Over recent years many companies have focused their attention on their key core competencies; however, they still have the non core activities to address.

As a result more and more companies are seeing that non-core activities such as stores management, high transactional purchasing and the attendant administration are all time consuming, financially costly and difficult to manage.

The option to outsource these 'back office' non core activities therefore becomes a requirement to free companies from these restraints with a number of companies able to qualify some of the main reasons for doing so as follows:

• Release capital or inventory
• The demand for the process is variable
• Move from fixed to variable costs
• Improve Productivity
• Access Technology and Skills
• Allow management to focus on core activities
• Minimise number of transactions in ERP system
• Cost Containment and Reduction
• Expenditure Planning
• Reduction In Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)
• Technical Support
• Controlled Supplier Database
• MRO Inventory control