Ganesh Natarajan
The Gartner conference in London every April witnesses a major turnout from CIOs of leading European corporations. This year was no exception, with over three hundred delegates from thirty-seven countries. The conference had our own veteran from India, Partha Iyengar, who has done so much to bring industry research and advisory services into the mind space and wallet share of all major technology and business process outsourcing firms in this country.
This year continued with last year's theme of multi-sourcing, with three focus areas uppermost in the minds of Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 CIOs-moving from cost containment to business alignment; using the fast growing nearshore providers in continental Europe, and availing of solutions utilities and the fast growing SaaS (Software as a Service) trends.
Linda Cohen, Gartner's distinguished analyst, advised CIOs to move from 'ad-hoc compulsive outsourcing' to a disciplined process of embracing truly strategic and repeatable outsourcing-from 'managed metrics' to 'governed outcomes'-and encouraged them to balance their time on advising, changing the processes within, operations management and integration.
Time-after-time we have seen early experiments fail and a more mature approach embraced the second time around
In her roadmap to disciplined multi-sourcing, it was pointed out that too many failures have been because of deciding to shift work offshore, choosing a location (did somebody say Bangalore?), identifying a vendor and only then addressing the fundamental issues of what to outsource, how to manage the transition, and by the way, why go through all that trouble anyway?
Our own experiences with working in a consulting mode to first time outsourcers in India and first time offshore experimenters overseas, have resonated with the Gartner advice to go from 'Why' (Is it cost reduction or operations improvement or business performance optimization?) to 'What' (applications portfolio) to 'Who' (internal or external or hybrid) before jumping to the 'How' (standard or customized process) and 'Where' (onsite, offsite, nearshore, offshore). Time-after-time we have seen early experiments fail and a more mature approach embraced the second time around, irrespective of whether it's the firm itself or a business unit looking seriously at outsourcing for the first time!
An interesting panel discussion that concluded the opening plenary of the conference featured similar views coming from both European and Indian majors, probably reflecting the fact that the offshore story is now the same, whether you hear it from an Atos Origin or an Infosys or a Zensar-the metrics are very predictable. Whether it's the executive view of shareholder value, risk and compliance improvement; the business unit view of cycle time optimization and RoI achievement; or the management view of reducing TCO! Perhaps the differences in the Europe led approach and the Indian offshore view comes from the staffing and investment level in nearshore capability. As the panel convener quipped, nearshore cannot mean half a dozen programmers posing for photos in a room in Budapest or Warsaw, but a serious commitment to providing consulting and architecting skills in locations close to the customer. Which raises the question: Is multi-shore outsourcing just about doing the same thing in multiple locations or disaggregating the delivery process and using specialist skills in different parts of the world to deliver increased value? Our experiences in Poland and Brazil have shown that one can tap into a rich vein of skills that complement the resources we attract in India and China, and some great projects can be executed with more quality and innovation by having collaborative teams working on client engagements.
A conference that raised as many questions as it delivered answers, but certainly touched core issues and many a raw nerve, the Gartners and Forresters are the true conscience keepers of the industry and worthy partners in the continuous progress that we continue to make!
The author is deputy chairman & MD of Zensar Technologies and an Executive Council member of NASSCOM for 2007-09.
He can be reached at http://ganesh@cybermedia.co.in
