Does outsourcing really increase time to market?

I am seeing a measure of faith in outsourcing being a way to increase the time to market for new products. I have to admit that I do not believe that that is the case on a generic basis. Frankly, in the greater scheme of things, given the amount of exclusions that one has to make to that statement, it is akin to saying, believe in God and life will be better. Erm, yes, that does work, but you need to work hard, you need to have some money, some companionship, no floods, etc. etc.

Let us see the factors which will influence the speed to market:

1. product complexity, more complex the product, less is the speed to market.
   
2. number of products per "manager unit", higher the number, less is the speed to market
   
3. geographic coverage of clients, greater the coverage, less is the speed to market
   
4. type of customer, institutional clients are much more difficult to sell to, so speed to market is lower there.
   
5. regulatory interplay, if there is any regulatory or governmental interplay, then you can basically wave goodbye to fast time to market.
   
6. process complexity, if process being outsourced is complex (with lots of feedback and approval loops) means slower time to market
   
7. number of discreet processes, more the number of processes, lesser is the time to market.
   
8. where is the outsourced process being handled? if the outsourced location is difference culturally, linguistically, time zone, country wise, etc. etc, then speed to market is slow
   
9. are there more than 1 outsourced partners? (repeat question on each partner), quite a lot of value chains have multiple outsourced partners, and if that happens, then the speed to market is inversely proportional to the cube of the number of outsourced partners.
   

etc. etc.

Then comes the issue around the new product itself

1. what is the new product? is it identical to the previous products in terms of product characteristics and client demographics. If not, then you have a challenge.
   
2. if the product is not identical, what is the difference which will impact your outsourced partner?
3. what is the frequency of the new products?
4. does your outsourcing contract cover new products? what has been the previous experience?
   

But personally speaking, until and unless your product is very simple, process chain being simple and small, localised, with very good management, vendor management etc. etc. speed to market is not a factor for pushing outsourcing, I am afraid.

I am a great believer in kicking the tires of business cases. One of the best ways of doing so, specially on a multi-year business case, is to tie the proposer's and the steering committee's annual remuneration/bonus to the delivery of the business benefits. Outsourcing can work but it has to be so heavily managed that if you miss something, then it will seriously impact your business. And the worst bit is, it wont sink your business, it simply will mean that it will slow down your business. Far too often, outsourcing is done on the basis of "manage my mess for less", and people forget that less cost means less service as well.

One way of remembering this is to think about medical services, how would you feel if your doctor has outsourced his surgical practice to a veterinary doctor in Siberia?. Speed to market can be increased by adding more veterinary doctors, but will that necessarily help the business? This is a silly analogy, but I hope you get the idea! :)

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!