OperationsAn operations lead at a 30–300 person company

When a piece of work costs more than buying it, I want to know whether to keep it or outsource, so the decision is made on real cost rather than habit.

Khi một phần công việc tốn nhiều hơn giá thuê ngoài, tôi muốn biết nên tự làm hay thuê, để quyết định bằng chi phí thật chứ không bằng thói quen.

Job context

Who: An operator owning a function's budget
When: When volume outgrows current capacity
Trigger: An outsourcing quote below the estimated internal cost
Situation: Internal cost is almost never fully counted
Constraints: Outsourcing erodes internal capability, and getting it back is hard

Does not know the true internal cost
High
Wages are one part; management, space and training time are the rest.
Root cause: Overheads are not attributed to functions
Outsourcing erodes internal capability
High
After two years nobody inside understands the work any more.
Root cause: Capability exists only while practised
External quality is hard to control
Medium
Contracts describe outcomes; the how cannot be inspected.
Root cause: The buyer cannot see the supplier's process
Outsourcing prices rise once dependence sets in
High
Year one is cheap; the real price appears once bringing it back is expensive.
Root cause: Price is set by the customer's exit cost
The decision is shaped by who is defending their team
Medium
Whoever owns the function is also whoever loses headcount.
Root cause: The analyst and the affected party are the same person

A solution is not the same thing as a product — a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

Compare the quote with wage cost
Behaviour
The commonest comparison, omitting most of the internal cost.
Outsource part and keep part
Behaviour
The only way to retain capability, and more expensive than either pure option.
Put quality targets in the contract
Product
Measures outcomes, not method, so it catches errors after they happen.
Build a fully loaded cost model
Workaround
Operators do the work accounting does not do at function level.
Have someone outside the function analyse it
Behaviour
The only way to remove the conflict of interest, and few companies think of it.

The person best informed to analyse the outsourcing question is the one who loses their team if the answer is yes.
Why existing solutions fail: The analysis is always assigned to the function owner because they understand it best, and no process separates analysis from consequence.
Potential opportunity: Guaranteeing the analyst's position before assigning the analysis, so the answer carries no personal cost.
The comparison uses wage cost because it is the number at hand, while the real cost includes management, training and capability lost.
Why existing solutions fail: Accounting records costs by type rather than by function, so nobody has a loaded number for any particular function.
Potential opportunity: A way to attribute overheads by function, coarse enough to be feasible and accurate enough to compare.