Offshore

Always a pleasure to read bah's monthly mag (registration)

there's a thought-provoking centrepiece article on outsourcing which once you've picked through the consultancy-speak (their top tip: 'Be a Visionary' We know!) is actually very helpful on the difference between outsourcing and offshoring. Outsourcing is a P+L moment - as Accenture telecoms manager Meredith Rose told TT yesterday "The minute that outsourcing contract is signed, the building blocks are already being put in place to take those activities back in-house" - i.e it is not clear it is a "strategy" at all. It needs to be managed, but as these Germany-based consultants point out, a typical multinational HQ has 0.3 people in strategic planning. But offshoring: that's a bit closer to forever (your IT and CAD centers are gone to Bratislava or Mumbai) and is where the serious money is going. Hence IBM's 6 billion USD investment in India. Namecheck some of the big-hitters like Subramanian Ramadorai, CEO of TCS (Tata Consulting - which had a good presence at our Carriers World conference this week.)

BAH's article is based on a survey by Duke Uni CIBER unit and Booz Allen which claims it "is the first ever to track the complete range of offshoring activities — including IT, business processes, engineering, and product design — across a broad array of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, technology, computer technology, media, software and programming, energy, defense, and automotive" Good data charts at the end of the final page.