Impact of US credit crisis on outsourcing?


A widely-debated topic these days is the impact of US sub-prime crisis on outsourcing. I came through an interesting question on LinkedIn from Phil Fersht, an outsourcing advisory guru who runs a blog ‘Horses for Sources’. Following is my take on that:
World is getting flatter at all ends
World is getting flatter at all ends… As long as you’re agile you’re doing fine. What I mean is that the distinction/advantages between onshoring and offshoring from a quality and commercial angles would keep blurring as we move forward.
So either due to weakening dollar, quality concern, stronger Asian economy or whatever other factor it would make more sense for busienss processes to be best-shored; not merely onshored, near-shored or offshored.
Get agile for tougher business challenges
Credit crisis, economic slow-down and many other factors which make the business environment more and more competitive only make the case for best-shoring stronger for companies around the world. Its all about remaining agile to meet and beat the economic pressures and business challenges.
Company sitting in China might want key functions to be performed in the US and vice versa. Similarly, a UK company with its IT team in Eastern Europe might want its sales team in US, its manufacturing team in China and its strategic team in UK.
Its ‘Enterprise Agility’ not ‘Labor Arbitrate’ that will remain the offshoring driver!
Slowly but surely labor arbitrage would no longer remain an offshoring driver. The only staffing/sourcing strategy that would work is the one which makes the company glocally (globally/locally) agile and effective to create and retain their value in both short and long terms. Also talking of agility, a trend of more and more ITO/BPO convergence is on the way to make this dream of agility really come true in an outsourced setting.



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