Outsourcing, support services

In performing their role, scientists working in an R D area of the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries, need the support of a large number of other professional people. Some of these support services are shown in Figure BIO. In big companies this support was provided traditionally in house but a majority companies now outsource at least some of these activities to external agencies (see Section B, 1.4). When a service, which previously has been provided internally, is outsourced it is an obvious concern that the support provided may not be of the same quality. To this end it... 

Table 37.5 identifies provides an indication of some real issues that might be encountered when outsourcing IT services. A significant investment in terms of expertise may be required to support the outsource partner, but this is hkely to be a lot cheaper and easier than having to change outsource partners because of an unacceptable level of service. This support may come directly from the pharmaceutical manufacturer s own staff or through a third-party consultancy. 

BPO Business Process Outsourcing. Contracting out for support services beyond information technology. Examples include human resources, finance and accounting, and logistics services. 

Outsourced front and back end fuel cycle support services, including waste... 

Small reactors without on-site refuelling are being designed specifically for operation with the outsourced front-end and back-end fuel cycle services they can be employed in either of the two proposed institutional approaches for providing fuel cycle support services. 

On the other hand, many of the longer-term and some of the nearer-term concepts identify centralized or regional fuel cycle support services as basic option and suggest that such services could, probably, be provided under an international control. Special features of small reactors without on-site refuelling that could facilitate their deployment for operation with the outsourced fuel cycle services are summarized in brief below. 

Businesses are under constant pressure to control costs, especially fixed costs, to do more work with fewer people. One answer is to stop any irrelevant support and to consider the outsourcing of non-core, but essential services. 

Outsource regularly used in-house services that provide no competitive advantage, for example IT and computing, information library support and routine analytical services, by agreeing an ongoing service contract with a specialist organisation. 

The R D Manager must ensure that the cost for the analytical support is in the budget for each project. Monitoring the cost and the use of analytical services is an essential task in budgetary control as it is easy for an R D team to run into overspend rapidly. It helps if data is provided to team leaders and chemists on the cost of the methods available in the analytical services group or from the outsourcing agency. 

In the case of outsourcing the support for the hardware platforms and network that run the chromatography data system software to the internal IT Department, a Service Level Agreement (SLA) has to be written. This SLA should cover procedures such as ... 

Consider Bharti Tele-Ventures, the largest private telephone company in India. It recently outsourced and integrated its core functions - such as network and program management, help desk support, disaster recovery, IT, and billing - which freed it to focus exclusively on marketing and customer service strategies. As a result, Bharti tripled its subscriber base - from six to 18 million subscribers - in just 20 months. 

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