Kate Vitasek

Author, educator and business consultant Kate Vitasek is an internationally recognized innovator in the practice of supply chain management and outsourcing. She is the founder and lead researcher in the concept of Vested Outsourcing, which was developed in conjunction with the University of Tennessee. Vitasek is also a faculty member at the University of Tennessee’s Center for Executive Education and is author of the popular book Vested Outsourcing: Five Rules that will Transform Outsourcing, along with Mike Ledyard and Karl Mandrodt.

Unlike conventional outsourcing by which companies purchase services for fees, Vested Outsourcing is a business model under which companies and service providers work collaboratively.

“Together, companies and vendors using the vested approach develop performance-based solutions in which both parties’ interests are aligned, and thus they are vested in each others’ success,” Vitasek explained. “After experiencing how well the vested formula works, companies regard traditional outsourcing as old-school, impersonal and outmoded.”

In Vested Outsourcing, Vitasek has created a model that will improve outsourcing procedures much the way Six Sigma and Lean improved production processes in the 1980s and ’90s. Based on a research study with the University of Tennessee and the United States Air force, Vitasek has identified the top 10 flaws in most outsourced business models and then shows organizations how to rethink their outsourcing relationships in a way that will lower costs, improve service and increase innovation.