Outsourcing: Work in abundance

A. Executive leadership is critical in creating the vision of the business structure needed for DME companies to be competitive. The right structure reduces costs in the central business office, while putting your best people and  your brand, patient- and client-facing. DME companies compete on relationships and services, not on hardware. Thus your brand is built on people processes, and your brand should never be outsourced.

The top executive in the company is the evangelizer of this new structural paradigm for DME companies. Success requires continuous communication over time to build employee trust and confidence in the new structure. Executive leadership must take their employees through a transparent communication process that helps make them realize “abundance” in this process versus “scarcity.” When employees and frontline managers realize abundance in this process, they understand that they have been empowered to extend their expertise and efficiencies through a partnered offshore work team. When employees and frontline managers feel scarce in this process, they feel the need to look for other work, as their job may be next. The key is to manage your top performers and knowledge experts to work in abundance as they work to implement the strategic initiative of outsourcing processes. 

The way to keep an abundant culture during an outsourcing process is for leaders to communicate vision, remove obstacles, and align rewards and recognition with staff's ability to lead extended work teams. Provided the right partner is selected, success is almost completely dependent upon the executive's engagement in the outsourcing effort.

Tim Crimmins is vice president of business development for EqualizeRCM Services. He can be reached at tim.crimmins@sysinformation.com.