Outsourced the wrong process? How to tell and what to do

Key takeaways

If you have outsourced the wrong process, the signs are rising escalations, falling quality you cannot fix with better instructions, and your own review time going up rather than down. First check whether the problem is the process, the split or the provider. Many failing processes recover by moving the split point; some should come back in-house.

• Signs: escalations up, review time up, quality flat or falling.
• Check: is it the process, the split or the provider?
• Often the fix is moving the split point.
• Bring it back if it fails the selection tests on review.

What are the signs you outsourced the wrong process?

Escalations to your team keep rising, quality stays below target despite clearer instructions, your review time grows instead of shrinking, and customers or colleagues route around the provider. After 90 days, any of these deserves a proper look.

• Escalation rate rising after month two.
• Quality below target despite better guidance.
• Your review time increasing.
• People working around the provider.

• Which business processes should you outsource?
• Why outsourcing sometimes fails to save money

Is it the process, the split or the provider?

Re-score the process with what you now know. If it fails on variability, differentiation or controllability, the process was the wrong choice. If it scores well but work bounces back at one point, the split is wrong. If both look right but quality is poor, the provider may be the issue, and switching may solve it.

• The process selection score: outsource, split or keep?
• Switching BPO provider without losing service

How do you fix a bad split?

Look at where escalations come from. If most come from one step, move that step back in-house, or move the split so the provider stops before it. Rewrite the rules for that step if the issue is clarity. Measure escalations again after four weeks.

• Outsource, split, fix or keep: four process verdicts
• Decision tables: turn judgement calls into clear rules

How do you bring a process back in-house?

Plan it like any handover: notice under the contract, return of data and documentation, a period of parallel running and a named in-house owner. Check whether TUPE could apply in reverse if provider staff mainly worked on your process. A clean exit clause makes this much easier.

• Insourcing vs outsourcing: when to bring work back
• Redundancy vs contract exit: the cost of scaling down

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: a process judged a failure is rescued by moving one judgement step back in-house. Bringing the whole process back would have thrown away the routine work that was going well.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

Review checklist

Work through these before deciding.

• Escalation and quality trends since go-live.
• Your review time trend.
• Re-score on all five tests.
• Where escalations originate.
• Contract exit terms.
• Decision: re-split, switch or bring back.

• An outsourcing risk register for each process
• Post-implementation review: did outsourcing work?

Next step

Tell us which outsourced process is not working and what you are seeing. We will give you an honest view on whether to re-split, switch or bring it back.