New business models don't have to be offshore
Jinfo Blog

By Tim Buckley Owen

Item

With India’s business intelligence market forecast to grow by 16% this year, while corruption liability forces over half of companies to abandon foreign business partners, you can be sure that outsourcing remains as hot a topic as ever. But outsourcing doesn’t necessarily equate to offshoring – and in any case there are plenty of different models to choose from.

In fact, Gartner’s forecast relates to BI use by Indian companies directly, explaining that decision making in India historically has been based on either “gut feelings” or on the business experience of managers – and the Dow Jones findings about foreign corruption relate to business partners in general, not offshored services specifically. But realistically some of that Indian BI power can be expected to be employed in providing offshored services, and half the companies surveyed by Dow Jones lacked confidence in their due diligence processes, attributing this specifically to difficulty in assessing the credibility of information.

Clearly, any venture involving foreign partners continues to stir up emotions and perhaps sometimes overreaction – especially when people suspect that their jobs might be at risk. So it’s not surprising that a recent Special Libraries Association (Europe) panel discussion, with outsourcing at its heart, attracted a capacity attendance.

But the title of the event didn’t actually mention outsourcing. It talked instead about new service models and partnerships as part of the changing face of corporate information services.

Chatham House rules forbade attribution of remarks to individual speakers. But suffice it to say that the models discussed included one shared service, centralising its corporate information staff at a location outside London while they remained employees of the firm, and another outsourcing through a specialist provider – after a lot of careful thought.

In neither case was offshoring the issue – and nor, particularly, was cost. Whatever the model adopted, panellists spoke instead of flexibility, of moving up the value chain – and increasing their status as well, stepping up a rank from support to consultancy.

Simple offshoring of commoditised services might contain costs but didn’t help create value, said another panellist. For that you needed people who could solve business problems and relate closely to the decision makers they were supporting.

But you can’t necessarily guarantee to retain the best talent when the model changes. Being honest and countering gossip helps, as does focusing on training; in fact, continuing professional development is crucial if you want to affect business outcomes.

So have information professionals been too risk averse and ignored new models? Yes, said one panellist who meets plenty of info pros – and there’s not been much improvement in 20 years.

But that doesn’t happen when you’re outsourced, countered another. You have to make a difference there or you’ll simply be overlooked.

« Blog