Master's Thesis from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0, University of Bradford (Bradford Institute of Management), language: English, abstract: Focus strategies that seek to leverage company skills, capabilities and resources have become a dominant paradigm in business strategy planning and implementation. As a consequence, firms increasingly seek to reduce investments in non-core business processes and functions while freeing up resources and management attention for core competency development to achieve competitive advantage and provide unique value for customers. Activities for which companies do not have critical strategic needs or special capabilities are considered for external sourcing. Combining the two approaches can yield significant benefits. Outsourcing business processes can give access to provider economies of scale and learning thereby reducing operating costs and enhancing the quality of the activities outputs. The expected value of an outsourcing initiative is constituted by the aggregate projected benefits – both efficiency and effectiveness gains within the externalised process and strategic rewards – that flow from the exercise of the option. Strategic fit of the sourcing strategy with the current competency profile of the firm plays a key role in securing the success of vertical dis-integration policies and to obtain the highest value contribution from outsourcing initiatives. Corporate planners who are involved in firm boundary and competitive business policy decisions have to understand the market and service characteristics of outsourcing service provision, the relevant strategic linkages between non-core and core processes as well as the various types of interaction and governance models that are available to fulfil the needs of the organisation. Empirical evidence suggests that corporate planning procedures and externalisation strategies could be integrated more comprehensively. KEYWORDS Outsourcing, value contribution, corporate planning, core competencies, make-or-buy decision, interaction costs, business process re-engineering, interconnected value system, information technology, activity costs, standardisation, relative cost differentials, strategic sourcing, total cost of ownership