Frank Cocuzza's first visit to an outsourcing vendor in India seven years ago left him intrigued but not ready to jump. "Nice story," the senior vice president of finance for Penske Truck Leasing Co. recalls thinking. "But we weren't going to trade our processes for a nice story." Eighteen months later, Cocuzza flew back for a second look, stuck around for a five-day visit, and left dazzled. The vendor's 600-person workforce had swollen to 3,000, service offerings had been expanded, and best-practice processes were in evidence everywhere. "We came away so impressed with what they had built that we realized we needed what they were doing," Cocuzza recalls. He soon began shipping bits and pieces of his finance operation to the outsourcer, which was then a subsidiary of General Electric Co. but is today an independent company operating as Genpact. It now handles some 40 different finance processes for Reading, Pennsylvania-based Penske, including collections, various accounting and financial-reporting activities, and even on-demand data analysis for the business units.
Penske's experience mirrors that of a growing segment of Corporate America.
Source: CFO, http://www.cfo.com