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The Evolution of a Process

By Rob Mattern
February 25, 2014

At the inception of Mattern & Associates in 1997, I had a concept that firms would be willing to pay for expertise to assist them in making their back office operations more cost-effective and efficient. I had been working on the vendor side for over a decade at two outsourcing companies, and I had paid witness to a lot of firm executives making poor outsourcing or vendor decisions. The decision makers either did not truly understanding the ramifications of outsourcing or they did not understand how to structure a contract that would fulfill their objectives.

In one case, for example, a firm was persuaded to outsource all their locations when originally the firm was only interested in outsourcing their home office. This resulted in both an unexpected increase in turnover in addition to agreeing to non-solicitation charges being placed on their own employees. An incoming vendor wanted to displace competitive equipment for another firm and persuaded that firm into a complete equipment refresh when their fleet was relatively young and did not require it. In other instances where the firms did not outsource their operations, the firms' staff lacked the market knowledge and expertise to improve their in-house services.

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