Have you considered hiring the cleaning service for your office? Why did you choose to outsource this task?

However, if you work in a restaurant and hotel industry, cleaning service outsource is a smart choice, isn’t it?

So what is the problem here?

First, in different industries, cleaning task may be important or not to your organisation’s competitive advantages. Customers choose to have dinner at your restaurant over your competitors because of the important reason which is the clean and fresh atmosphere in your restaurant.

Second, does the task disrupt the operation of your organisation if you do not perform it well? For example, you can satisfy your customer’s orders even if accounting activities will be conducted lately.

Therefore, Barnes created a tool to help you make proper decisions on outsourcing. Here is a matrix:

There are two factors that you should understand first: strategic importance and contribution to operational performance. As we analyse in the beginning of the blog post:

• Strategic importance of the task: Does the task give your organisation a competitive advantage? Does the task make your customer choose to purchase your organisation’s product or service over your competitors?
• The task’s impact on the organisation’s performance: how much does the task contribute to the smooth running of the organisation? How long has your organisation’s operation been waited if the task was done lately?

When you are clear about two factors, you can allocate your all activities into 4 quadrants.

• Form a strategic alliance (high strategic importance, low contribution to operation performance)

In the quadrant, the task may be outsourced to the trusted partner. They will share the work and control to the your organisation but they still keep independent.

• Retain (high strategic importance, high contribution to operation performance)

In this quadrant, your organisation should be the only one who keeps a complete control of the task.

• Outsource (low strategic importance, high contribution to operation performance)

It is very clear that you should outsource the tasks allocated in this quadrant because you can take advantage of TOP’s expertise and innovation. From that, you can spend your effort and resources on core activities.

• Eliminate (low strategic importance, low contribution to operation performance)

You could consider eliminating the tasks in the quadrant because they do not contribute any value to your organisation.