Page 40 - Like No Business I Know

The Outsourcer’s Apprentice

His audience nodded with complacent satisfaction at Vasek’s
mastery of technical terminology.
“Palltree and Blythe’s contract was merely to bring in a team of
industrial designers to redo the packaging of Sweet Gnawthings. The
entrenched department responsible for graphics design was perceived
by the management as a millstone, a cost center eating up resources
between assignments. Our completely objective analysis of their
operation”—a pause for snickers around the table—”revealed that
our consultants could come up with a new box for minty dog chews
in half the time as their in-house staff, and that it would be much
more appealing to the canine shopping demographic than the tired
old designs that left sales in the doldrums. NI already had an inkling
of the savings in ultimate benefit costs by letting their people go—
nice phrase that, sort of like the old spiritual, ‘Tell old Pharaoh, let
my people go.’” More knowing laughter. “Anyway, they went for the
bait, and it was the thin end of the wedge. I was lunching big-time
with the major players at NI in a matter of days. And they were
picking up the tab—unfortunately, I know, becelves as providers
of every kind of product or service imaginable, not just one narrow
specialization like accounting or sanitation, as our competitors have
been thankfully slow to comprehend. I was able to break through the
managerial elite at NI to the real owners of the corporation, a series
of holding companies and institutional investors, and sell them on my
philosophy. Once they understood where their interests lay, they
were behind me one hundred percent. NI, being the result of
leveraged buyouts during the uncontrolled merger mania of the last
two decades, had a debt load depressing its stock price and curtailing
any dividends. It needed to cut costs as well as boost revenue, and we
promised both. In short, over a period of two-and-a-half years, I
managed to outsource virtually the entire corporation, from the
penthouse to the doghouse.”
The executives of Palltree and Blythe found this amusing, as well.
Several of them had coasted into new territories of prosperity thanks
to Vasek, and they were ready to indulge him in any attempt at
humor. But this was not a joke.
“You wouldn’t believe what they were paying to maintain a kennel
full of product tasters. Almost as much as three vice presidents. The
initial resistance of certain upper-level managers, who enjoyed the

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