Posted on 08/13/2003 8:20:37 PM PDT by thimios
U.S. Offshore Outsourcing Leads to Structural Changes and Big Impact Gartner
By Diane Morello Vice President & Research Director
As offshore outsourcing ramps up, the dislocation of IT jobs in the United States is becoming real. CIOs must anticipate the potential loss of talent, knowledge and performance.
Many Ramifications With an Outsourcing Decision
In the first half of 2003, the application development manager of a well-known company was frantic. Her staff was near mutiny. A day earlier, the CIO had called an "all hands" meeting and announced that he could save the company $30 million during the next few years. How did he propose to do that? By moving application development offshore to outsourcing vendors. The application developers in the room were stunned. Immediately, they crowded into the office of their manager, all asking similar questions: What does this mean for me? Is my job safe? Will I become unemployed?
That scene is occurring in company after company around the United States, from midsize to large companies, with each decision affecting between 150 and 1,000 people. The movement of IT-related work from the United States and other developed countries to vendors and offshore sites in emerging markets is an irreversible mega trend. Although the United States may feel the biggest effect from this movement, other developed economies, including Australia and the United Kingdom, feel disoriented, too.
The workforce changes that accompany the trend toward offshore delivery - whether offshore outsourcing or offshore insourcing - are structural in nature, not fleeting or temporal. The effect of IT offshore outsourcing on the United States is a harbinger of changes in other countries that pursue global sourcing models. The workforce and labor-market consequences will be substantial.
Three CIO Issues
Three overarching issues shape CIOs' obligations around offshore outsourcing:
As long as new investment in IT remains low in North America and Western Europe, IT offshore outsourcing will yield a displacement of IT professionals and IT-related jobs. CIOs who make ill-informed decisions today will be unable to find or acquire the requisite local knowledge and competencies when IT investment resumes.
Few enterprises would deliberately choose to cede intellectual assets to offshore outsourcing vendors, but some executives fail to envision today which skills, knowledge or processes will generate business innovation tomorrow. Vision, leadership and an understanding of how technology fuels competitive advantage will help CIOs and business counterparts retain core knowledge.
CIOs and other business leaders must be clear about their plans, timing and transition phases for the offshore outsourcing transition. They must develop milestones, timelines and accountability. Moreover, they must communicate honestly and respectfully to keep performance high and defuse employee anger.
Not a Pretty Picture for the IT Workforce
Since 2001, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 500,000 people in IT professions in the United States have lost their jobs. Some were caught in the dot-com bust. Others were laid off by cost cuts, shrinking budgets, a poor economy and a desire to satisfy shareholders quarter by quarter. Now, a growing number of IT professionals and practitioners are having their jobs displaced as IT work moves to offshore venues.
Without a "shot of adrenaline" to the U.S. IT profession - such as an investment boom, a "white knight" industry, new IT-led innovation or new ways of competing globally - the scenario for the IT workforce in the United States and other developed nations looks bleak.
Large U.S. enterprises, vendors and service providers aggressively are investigating or pursuing offshore markets for IT delivery. Combining that interest with minimal new investment, preliminary Gartner analysis - based on the IT Association of America's count of 10.3 million IT practitioners in the United States in 2003 - indicates that another 500,000 IT jobs plausibly may disappear by year-end 2004.
By year-end 2004, one out of every 10 jobs within U.S.-based IT vendors and IT service providers will move to emerging markets, as will one out of every 20 IT jobs within user enterprises (0.8 probability).
Through 2005, fewer than 40 percent of people whose jobs are moved to emerging markets will be re-deployed by their current employers (0.8 probability).
Likely Implications of IT Offshoring
To many CIOs and business executives, the decision to outsource activities offshore is fiscally sound:
The cost, quality, value and process advantages are well proven.
Moreover, at a time when IS organizations are struggling with poor credibility and IT is being scrutinized, offshore outsourcing is becoming a tool for improving service delivery and a source of highly qualified talent in greater numbers.
Finally, the extensive use of quality methodologies among offshore vendors - such as Software Capability Maturity Model (CMM), People CMM and ISO 9000 - enables a degree of assurance that many in-house organizations lack.
Gartner urges CIOs and other business executives not to trivialize the impact of offshore outsourcing on their business strategies, their organizations or their employees. Three areas of concern arise:
Loss of future talent;
Loss of intellectual assets;
Loss of organizational performance.
Loss of Future Talent
Many IT applications and services that are being considered for movement offshore are now run and maintained by seasoned IT professionals in user companies, technology vendors and IT service providers. Offshore movement of that technical work implies a significant displacement of IT professionals who possess organizational memory around IT investments. At the same time, college students in the United States, the United Kingdom and other developed countries see technical work moving to emerging markets, and see family and friends losing technical jobs. Interest in pursuing technical careers will wane.
Why should CIOs care? Because they cannot afford to have domestic IT talent "dry up." When investment resumes and the economy rebounds, CIOs will need a cadre of seasoned IT professionals and eager recruits to "turbocharge" new ideas, new investments and new programs.
Loss of Intellectual Assets
CIOs and enterprise executives must ask: If everything can theoretically be outsourced, what kind of knowledge must we retain or develop? At Gartner's Outsourcing Summit in Los Angeles in June 2003, 39 percent of attendees at the session "Managing Workforce-Related Risk in Outsourcing" cited the loss of critical knowledge as the greatest source of workforce-related risk around outsourcing. Identifying, capturing and measuring core enterprise knowledge is daunting, especially when critical knowledge is often subordinate to technical skill sets.
For now, most enterprises send straightforward technical activities and routine business processes offshore, but the ease with which they can move those activities may numb decision-makers to the need to maintain and protect essential knowledge/
Six areas of core knowledge that are worth protecting include:
Enterprise Knowledge: How do our products, services and systems blend together?
Cultural Knowledge: How do we do things here? What are our beliefs? Who really makes decisions?
Social Network Knowledge: Which roles and which people form critical connective tissue?
Strategic Knowledge: What are our objectives and competitive advantages?
Industry and Process Knowledge: How do our industry, competitors, and customers operate?
Activity Knowledge: Do we know which people are doing what today?
Loss of Organizational Performance
Offshore outsourcing weakens the already-fragile relationships between employees and employers. Whether CIOs are considering, investigating or actively pursuing offshore outsourcing, they should prepare for a bumpy ride. Beneath the sound business reasons for outsourcing lie thornier issues associated with people.
Decisions to outsource - whether offshore or domestic - bring upheaval to IS organizational competencies, roles and makeup. More than 40 percent of attendees at the workforce-related risk presentation at Gartner's Outsourcing Summit considered their organizations to be ill-prepared for the new roles, competencies and skills that accompany an outsourcing delivery model.
Are Enterprises Prepared for Outsourcing? Not Really
The situation worsens with offshore outsourcing, because fewer than 40 percent of the people affected will be re-deployed. During the offshore transition, the degree of uncertainty is so high that it can severely disrupt organizational performance. CIOs and other business executives should hold themselves accountable for sustaining and improving organizational performance levels during the transition. To do so, they should coordinate along several lines:
Identify competencies, roles, people and knowledge that will be retained. To prevent organizational paralysis, CIOs must define the future role and shape of their IS organizations as certain day-to-day activities move overseas. Gartner research reveals that many enterprises retain such critical functions as application design, application integration, client-facing process management, enterprise architecture, information management and high-investment competency centers. In addition, they develop new competencies in service management, vendor relationship management, process management and business integration.
Create a meaningful transition plan. Provide clear timelines and milestones to help people prepare for the changes that offshore outsourcing brings (for example, Milestone A will be reached in six months, Milestone B six months later and Milestone C 12 months after that). At each milestone, certain segments of work or applications will complete their offshore transfer, and the affected people will be terminated or re-deployed. Companies that have a lasting commitment to their people will generally spend time arranging redeployment of their affected employees.
Outline employees' options. Define the options available for affected employees: re-skilling, re-deployment, termination or outplacement. The way in which enterprises deal with employees during the offshore transition will be a lasting testament to the perception of leadership and the reputation of the company as an employer. Executives must hold themselves accountable for communicating clearly, quickly and meaningfully. "I don't know" is an unacceptable answer when the organization's performance and people's livelihood are at stake.
Bottom Line
CIOs and business leaders in the United States and other developed countries should move carefully as they pursue offshore outsourcing.
Until IT investment resumes, IT offshore outsourcing will yield a displacement of IT professionals and IT-related jobs.
CIOs who make ill-informed decisions will be unable to find or develop qualified talent when they need it.
Additionally, CIOs and other business leaders must be clear about envisioning what knowledge, roles, people and skills will fuel competitive advantage in the future - otherwise, they risk losing core knowledge.
Finally, CIOs must communicate clearly, honestly and respectfully about the transition plan, and about the options available to affected employees.
People said the same thing about Japan in the 80's. Remember when the Japanese were going to be the new kings of the world, Japan Inc. etc.etc.
Different times different conditions and quatos and tariffs were used to limit the predatory practices of the Japanese.
In short your false analogy is moreintentional misrepresentation on your part.
Really. I grew up and currently live in the Pittsburgh area. Even thoguh the population is down, the traffic seems to be twice as worse. It must be all those cars.
Retail establishments are blossoming in the suburbs and those Nintendo's seem to fly off the shelf.
Americans in 2003 have a much better life than they did in 1979, IMO, and that came about with a minimum of tariffs.
I guess I can understand. I would be ashamed of myself if I wrote what you did, too.
Expressing dismay and disgust with the current course of events is worthy of being compared to Hillary™?
Did I miss something of substance here?
Yes, this will be an issue for 2004. But I don't think any of the candidates see it yet.
It's called a sales tax. And do you truly want to start laying out extra money simply because those of us in the tech sector are seeing jobs dry up?
What happens once the sector comes back? You think that the Feds will have the wherewithal to eliminate any tax once they've started it?
Please. There are alternatives to going back to our collective wallets.
This is sarcasm BTW
Why on earth would someone who has purported to be a conservative offer such a ridiclous plan when it is patently against american values whereas tariffs are the classical solution. What do you have against Free Markets? Why can you not allow the Free market tro operate in the USA without foreign interference?
You are of course merely trying to distort the issue away fgrom tariffs by offering what you consider to be a ridiculous counter proposal to achieve the same ends. deal with the issue. If you or anyone thinks tariffs are bad then show the evidence. If the supposition you make is true then surely there are studies that have evidence showing that.
There are regression analysis showing the opposite. If you can find a case where tariffs have inflicted harm on the US economy please bring it to light so we may examine and verify the facts presented and the logic from those facts used to prove the supposition.
In crude language put up or shut up.
Sorry - I've been a bit dense this morning....
I'd hope that those who call themselves truly American aren't that shortsighted. At any rate, I have two problems with this. One, I can't stand the thought of going to the government to solve problems that government created because government is the problem. And, two, I have a hard time holding someone responsible for something that they didn't do. Where is Congress in all this mess?
I got a lotta livin' to do before I die, and I ain't got time to waste.
Naw. T_C_L doesn't seem to have anything of substance to say. He or she sure won't defend these comments: "You say a lot of evil things about our President. I think you need to be held accountable for running your mouth and making these insulting, outragous claims. Like President Bush said, you're either with us or against us. I can only presume you're an enemy of this nation."
In here, T_C_L states that anyone who makes comments that he or she deems 'evil' or 'outrageous' or even 'insulting' must be 'held accountable' as an 'enemy of this nation'.
T_L_C is a friggin' fascist, only without the spiffy uniform.
I've got no problem with a free market, provided you make it a truly free market: get rid of the incentive and visa programs that make it advantageous for firms to outsource in the first damn place.
Truly make it a level playing field.
There's a store in Hong Kong selling Nazi-era SS uniforms as fashion items. Perhaps a mail-order catalog might be in order? [g]
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