What is the difference between the operational strategy of a manufacturing company and the operational strategy of a service company?

2. What is outsourcing?
Outsourcing is defined as the contracting out of a business process, which an organization may have previously performed internally or has a new need for, to an independent organization from which the process is purchased back as a service. The practice of purchasing a business function—instead of providing it internally is a common feature of any modern economy.
Organizations need to concentrate their valuable resources on what they do best in order to gather their main attention and care on their core competencies. At the same time, they require partners who can carry on innovating on the non-core processes that they outsource. More and more companies adjust to rapid changes better than their competitors while taking advantage in the opportunity that globalization provides : the possibility of having a part of their business taken care of in another part of the world for better costs and better expertise.
Outsourcing allows companies to focus on other business issues while having the details taken care of by outside experts. This means that a large amount of resources and attention, which might fall on the shoulders of management professionals, can be used for more important, broader issues within the company. The specialized company that handles the outsourced work is often streamlined and often has world-class capabilities and access to new technology that a company couldn’t afford to buy on their own. Plus, if a company is looking to expand, outsourcing is a cost-effective way to start building foundations in other countries.
In order for the right steps to be taken , the company off shoring often needs the expertise of an Outsourcing Advisor which can support the client by identifying the business strategy and providing realistic proposals while understanding your company’s goals and objectives, which can offer you support in all the important stages of outsourcing plus valid information regarding outsourcing location assessment & multicultural differences.

3. What is benchmarking?

Simply put, benchmarking is a process to discover what is the best standard of performance seen in a specific company, by a particular competitor or by a completely different industry.
The process of benchmarking involves four distinct steps:

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  Identifying the areas where the organization is keen to identify actionable insights. These could range from cost of production to number of critical to quality errors to employee engagement scores.
  
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  Once the areas have been identified, the organization then shortlists the companies/industries to benchmark.
  
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  The third step that follows is to collect data from these identified companies/industries across the areas of interest that were zeroed in earlier.
  
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  Finally, when the data has been collected, the organization studies the gaps between their standard and that of the benchmark.
  

Sometimes companies might confuse benchmarking with competitor research. However, there are some key differences between the two.

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  Focuses on best practices to identify next practices
  
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  Strives for continuous improvement
  
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