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U.S. Offshore Outsourcing Leads to Structural Changes and Big Impact
cio.com ^ | August 13, 2003 | Diane Morello

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.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: freetrade; outsourcing
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Comment #261 Removed by Moderator

To: AppyPappy
Not only that, you will NEVER speak to a programmer. There is a always a conduit that doesn't know the technical side so he can have plausible denial.

Not only that, most of the programmers can't speak English well enough to communicate with you anyway.

262 posted on 08/14/2003 8:12:09 AM PDT by mhking
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To: Dane
few would deny that it stimulated a cascade of retaliatory tariffs by foreign governments which made it very hard for American businessmen and farmers to sell goods overseas.

This is a bald face lie. There are many who will challenge this statement who have read the history of the 1920's and the 1930's. you were called on it.

263 posted on 08/14/2003 8:13:00 AM PDT by harpseal (Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown)
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To: Marauder
So I'm looking to change my career yet again, but I want to find something they can't outsource, whatever the hell that turns out to be.

We might call it geographically safe employment. I've suggested my son consider plumbing. [g]

264 posted on 08/14/2003 8:13:06 AM PDT by Diva
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To: Trivista
Nintendo just announced a halt to Gamecube production due to lack of sales...

The damn box sucks compared to XBox and PS2, what do you expect?

265 posted on 08/14/2003 8:14:08 AM PDT by mhking
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To: mhking
I doubt that. Most Indian students coming here have been raised speaking English. Some of them told me they don't speak Hindi as well as they speak English. All of the technical schooling is English-only.

Now, you may not be able to understand them but that gibberish is English. When I was at Wrangler, I attended the meetings between the users and the Indian coders because I could interpret for them.

266 posted on 08/14/2003 8:15:24 AM PDT by AppyPappy (If You're Not A Part Of The Solution, There's Good Money To Be Made In Prolonging The Problem.)
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To: harpseal
By this standard it was wrong to try to get government to enact the welfare reform of the 1990's because it was going to government to solcve a problem government created. Sometimes when theproblem is government polkicies or programs only government action can change them.

Yes, by removing themselves completely out of the equation. That's the only acceptable premise to me.


I got a lotta livin' to do before I die, and I ain't got time to waste.

267 posted on 08/14/2003 8:15:33 AM PDT by rdb3 (I'm not a complete idiot. Several parts are missing.)
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To: AppyPappy
The trouble is, the first real big emergency could be our last.

China has publicly stated their desire to kill us. Yet we give them great power over us.
268 posted on 08/14/2003 8:15:53 AM PDT by the gillman@blacklagoon.com
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To: mhking
Beta vs VHS.
269 posted on 08/14/2003 8:16:01 AM PDT by AppyPappy (If You're Not A Part Of The Solution, There's Good Money To Be Made In Prolonging The Problem.)
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To: harpseal
This is a bald face lie. There are many who will challenge this statement who have read the history of the 1920's and the 1930's. you were called on it

A bald faced lie, IMO, is stating that the American economy was going gangbusters in 1932 and that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs had absolutely no effect in worsening the depression.

270 posted on 08/14/2003 8:16:06 AM PDT by Dane
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To: RinaseaofDs; IvanT
This President thinks that ceding one of the only real advantages we still possess in the US, that of software engineering and development, to countries like China, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia is sound Homeland Security policy, and sound economic policy as well. This is the same party that wailed about the sale of sensitive satellite technology to China, but lifts nary a finger when a half a million, high paying, strategically critical jobs go to the ChiComs.

Sadly, you are right. I really want to like (and I do in many aspects) GW, but encouraging outsourcing will result in a national security disaster.

Indeed, just thinking about the ChiComs calling the shots on future high end tech development gives me the willies.

Well said, RinaseaofDs.

271 posted on 08/14/2003 8:16:16 AM PDT by americanSoul (Better to die on your feet, than live on your knees. Live Free or Die. I should be in New Hampshire.)
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To: B.Bumbleberry
try to post to the issues. I do not initiate any persona attacks on this thread and calling a demonstrable lie a lie is not in my circles a personal attack. Clearly if we had a little more such openess in discussion we might not have been saddled with WJC for eight years. As I have said in most of my posts let me know when or if you wish to dicuss issues.
272 posted on 08/14/2003 8:17:39 AM PDT by harpseal (Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown)
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To: Dane
Your definition of what constitutes prosperity is incredibly shallow. Nintendos ?

A city whose population has dropped is faring badly, losing jobs. And God help smaller industrial cities like Flint, Dearborn, Dayton, Youngstown, etc... All shadows of their 1971 selves. The entire Northeast never recovered from the end of those factory jobs.

The non-college educated worker of today is not by any shred of the imagination better off than the worker of 1971. The worker with a good seniority union job of 1971 could buy a house, go away on vacation, have health insurance, and retire on a pension. How many college graduates these days have those things ? His standard of living has dropped.

On top of this still bleeding wound you would add yet another.
273 posted on 08/14/2003 8:17:41 AM PDT by Tokhtamish
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To: Lazamataz
" I have so much in common with Hillary, because I quoted you and ask you to defend your comments?"

Another nice trick you picked up from the Clintons - Attacking our President and Commander in Chief while we have American sons and daughters fighting and dying for us on foreign soil. The depths of your disgusting behavior seems to know no bounds. How do you sleep at night?
274 posted on 08/14/2003 8:17:44 AM PDT by Those_Crazy_Liberals (Ronaldus Magnus he's our man . . . If he can't do it, no one can.)
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To: Dane
Retail establishments are blossoming in the suburbs and those Nintendo's seem to fly off the shelf.

= Record Credit Card Debt
275 posted on 08/14/2003 8:17:55 AM PDT by cp124
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To: Lazamataz
I rather disgust him than be considered honorable by him.
You're having a lucky day.
276 posted on 08/14/2003 8:17:56 AM PDT by the gillman@blacklagoon.com
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To: AppyPappy
Now, you may not be able to understand them but that gibberish is English.

Good point. (I keep picturing Apu from "The Simpsons")

277 posted on 08/14/2003 8:18:10 AM PDT by mhking
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To: Trivista
Who cares about the southern border? How many Mexicans were part of the conspiracy that used airplanes to kill on 9/11? Please don't let prejudice against people of a different skin color cloud your perception of the facts.
278 posted on 08/14/2003 8:19:30 AM PDT by Those_Crazy_Liberals (Ronaldus Magnus he's our man . . . If he can't do it, no one can.)
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To: Dominic Harr
I've got horror stories to tell about indian resources.

Please: As a favor to me and every other FR IT guy.... can you put them down and submit them as a message? Or even better -- as a new thread?

Right now, these idiot reporters are writing articles praising off-shoring, not mentioning the near 100% failure rate of the projects trying this.

Also, relating your experiences with this may a) Prevent protectionist legislation from being championed and b) allow FR IT guys to sleep a little better.

279 posted on 08/14/2003 8:20:25 AM PDT by Lazamataz (PROUDLY POSTING WITHOUT READING THE ARTICLE SINCE 1999!)
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To: Those_Crazy_Liberals
Another nice trick you picked up from the Clintons

Back away from the KoolAid.

Isn't Laz (or anyone else for that matter) entitled to question the Administration and their motives?

How is that disgusting, and how does that make Laz comparable to the Clintons?

280 posted on 08/14/2003 8:20:51 AM PDT by mhking
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