Evaluation of Strategic Outsourcing as an Instrument of Facility Management within the Czech Republic

The main objective of economically well-performing enterprises nowadays is to be competitive. Providing services through outsourcing is a strategic move not only in private sector but also in the public sector. Strategic outsourcing is the process of engaging the services of a provider to manage essential tasks that would otherwise be managed by in-house personnel. Outsourcing of business activities and services is one of many new trends in business development, reducing costs and increasing quality belong to most preferable activities. A questionnaire survey was carried out to analyze the Czech market following the theoretical basis of outsourcing. Questionnaires were sent to randomly selected companies in the Czech Republic that use outsourcing. The aim was to analyze enterprises within the Czech Republic and find out what are the most common reasons for strategic corporate decisions when deciding whether to outsource or not. The Czech Republic consists of 14 regions and each of them has different population, different size and location, it is variously rich and industrially represented. To make the survey relevant, the factor of population in each region with the total population of the Czech Republic was taken into consideration. The total amount of randomly selected companies that were contacted was 290. The survey was answered mostly by SMEs compared to large companies. The results show that outsourcing is primarily used by small and medium enterprises, which is 44 % of the total number of returned questionnaires. From a total of returned and completed questionnaires it is obvious that outsourcing is used by almost 91 % of businesses in the country. It was also found out that enterprises which use outsourcing so the most of them outsource bookkeeping, logistics, cleaning services, IT and other processes. The most common reason for outsourcing is to reduce costs, focusing on more important business areas and the lack of specialized human resources in the organization. Nationality of outsourcers has no longer been only Czech but an increasing number of companies use the foreign services. Fundamental contradiction between theory and practice is in the types of contracts used for outsourcing. The theory says that the contract for work is the least suitable for outsourcing, however the analysis showed the opposite. The most widely used contract is the Contract for Work. In practice, this contract is commonly used for bookkeeping, etc., although according to the new Civil Code, it can be used only for making things. The second most used contract is an Unnamed Contract, which is in theory the best contract for outsourcing. Results of the survey shows that outsourcing is gaining more and more popularity and that contributes to the strategic interconnections of competitive firms in the market