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.
I do. Aspect-Oriented Programming.
Agree. I am also getting sick of this bs. I like GWB but I've also got to think about me and my fellow Americans. He is losing my confidence. The only guy running for President that is saying we've got to do away with NAFTA and GATT is the congressman from OHIO. I cannot think of the guy's name but I wouldn't hesitate to vote for the guy because HE GETS IT.
Enough is enough. I've had enough.
Kucinich. He also wants to cut defense spending 30% so we can build more pre-schools. He's also a vegan. He was mayor of Cleveland about 25 years ago, and the city went into receivership. (However, there was some technicality around that, not sure what. I don't think Cleveland ran out of money, per se, but he was protesting something and didn't pay up). He was pro-life, but now he's pro-choice.
I've never understood pro-choice Vegans. I mean, you've got people who won't eat eggs, because that's killing a living thing. But then abortion is ok. So an egg's a life, but a fetus isn't. Yeah, something like that.
The real problem is that these CIOs and other mgt types can't see beyond their income statements, because their stockholders can't see beyond their dividend statements.
The lower level of disposable income here in the states - and yes, I think GWB will pay for that at the polls* - has to impact domestic sales. This in turn will have a profound effect on the almighty dividend statements, and the crafty CIOs will pay as well.
In the meantime, when and if IT investment returns, and there are no developers that trust the industry not to hose them again, I think the answer will again be sought with H1B and L1 visa sponsorships. Because these people are sponsored for the most part, it's hard for them to change jobs, and because they generally work for less money, I call this "neo-indentured servitude."
I can't compete with it, can't afford to. 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.
*Not that I want him to; I don't want a liberal democRat in the White House.
Not to worry. These companies are indemnified against loss by the U.S. Government. Ever heard of OPIC?
If companies have to move their IT jobs back to the US suddenly, they may not be able to find skilled people to fill them.
They don't care. They only care about the $ to be made now. But then, if we need JDAM guidance systems, I'm sure the Chinese will be more than happy to provide them. After all, they're just like us. </ sarcasm>
This is the problem I have with the whole issue. There are precious few Dems who are talking about this -- mainly because they don't give a damn about it and will do nothing to stop it. But the ones that are I wouldn't vote to put them in a night watchman's position, let alone in the White House.
Yep, the good news is that this will weed out all the wannabees. Those who stick with it will be the ones who actually have the passion for it, not just doing it just for the money.
You must be kidding turk. I've been an IT consultant and working steadily for 20 years. I now find my self unemployable. Why would I stay in the IT industry? I should spend the next 20 years keeping my skills honed how? At a minimum wage job?
This isn't companies that are laying off people during hard times because they're hurting. They're stabbing their employees in the back and laughing all teh way to the bank to do it. They really don't care about their people, they care about their bank statements to the exclusion of all else.
I for one won't be around or interested in working in the "IT industry" should these short-sighted people come looking in the future.
I just don't understand this at the bottom most level I guess. They complain that American IT people are too expensive. They're making a killing going overseas. But they think the prices for overseas talent isn't going to increase in the next few years? That's nuts.
"When ya got em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." and the foreigners are gonna have em by the balls a few years down teh road.
Just my $.02
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