Multi-sourcing has become a common venture for large scale enterprises as they look to a number of partners for support on strategic projects in an effort to reduce costs and gain access to skills not readily available to them in-house. In theory multi-sourcing can reduce spend and provide predictable costs, guaranteed outcomes and improved service levels for customers and employees.

This coupled with the ability to draft in experts to handle specialist tasks, rather than adding to the already busy work schedules of over-stretched staff, creates an attractive prospect for large enterprises.

However, with the managing of multiple partners, deadlines and costs, multi-sourcing isn’t always a smooth operation, as quite often communication can break down and as a result collaboration breaks down too. Poor pre-planning, communication challenges and collaboration breakdowns can lead to a decline in service levels, dragged out projects, costs and ultimately; unfulfilled expectations.

But all is not lost when it comes to multi-sourcing. When the lines of communication are clear and open between partners there is less scope for error. A clear project leader amongst suppliers ensures good collaboration and cohesive multi-sourcing which results in the overall achievement of a successful project.

In today’s workplace there are plenty of channels widely available to help promote this collaborative approach. With instant messaging, wikis, video conferencing, microblogging and traditional methods like regular phone calls and meetings, the opportunity for collaboration has never been more readily available. By collaborating through these channels, multi-sourcing can be managed in real time which could effectively provide a solution to communication breakdowns. This is something which can only ever be a good thing for the future of cohesive multi-sourcing and overall project success.