A study on events management outsourcing in Kenya

Abstract

Outsourcing has been growing steadily in Kenya following a conscious effort by the Government of Kenya (GoK) to create an enabling environment for the industry as part of its long-term strategic goal. Despite this growth however, most Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) still prefer to organize and manage their events in-house by assigning the task to a staff member who may not have events management expertise. This ends up being very daunting and stressful as planning a good event is time consuming. It is with this background in mind, that the study attempted to establish the business prospects in events management outsourcing among NGOs in Kenya. In doing this, it was important to bear in mind that when prospecting for business, events management will be an outsourced function. Consequently, apart from purely dwelling on the intricacies of events management, a methodical approach to discover what will drive organizations to outsource this function was crucial. This is because the decision to outsource any service is a major strategic one for most organizations and it involves weighing the potential cost savings against the consequences of a loss in control over the product or service. There were two underlying principles guiding the study i.e. the analysis of events management and critical success factors (csf) in outsourcing of events management. They guided the formulation of several hypotheses based on the research questions. These were to characterize how events are currently organized by NGOs in terms of the frequency of events, size, type and additional items and services required. Furthermore, it sought to find out what will drive organizations to outsource the events management function. From the empirical study, there are great prospects for events management services to NGOs in Kenya especially for organizing conferences/workshops/seminars. Additionally, NGOs give preference to what they consider their drivers of outsourcing. The other two areas used to measure i.e. benefits expected and the service provider's capacity have the same influence on the decision to outsource. Finally, it is important to appreciate that most NGOs subscribe to their donors' ideals and therefore have no hand in major decision making regarding their mode of operation. As a first step, it is imperative to target the donor organizations to buy the idea of outsourcing their events. Once the donors are persuaded to go the outsourcing way a major barrier to entry is eliminated which will then open up a world of opportunities for a prospective entrepreneur.