels: core resources, outsourcing resources and market resources. Core resource is a resource platform or technical platform to support and develop enterprise's core competence and cultivate enterprise's core business and products. Market resources are high-quality and low-cost standard products or resources purchased through the market, which have little influence on the unique quality of enterprise products or services. Outsourcing resources have a strong correlation with the core business processes of enterprises, which provide enterprises with products or services with specific attributes and affect the quality and performance of core products.
At present, the general view is that the object of resource outsourcing should be the part of the enterprise that does not have core competence, and the part that has core competence should stay in the enterprise. At the same time, a large number of empirical studies show that outsourcing of peripheral business can improve the performance of its enterprises in three aspects: first, reduce the peripheral business of enterprises and focus on core business; Second, the outsourcing of peripheral business can greatly improve the quality of these businesses; Third, it leads to the endogenous increase of enterprise costs.
How to effectively manage suppliers in the process of outsourcing In this environment of rapid market changes, rapid technological changes, frequent market restructuring activities and economic globalization, with the deepening of understanding and research on outsourcing, effective management of suppliers who provide outsourcing resources is the guarantee of successful outsourcing under the condition of determining which resources can be outsourced and which cannot be outsourced. Suppliers and enterprises are different stakeholders, and they will pursue the maximization of their own interests, which leads to the inconsistency between suppliers and enterprises. Therefore, it is necessary for us to understand the operation of suppliers in the outsourcing process, and how to manage these suppliers well and establish a deeper supplier relationship. In order to win in many aspects, it is necessary to form a supplier portfolio that adapts to changes in the market environment. Systematic inspection and management of this portfolio can bring value-added and competitive advantages to enterprises. The formation of this supplier portfolio is divided into three steps: planning process, implementation process and supervision and control process.
Planning process
The first step in forming a supplier portfolio is the planning process. In this process, it is to find out which suppliers should cooperate with in the future and form a supplier selection library, that is, the supplier screening process. Regarding the criteria for supplier selection, an important challenge in the market is to clearly understand the company's customers and how to evaluate products and these support services. However, empirical research (Joseph M. Bonner, Roger J. Calantone, 2005) points out that suppliers lack an understanding of the nature and importance of the decisive factors that affect the outsourcing decision-making process, so if suppliers can attract employers' attention and think that they can perform well in selecting enterprise supply resources, then they may form and implement effective marketing strategies. In the process of outsourcing decision-making, employers are mainly influenced by supplier performance in supplier selection criteria, and supplier performance can be evaluated from four dimensions, namely, reliability, competitive price, service support and technical ability. Among them, competitive price is the main factor in traditional purchase decision, and price factor is still the most important determinant in current purchase decision. Reliability refers to the extent to which suppliers provide goods and services as expected and on time, and employers tend to make purchasing decisions with suppliers who are sincere and communicate frequently. Skills, the buyer is very concerned about the long-term cooperative relationship with suppliers and their ability to gain competitive advantage. Service support, research shows that services and those characteristics related to services play an increasingly important role in the decision-making of resource suppliers.
Execution process
After the plan forms the supplier framework, it comes to the implementation stage, including the formation of supplier library, supplier development and supplier integration. Compared with the latter two, the formation of supplier database is easier to realize and more operational, mainly to reduce the number of candidate suppliers, classify suppliers, evaluate and select suppliers. However, it is difficult to implement the development and integration of suppliers, and the measures, methods and effects taken in these two aspects are very different due to cultural differences, such as the cultural differences between eastern and western enterprises. When the supplier's performance can't reach the expected effect or future demand, the biggest possibility for the employer is to terminate the current relationship with the supplier and find a new supplier; Or vertically merge this supplier and internalize the problem. By developing suppliers, providing another choice, and taking measures such as supplier guarantee, help, support, upgrade and performance promotion, we can help suppliers improve their performance, improve quality and reduce costs, and let customers know that the relationship between enterprises and suppliers is close. In this process, close cooperation and timely information exchange and transmission are very important, and the sustainability of this process is the key to ensure the continuous improvement and development of suppliers (Stephan M. Wagner, Jean L. Johnson, 2004).
Integrating suppliers means integrating buyer's resources and seller's resources strategically, extending and combining the related activities of buyers and sellers, establishing a deeper supplier relationship and improving the efficiency of supplier production and logistics. In the process of outsourcing, employers and contractors are two different independent individuals with different goals. It is much more difficult than expected to integrate suppliers and establish close cooperative relations. Japanese companies are better than American companies in this respect. American companies often put each other in a hostile state and cannot develop good relations with suppliers. The supplier relationship established by Japanese enterprises is called Supplier Keirestu, which means the close, continuous learning, improvement and prosperity relationship between the seller and its affiliated enterprises. This relationship has changed the past. In order to survive and compete, and to win the contract of contracting enterprises, supplier enterprises blindly cater to the increasingly high requirements of those large-scale and powerful contracting enterprises, which makes them often in a tense and hostile position and have no loyalty and enthusiasm for improving relations. On the contrary, keirestu believes that contracting enterprises should make the same efforts, actively improve the relationship with suppliers and establish the loyalty of both parties. Thanks to the keirestu project, Japanese Honda and Toyota Motor Corporation's outsourcing enterprises or suppliers in the United States are more willing to cooperate with them, and have established deeper trust and loyalty among enterprises. However, the three major American automakers, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, failed to establish close and in-depth relations with domestic outsourcing enterprises or suppliers. To make matters worse, some suppliers expressed their willingness to become parts suppliers of the three major automobile companies, but individuals themselves would not choose to buy their cars.
Supervision and control process
The last step of strategic suppliers configuration is supervision and control, tracking and feedback. By measuring and evaluating the performance of suppliers (such as cost reduction, reliability, etc. ) and detect the system status, and always keep the flexibility of the system to deal with emergencies. An effective monitoring can effectively process a large amount of information, analyze the capability of the system, effectively observe and predict possible deviations, make timely adjustments, and improve the response speed and capability to environmental changes.
In the highly competitive market environment, enterprises often choose outsourcing if they want to succeed in change, and outsourcing non-core business seems to be the only way and method for enterprises to find a way out. However, when the outsourcing decision is still unsuccessful, outsourcing becomes an excuse for enterprises to shirk. So it can be seen that outsourcing is not a panacea for enterprise success. If an enterprise wants to focus on its core business and improve its competitiveness through outsourcing, it can't take business return as the only criterion to measure outsourcing performance, nor can it just pay attention to the benefits obtained from outsourcing partners. Instead, we should establish a long-term, loyal, trusting and cooperative partnership with partners and effectively handle the relationship with suppliers, so as to maximize the effectiveness of outsourcing, obtain a competitive and stable supply source, and promote enterprises to obtain the competitiveness of sustainable development.
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