Outsourcing Industry reaches the maturity curve
There are subtle signs when an industry stops being at the periphery of business and starts moving into its core. This is the time when an industry becomes noticed and talked about frequently in the media and general business circles. For the past couple of years, the outsourcing industry has been sending out such feelers, which indicate its increasing maturity, thus fueling its rate of adoption and increasing its importance among the corporate managers.
One such feeler came in the form of an article yesterday, titled “Boutique Outsourcing Advisory Firms Come of Age”. Quoting the article here would be easier than re-phrasing it to convey its gist -
“Given the pressures to make their outsourcing strategies work, organizations have increasingly turned to this band of advisory firms that specialize in outsourcing for information about service providers and their global delivery capability.”
“More than a third of the outsourcing contracts have been handled under the guidance of these firms. Forty-seven percent of such deals are being executed under the guidance of sourcing advisers”
Will keeo you posted as and when further such signals emerge from the market.
$10m spent on ODesk – An outsourcing marketplace
ODesk.com, an outsourcing marketplace provider (www.odesk.com), announced yesterday that till date, contracts/projects cummulatively worth $10 million have been executed via the ODesk infrastructure. ODesk was recently featured in the RedHerring 100 Finalists list and positions itself as an on -demand global workforce provider.
I have personally believed in the value provided by upstarts like ODesk. Alhthough marketplaces like E-Lance and Rent-a-Coder have existed for a longer duration, companies like ODesk go beyond the aspect of a market place and try to provide tools that enable its clients to function effectively in that marketplace. Although I am skeptical about its scalability in terms of, what project sizes can it handle, I am sure it will satisfy small and individual projects (Psst… I heard somewhere that the Technorati website was built by outsourcing it to someone via ODesk – I am not completely sure when & where I heard this information though!)
Offshoring – Looking beyond India
With the conclusion of Gartner Inc.’s Outsourcing Summit last week at Dallas, we should be expecting to see some analysis, forecasts and general opinions on the Outsourcing industry in the media this week. Here’s one of them.
This article in Computer World highlights the issue of rising costs in Offshoring to India and the alternatives that were discussed during the summit. To quote some of the interesting snippets from the article -
“One conference attendee whose company runs its own offshore development facility in India agreed with Gartner’s assessment of the wage increases in India. “We’re finding that ourselves,” said the attendee, who requested anonymity. He added that his CIO asked him last year to investigate other countries, and his company is currently looking at China as a possible alternative for offshore IT work.“
The primary motive behind sticking with India seems to be the location’s ability in providing the assurance of availability of a large pool of skilled workers. Although information executives are not against looking at other regions of the globe, the standard of service that has already been established by India based service providers seems to be hard to match, by providers from other locations.
But I have always found that the most interesting piece of information in such articles is always in the discussion that ensues between the proponents and opponents of outsourcing in the discussion thread. The discussion thread in this articles seems to indicate that it is going in a similar direction as well!
Stay tuned… more analysis and forecast will follow.
- Vinod.
India to outsource paperwork to U.S. Company!
Alright… it took me a while just to digest the fact and make sure that I was reading it right. Yes – Outsourcing does NOT necessarily mean outside the US. It can be the other way too. Apparently, according to “The China Post”, the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C., plans to outsource the processing of visas to an American company. And before you start thinking “it must have been another Indian company based in this country”, wait! It seems that they have been fairly open about the vendor selection process, by advertising in the Washington Post and soliciting proposals from any company to take on this work.
And why did I read about it in a Chinese newspaper, rather than an Indian one? I have no clue!
Outsourcing from the perspective of the outsourced!
If “The Goal” was a novelistic story about manufacturing and its travails, “Thriving In The Flat World” is a perspective on outsourcing from the outsourced! Business expert Andy Sharma, in his book, talks about job loss, career transformation and ways to deal with a changing industry landscape that is sweeping across the IT sector today. Mr. Sharma’s take is that outsourcing is not necessarily bad, and can present new opportunities to employees and lead to new job satisfaction.The book chronicles the fall and rise of a man’s career trajectory after being affected by outsourcing.
Side Note: Interestingly, this book, which is available for sale on Amazon.com and Borders.com is published by BookSurge – a self-publishing and print-on-demand services company. A firm that I had contemplated using a couple of years ago. And why didn’t I use them? Coz I just didn’t complete my book 
Hit 1500: Alef Goals Re-visited
Well… well… what do you know!? We’ve hit 1500 views as of today! Not that it is a big number, but it is still worthy of bragging. And just like New Year resolutions, hitting this number reminded me to re-iterate the goals for this blog
The Alef Solutions blog aims to discuss the pain points of outsourcing, celebrate its success and debate on its utility with a focus on small & medium sized business that look forward to engaging in outsourcing contracts in the future. The purpose is to become a vital source of information for best practices and industry trends related to outsourcing.
Dian of SourcingMag made a suggestion how to take this blog forward. Apart from profiling directories of ousourcing service providers that are out there, she suggested posting an analysis of outsourcing strategies adopted by the Fortune 500 companies. Hmm… great suggestion, I should say. Therefore, added to the overall purpose of this blog since it overlaps with Alef Solutions’ mission statement anyway (Don’t Google for the mission statement yet – It is not out there since I am still waiting for my own personal Marketing genius to get back to me on this one).
Outsourcing & Social Entrepreneurship – An Example
BusinessWeek published an article in its latest edition titled “Outsourcing Heads To Outskirts” providing a great example of how exactly outsourcing is resulting in the social/economical uplifting of rural India. It may not be the great turn-around story of the century but it is definitely a start. If we start seeing more companies like GramIT using outsourcing as not just a mode of capitalizing on the current trends in outsourcing, but also to serve a social cause, then we may start seeing a whole new paradigm of outsourcing. Probably social entrepreneurship will see a renewed spurt when such success stories are given more exposure in the media.
New Blogroll – Outsourcing Directories
I was thinking (a dangerous activity in itself!) – “What is so unique about my blog?” and “What is the value that I am adding to my readers?”
Unable to find an answer, I decided to take an extreme step. No… I am not closing the blog down. I have added a new section under my Blogroll called Directories. The intention here is to catalogue all the directories out there that provide a directory (of sorts) of outsourcing service providers.
Directories come and go. My intention is not only to chronicle and track the ones that are active, upcoming or defunct but also to provide a single source of reference for people/firms looking for a valid source of service provider listings. I don’t know how far I will be able to take this forward, but I will definitely try to keep it as updated and as structured as possible.
If you come across any such sites out there that needs to be added to this list, please drop me a comment.
Guy Kawasaki – Marketing Your Blog
Update (Jan 05 2007) – Apparently, the link mentioned in my post is incorrect. Please find the blog here – http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/04/the_120_day_won.html
Thanks to Dian, the editor of Sourcingmag.com, for pointing that out. If you are interested in outsourcing inn general, I highly recommend www.sourcingmag.com. It also has an active discussion forum, where some very good people answer questions posted on various subjects related to Outsourcing.
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The last few days of 2006. I was taking a break from reading all the (already) cliched predictions for 2007 & beyond in the blogosphere when I ran into a blog authored by the one and only Guy Kawasaki of Garage Ventures (I did not know that he had a blog!). And what do you know… he has a list of his most read posts!
So, here I was, pondering about the launch messaging campaign that has been planned for sometime in January and how to market the message over blogosphere, and I see this blog. This is a great piece for people starting to blog, especially for start-ups that are focussing on blog-based launch marketing. You can find the entry HERE, a great post on how to market your blog.
P.S. – Yes. We have finally figured out what ‘exactly’ we will start doing! You can expect to hear about it in January, ss soon as we settle some of our logistics & administrative issues.
Outsourcing Challenges – Looking Beyond Bangalore
Business Week published a special report recently on the challenges of looking at outsourcing beyond Bangalore. In fact, it has a whole bunch of outsourcing related articles linked to this report (if you access it via the website).
I felt that it did a great job of putting together a concise list of “soft” issues associated with outsourcing to different geographic regions. It talks about employee attrition, intellectual property protection, etc. All of them, which are, pretty much burning issues in the subject area of outsourcing these days. You can find the report here.
P.S. – Don’t forget to take a look at the discussion thread (a pretty long one) created by the readers. Different people from different parts of the world. Quality discussion in general.
