For centuries, people have been delegating responsibilities to others. Whether it’s a nanny hired to assist with child care, a landscaper hired to mow your lawn, or an accountant hired to do your taxes, society has long leveraged the help of others to achieve goals. Of course, in our world, we call it outsourcing. While the activities we choose to outsource continue to evolve, the reasons for outsourcing remain the same—scalability, flexibility, and cost considerations (among others). Frustratingly, the reasons outsourcing can fail also continue to stay the same.
In asset management, outsourcing activities span across operational and technology services. Fintech firms are shrinking your technology footprint by moving critical applications to the public cloud while service providers continue to take operational activities off the hands of asset managers. While outsourcing in asset management is already firmly entrenched, there’s reason to believe the outsourcing footprint will continue to expand.
Whether you are outsourcing a holistic set of middle office services and activities, or your entire technology footprint, we see the same mistakes being made time and time again. Below are some of the most common mistakes we see:
Outsourcing is here to stay. There are strong business cases for partnering with firms on a variety of facets of your business–both operational and technical. Keep in mind, however, that a sustainable model is only successful if both firms are committed to the relationship and truly partner with each other to achieve their goals.
Alex is a Citisoft Director, seasoned program and project manager with over 20 years of experience in the industry including working at highly respected investment managers and industry leading service providers. Alex has led delivery engagements in complex multi-year programs, various types of data integration projects, outsourcing transitions, acquisitions, divestitures, and system implementations. Alex has also participated in strategic engagements for vendor evaluation/selection. Alex has a well-balanced background that spans across front, middle, and back office working in both technical and business-facing capacities.