Hi ,
Welcome to our first newsletter of 2010.

Management Brief: Manufacturing Outsourcing
Both strategic and pricing decisions lie at the heart of outsourcing choices. In order to rapidly expand operations and capture markets at an opportune time, capital, technical, and employee resources are required. Outsourcing is often an attractive option, since it offers the availability of needed resources without the need for new capital. Risks can also be shared with the outsourcer, and financial flexibility gained via reduced debt levels. However, certain intangible costs, associated with political and economic risks and supply chain management restrictions, should be seriously considered when entering into outsourcing partnerships........read more..
Read other management briefs

Benchmarking for Excellence, Kuwait 21 Feb 2010, Bahrain 27 Feb 2010
World-Class Organisational Learning through Professional Benchmarking. The Centre for Organisational Excellence Research (COER) offers 2-day interactive workshops in TRADE, where you will be introduced to a number of tools in practical work sessions that will help you in the planning and undertaking of a benchmarking project. It is beneficial if you are able to identify a benchmarking area of focus (a process, activity or level of performance that needs to be improved) prior to the workshop. For more information email Dr Robin Mann via This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Benchmarking Presentations on You Tube
We recently added a series of benchmarking presentations to You Tube. They are explained in full on our BPIR blog.
1. A benchmarking example from the health sector (see it here)
2. What is benchmarking? (see it here)
3. Popularity of benchmarking (see it here)
4. Benchmarking is becoming easier due to advances in social media (see it here)
5. What is the BPIR.com? – and how it supports benchmarking (see it here)
View the whole blog here

BPIR Network - what's been happening?
Well our new network is slowly gaining momentum. There are upwards of 350 member profiles now created and these people, from more than 20 different countries, are now talking to each other, making new contacts, finding synergies, and benefiting from being able to plug in, whenever they like, to a group of business improvement focussed individuals. Have you created your own member profile yet? Tried out the contact mechanisms? If you have any issue in the business performance area on which you could do with some help, some objective opinion, or just need someone to bounce ideas off, then just plug in to the network and reach out.

Example: Last week I received a contact from a manager in Singapore who was having a real struggle managing several remote teams. Over a series of emails which then quickly developed into a Skype conference call with a few others in our networks we not only provided effective assistance but we all learned something valuable from the experience and also made some excellent contacts / potential colleagues / clients / customers.

Spotlight on Self-Assessment
Have you used any of our self-assessment tools lately? We have over 50 to assess all aspects of your organisation - from how your organisation develops its strategy to how it serves its customers. Here are three topical examples:

Performance Measurement - Selection of Performance Measures...?. read more (go to category 7)
Benchmarking - Best Practice Maturity Grid...?. read more (go to category 7)
Leadership - Ethical Decision Making Process.....read more (go to category 1)

Featured publications
Did you know BPIR provides full access to over 600 excellent business publications providing, in total, over 1,000,000 articles and reports? Here are a few of the publication titles from the "Management" category (one of 23 categories):

Members read the latest issues - non members see available titles

Remember
..to check out the website keep in touch with other members through the network and view the rest of our research. There are 1000's of case studies, research papers, and 'expert' articles linked to over 1000 strategies, tools and techniques. More and more are added each month. We know you will find valuable knowledge and we always welcome your feedback, so if you have time, please email any comments about our services to feedback@BPIR.com, or simply fill in and submit our 30 second survey found under "Newsletters-subscribe".

And if you are currently not a member of the BPIR, or wish to upgrade your membership to a site-wide membership, then we encourage you to do so right now.. JOIN NOW.. you won't be disappointed.