Outsourcing = Competitive Advantage
Over the past 10 years I've spent a lot of time in a "services industry", asset light businesses who have a scalable model to ensure they can manage any growth or expansion. Daily, we challenge the status quo of using a provider directly - whilst there are some obvious "late adopters" to models like 4PL consultancies & advisory services, the vast majority of companies I've worked with see the value in appointing an expert.
Key benefits in engaging someone to assist & manage various data points, providers & transactions is simple. Their ability to invest in their own people (if asset light), be flexibility, aggregate & innovate from within one key area of your business, will yield a greater return than most in-house models.
Why?
Outsourcing can almost always allow you to allocate time, cost efficiencies, and energy into other, more strategic "business conducive" efforts. A partner who adapts & understands your businesses underlying goals & objectives or "mission & vision", can act as important as a top performing employee. Like any services business, there are good ones & bad ones - which can often be left upto interpretation. As often the case, people are more likely to add to a rumor mill of a bad experience (Isolated or otherwise), than preach about good ones.
This is the same case when making hiring decisions - The risk is present whether it be in-house or outsourced labor. To ensure you're talking to the right fit, its a great idea to provide examples or insights of what your businesses is currently work on/with, as well as the key succession goals you have for the foreseeable year. This will help them align a solution with your strategy, which will generally net a greater result if executed well!
If your outsourcing partner can help you save any money, the upside in speaking to them about how they can help you invest the 90c from each $1 dollar into key focuses such as innovation, training, personnel & systems etc. Pocketing 10% of that benefit as profit should satisfy management & begin to turn your "Cost Centre" into a "Value Centre".