The Future of Offshore ICT Outsourcing 2015
MBA students Berend Ten Wolde, Jordy Kool, Manikantan Muthu, Mona Matar and Zsolt Zsirony at the Rotterdam School of Management explored futures of ICT outsourcing. They brought in newer perspectives because of their different backgrounds, and having been involved in some way or the other with offshore ICT outsourcing. Download the full report Media:here
Outsourcing of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) activities to faraway shores is one of the most discussed and hotly debated issues in business circles and literature nowadays. Availability of a large number of well-qualified but cheap skilled labour in parts of the developing world and enabling broadband communication technology has triggered companies to think of new business models. Every organization around the world has already engaged in or is planning to engage in the activity of outsourcing a part of its business process offshore.
Although there are advocates and sceptics on both the customer and vendor sides, what major developments are going to happen in the coming decade and whether offshore ICT outsourcing as a trend would continue to deliver to companies, on the promises of low cost and high quality services is not very clear
By mapping the uncertainties on to the scenario axes, we were then able to come up with a set of relevant, plausible, surprising but coherent scenarios for the future of offshore outsourcing. The four scenarios for offshore ICT outsourcing are:
By assessing the different scenarios we were then able to come up with the implications of each future, and the various options available for both vendors and customers within the industry. By using our scenario set, companies would be able to assess the robustness of their current strategy and be able to understand the changes they would have to make in terms of Markets, Products, People, Processes, Infrastructure, Finances, Knowledge Management, Innovation, to succeed in the long term.