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Solution Story · Vendor Management

Half the work is outsourced. None of it is invisible.

Some repairs need the manufacturer. Some need a specialist. For this company, that's roughly every second order — 1,148 of them routed to outside vendors. The business model works only if every outsourced dollar, day, and device is tracked as tightly as in-house work. Now it is.

Part of
Small-Business Repair Platform engagement
Outsourced volume
1,148 orders — ~50% of the workload
Tracked per order
Vendor cost · company margin · custody & status
Vendor registry
Vendors mapped by modality they service
The problem

The riskiest orders were the least visible ones

An in-house repair is under your roof and under your eyes. An outsourced one is a customer's expensive device sitting at someone else's shop — with your name on the commitment and your margin depending on what the vendor charges. Tracked by memory and email, outsourcing meant devices you couldn't locate, vendor bills you couldn't predict, and margins you discovered only at invoice time.

The customer doesn't care who fixed it. They care that you know where it is, when it's back, and what it costs. That's the promise outsourcing must keep.
Your vendor's delay is your reputation
What we built

One order record, wherever the device goes

Outsourcing is a routing decision, not a different process. The order stays in the same lifecycle — with vendor, shipping legs, costs, and margin layered on.

Order received incoming QC done, repair scoped Routing decision in-house lab, or vendor? vendors matched by modality In-house lab timed labor · parts from inventory Vendor ship out — tracked leg vendor cost recorded ship back — tracked leg outgoing QC on return Invoice & margin customer price − vendor cost = the cut, per order, visible
Same lifecycle, extra legs — the vendor path adds shipping, cost capture, and a return inspection, never a separate system.
Customer pays
Service total
quoted from findings & contract
Vendor charges
Outsource cost
recorded on the order — $515K/yr in total costs
The business keeps
The cut
margin per outsourced order, known before invoicing

Chain of custody, both directions

Outbound and return shipments carry tracking numbers; a background job polls carrier status. "Where is the scope?" has an answer even when the scope is three states away.

Vendors by modality

The vendor registry maps who repairs what — so routing a specialty instrument means picking from vendors who actually service it, with history to compare.

Return-gate quality

A vendor repair still passes outgoing QC before going home. Outsourcing the work never means outsourcing the standard.

Results

A hybrid shop with nothing off the books

1,148
outsourced orders, fully tracked
~50%
of the workload routed to vendors
100%
of vendor costs captured per order
0
devices "somewhere at a vendor"
Outsourcing done blind is margin roulette. Outsourcing done tracked is a business model.
The difference is one order record
Keep reading

More from this engagement

Flagship story

Enterprise discipline, two-lab scale

The full engagement: a $2.9M repair business off spreadsheets and onto a platform.

Read the story → Solution story

A small business that knows its numbers

The other half of margin truth — what in-house labor really costs.

Read the story → From another engagement

Chain of custody & loaner logistics

The same custody discipline at 300,000-order enterprise scale.

Read the story →

Do you know your margin on subcontracted work — per job?

If vendor costs surprise you at invoice time, the tracking is the product you're missing.

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