Industry chat is awash with talk of how organisations can actually measure the impact of outsourcing on their bottom line. Outsourcing is all well and good and everyone knows that it’s supposed to cut costs and improve quality. But unless the results are carefully assessed, claims like that are spurious.

The NOA has just completed a piece of research on Business Orientated Metrics, otherwise knows as BOMs. They are real measures of the business impact of outsourcing, as opposed to what we call “output orientated metrics” which measure the operational efficiency of outsourcing. Typical BOMs might include: reductions in error rates; employee satisfaction; levels of absenteeism etc.

The NOA research, which was conducted by outsourcing analyst firm, NelsonHall, found that only 18 percent of organisations use BOMs, as opposed to 70 percent that use output metrics. But the number using BOMs is due to double in the next two years, as organisations wake up to the benefits of considering outsourcing in the wider respect of the business.

Whilst in the early days of outsourcing, companies were blinded by cost savings, they seemed to lose track of how it should be measured. BOMs are the industry’s answer. It will be interesting to see how outsourcing measures up.