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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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To: Mortimer Snavely
They are gambling with the idea that strong economic ties now will transcend global ambitions in the future.

Corporations benefit directly in the short term from offshoring where laborers are expected to wait and hope for new opportunities to be generated in the future.

Sounds as if the globalists are telling us to gamble with the future based on their current profit ambitions. I never considered gambling a conservative trait.

61 posted on 08/13/2003 11:04:30 PM PDT by RockyMtnMan
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To: Dane
earlier on this thread I noted that self-serve check out lines now lets one checker do the job of four

A more current example would be: a business brings in 4 H1b visa workers for the price of one American. Hey, its just economics.
62 posted on 08/13/2003 11:06:10 PM PDT by lelio
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To: Dane
You have your economic terms crossed. You describe a productivity improvement of three checkers. You made them obsolete with the application of technology, you didn't send the checker work to Nova Scotia. Welding made riveting obsolete. Steam power put sail makers out of work.

With IT outsourcing, you haven't made anything obsolete. The phone bills, a record of every call you've ever made to anybody, is in real life as we speak for every phone company in the US, handled by an Israeli company that used to be called Comverse Infosys. Your bank statements, India or Pakistan. I wonder where your medical records are being digitized? Russia maybe? Ever used a customer support line call centered in India? "Can I speak to somebody that knows something about rebuidling the IP stack?" "Sorry to be telling you, sir, but there is only me."

'Good, you deserve Dean' was this guy's answer to the original post. That's a flip response, and it is going to earn you Dean if that's the sum total of what you have to tell intelligent, right leaning, Master's Degree holding, displaced IT workers.

This kind of outsourcing allows countries that aren't exactly allies to be exposed to either very sensitive information, or outright trade secrets in the case of software application development and silicon technology.

The work is both sensitive and strategic. It isn't that the work can now be handled by your epsilon semi-moron either. Outsourcing is an improvement in marginal costs in short term at the expense of having native talent and trained labor in the long term.

Here's another problem with it. Let's assume the economy recovers, and you really need software developers, now. Those that were insane enough to get degrees in it despite the outsourcing trend are going to ask the following question: 'Ever outsource key aspects of your development to another country?'

What do you say to that? If you say yes, the guy is either going to say, "Fine, you are going to make it very worth my while in the short term." or they will say "Bye now."

What seemed like a golden boy idea for the CIO today is going to end up hanging the kevorka curse around the neck of your company for attracting key talent for the next twenty years.
63 posted on 08/13/2003 11:06:10 PM PDT by RinaseaofDs
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To: lelio
If my way of cutting costs was dumping toxic waste into a river then I think the government has every right to step in.

Sheesh, non-sequiter hyperbole. Where has anyone mentioned toxic waste?

Hoover thought the same things about keeping the government out of the Depression and look what that got us

Yep the Smoot-Hawley tariffs Hoover signed in 1930, helped worsen the depression by starting a trade war.

64 posted on 08/13/2003 11:07:27 PM PDT by Dane
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To: Dane
There's a big difference in sending them in bulk so they can keep parts on hand vs. making them smuggle them out of the country.

Don't ban the auto-checker because more skilled and higher paid workers depend on it's development. So your checkers that pay no taxes are replaced by a development team that pays approximately 20k each year over year. If the checkers want to they can develop the skills neccessary to develop their own auto-checker. Automation generally leads to more high paying jobs, offshoring just eliminates them.
65 posted on 08/13/2003 11:10:06 PM PDT by RockyMtnMan
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To: RinaseaofDs
You describe a productivity improvement of three checkers. You made them obsolete with the application of technology, you didn't send the checker work to Nova Scotia. Welding made riveting obsolete. Steam power put sail makers out of work.

Huh, in the 70's massive amounts of Americans found that Japanese cars were more productive in their life. Would you have ordered by fiat that Americans couldn't buy a Toyota or Datsun.

66 posted on 08/13/2003 11:13:35 PM PDT by Dane
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To: Dane
Sheesh, non-sequiter hyperbole. Where has anyone mentioned toxic waste?

Right here:
[ Dane ]: how would you feel if a government beureaucrat said you couldn't.

And I brought up a point where the government should step in, mainly to show that there is a role for government in business.
Perhaps you didn't like the example. How about "you can employ prisoners in communist China for $1/hr, should you be allowed to?"
67 posted on 08/13/2003 11:15:06 PM PDT by lelio
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To: Dane
Yep the Smoot-Hawley tariffs Hoover signed in 1930, helped worsen the depression by starting a trade war.

So the Depression was worsened because Americans couldn't buy goods from other countries? Do you have any facts to back that up?
68 posted on 08/13/2003 11:16:43 PM PDT by lelio
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To: Dane
Because if a staunch republican can do it off the top of their head, liberals in the press will be able to carry it off pretty well as it gets down to the wire.

I'm for Bush, plan to vote for him again, twice if possible. Would love to see Murray, McDermott, Larsen, and some of the logic-impervious, business-destroying liberals relieved of their reponsibilities in representing my state.

I own a business that sells competitor information management software. Best thing you can do for your business is to profile it as if you were a competitor.

The things I just said in that paragraph are not yet Demo talking points. I have yet to hear any of the Dwarves, or the ex-co-president say any of what I just did.

But they could, and it would sound pretty reasonable to a right-leaning IT worker, wouldn't it? It might sound pretty good to a hard right guy as well.

Personally, I don't think Bush should make ANY deals with democrats. Look where it's got him? Where are all of his judicial nominees. Look at what his Dad's deals did to the SCOTUS.

As far as taxes, I am all for the new fair tax initiative, and abolishment of the IRS in the near term.

If Bush's strategy is to take issues away from the D's, then the outsourcing one is an issue that, let's say, he needs to get around to sometime in the near future.
69 posted on 08/13/2003 11:17:55 PM PDT by RinaseaofDs
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To: Doctor Stochastic
Yes, we get it...sarcasm. It is funny once, not three times.
70 posted on 08/13/2003 11:22:10 PM PDT by montag813
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To: RinaseaofDs
He's going to wait as long as he can before he has to address the offshoring issue. His main contributors are the ones doing the offshoring.

He'll bring the issue up when he thinks he has enough cash for his campaign. If just parrots the free trade mantra he'll go down like an Iraqi Mig.
71 posted on 08/13/2003 11:23:04 PM PDT by RockyMtnMan
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To: RockyMtnMan
Agree completely. They are going to have to be extremely careful in timing, and probably have to sit some CEO's down for a reality clarification session before hand as well.
72 posted on 08/13/2003 11:25:55 PM PDT by RinaseaofDs
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To: lelio
And I brought up a point where the government should step in, mainly to show that there is a role for government in business. Perhaps you didn't like the example. How about "you can employ prisoners in communist China for $1/hr, should you be allowed to?"

Weak analogy, IMO. Toxic waste dumped into a river affects a person's physical health, while a business owner seeking the best price on a product does not affect a person's physical health.

BTW, when you compare prices on socks or a car, does you toxic waste analogy automatically pop into your head?

73 posted on 08/13/2003 11:27:45 PM PDT by Dane
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To: lelio
So the Depression was worsened because Americans couldn't buy goods from other countries? Do you have any facts to back that up?

While the consequences of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff have been a subject of dispute, 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 took the American economy, already staggering after the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and shot it in the knee. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff may not have caused the Great Depression but it made it matters much worse.

When the Democrats returned to power they slowly began to reduce tariff rates and the Republicans with few exceptions have abandoned protectionism. Today, for the most part both political parties assert that government tariffs that either fatten the profits of poorly run businesses or keep alive jobs that do not make economic sense anymore, cheat the vast majority of Americans of the benefits of affordable goods and make it harder for us to sell our products overseas.

So it looks like it was your precious Roosevelt, Mr. New Dealer, who helped roll back tariffs.

LINK

74 posted on 08/13/2003 11:36:06 PM PDT by Dane
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To: Dane
So it looks like it was your precious Roosevelt, Mr. New Dealer,

I'm not sure what that comment's supposed to mean. Do you think I want another FDR? No. But you don't seem to realize that FDRs don't grow in a vaccuum: they come up as politicians and leaders sit around thinking everything's fine while millions of people watch their dreams go up in smoke. The blame for the rise of FDR can be placed partly at the feet of Republicans.
75 posted on 08/13/2003 11:42:54 PM PDT by lelio
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To: lelio
No. But you don't seem to realize that FDRs don't grow in a vaccuum: they come up as politicians and leaders sit around thinking everything's fine while millions of people watch their dreams go up in smoke. The blame for the rise of FDR can be placed partly at the feet of Republicans.

Well let's go back to your reply #59.

And be careful what you wish for: Hoover thought the same things about keeping the government out of the Depression and look what that got us

Well I just pointed out that Hoover did something that you are very supportive of, raising tariff.

76 posted on 08/13/2003 11:49:32 PM PDT by Dane
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To: thimios
Those $50 Nikes are on the streets of Beijing and Delhi.
77 posted on 08/14/2003 1:02:30 AM PDT by Cronos (Sanity and slam don't mix, consult your Imam...)
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To: thimios
Those $50 Nikes are being sold in the shops and worn by the folks in Beijing and Delhi.
78 posted on 08/14/2003 1:02:59 AM PDT by Cronos (Sanity and slam don't mix, consult your Imam...)
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To: tubavil
Now all we need is a conservative leader.

Fat chance.

79 posted on 08/14/2003 3:59:35 AM PDT by Marauder (What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.)
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To: .cnI redruM
"....what is the President supposed to do...?

Take a good hard look at OPIC.

Why is El Presedente' Jorge Bush continuing the Clinton policies of outsourcing jobs? Why is he offering big bisuness huge tax incentives to move jobs offshore? Why not offer huge tax incentives to employ more americans here at home? Why did King Jorge sign onto the L1 visa program, wasn't the H1-B visa program a big enough screwing for the American workers?

You don't have to look very long or very hard to see that our fearless leader cares more about workers in China, India and Mexico, than he does about Americans.
80 posted on 08/14/2003 4:05:13 AM PDT by taxed2death (A few billion here, a few trillion there...we're all friends right?)
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