More than offshoring: SmartSourcing

Many financial services firms are embracing diversified sourcing of their IT and operations activities, which can provide lower and variable costs (up and down), improved quality, and flexibility, both in current conditions and emergency situations. While many firms are approaching sourcing incrementally, Deutsche Bank is pursuing a holistic approach, termed SmartSourcing, which examines all sourcing options – and their implications – rigorously in one go. Deutsche Bank’s corporate culture, with its strong linkages between people, processes, and performance, is also ensuring that SmartSourcing is accompanied by a major upskilling of its workforce through re-training and enhancements to its hiring processes. To implement SmartSourcing effectively brings many challenges and requires new skills, which will be discussed in this paper.