Key outsourcing trends taking place in Great Britain in 2011
This blog usually explores opportunities in Eastern Europe, but given that it is the first month of 2011, it’s worth exploring some of the key trends taking place in the most mature European outsourcing market – the United Kingdom.
Outsourcing advisory firm Equaterra just published their key trends for the UK market in 2011, based on examining 650 outsourcing contracts with over 200 companies, worth around £14 billion. Given that so many UK contracts have been examined, it was possible for the Equaterra researchers to draw some conclusions about how Western European customers are behaving, and what they will want in 2011.
Trend 1: Economic conditions are still tough, forcing companies to consider more offshore outsourcing. Eighty-seven per cent of companies will continue offshoring at present or higher levels, but sixty-one per cent will increase offshoring.
Trend 2: Cost reduction continues to be the key driver for offshoring, but financial flexibility is becoming far more important – up fifteen per cent on the previous year.
Trend 3: Global sourcing of services is far more accepted – with over seventy-five per cent of all companies using outsourcing applying some kind of offshore delivery model.
Trend 4: Multisourcing is increasing – with large-scale single-supplier contracts usually linked to low satisfaction with the contract.
Lee Ayling, EquaTerra’s Managing Director, IT Advisory UK, commented: “As in previous years, the 2010 study provides deep insights into the changing dynamics of the UK outsourcing market. One of the many points of note is that outsourcing contracts which deliver cost savings alone do not lead to higher client satisfaction. But successfully delivering cost savings plus another driver, such as access to skills or time to market, does positively impact general satisfaction – highlighting that both end users and service providers should not focus on price alone before and during an outsourcing relationship.”
For the European supplier community, the message is clear, cost remains important, but flexibility is the key. If outsourcing can create more flexible service levels and improve cash flow through more flexible financial models then it will be regarded a success.
Hi,
Thanks for the share.it is great to know about the outsourcing trends that take place in Great Britain.
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Brad, thanks for your comment. However, I think the “India is bigger therefore better” argument was something we all argued about in the early part of the last decade. I don’t believe at all that 80% of all BPO services will soon be delivered from India. India had led that way for many regions, but the buyers of outsourced services are now far more mature and happy to explore new regions, and those regions are showing that delivering services is often about where speciality skills can be located, not just about lower cost.
India’s BPO industry has evolved and matured to present higher-end services that require judgment-based analysis and domain expertise, rather than function-specific, rules-based performance parameters alone. As service providers strive to offer end-to-end services, we see BPO falling into different segments. At one end of the spectrum is the traditional rules-based transactional outsourcing; while at the other end is judgment-based transaction processing and full-service business process outsourcing.
India has won its spurs as the world’s outsourcing destination of choice. Currently the country has a commanding share of the global outsourcing market.
India is undoubtedly the most favored IT/BPO destination of the world. This raises the question why most of the big MNCs are interested in outsourcing their operations to BPOs in India. The answer is very simple- India is home to large and skilled human resources. India has inherent strengths, which have made it a major success as an outsourcing destination. India produces the largest number of graduates in the world. The name of India has become synonymous with that of BPOs and IT industry hence the name BPO India.
Besides being technically sound, the work force is proficient in English and work at lower wages in comparison to other developed countries of the world. India also has a distinct advantage of being in a different time zone that gives it flexibility in working hours. All these factors make the Indian BPOs more efficient and cost effective. In order to meet the growing international demand for lucrative, customer-interaction centers, many organizations worldwide are looking to BPO India.
A subset of outsourcing, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) involves contracting the operations and responsibilities through a third party service provider. From the last couple of years, the BPO industry has evolved as the most substantial sector in the Indian market. India has emerged as the most favored location for all Bpo services across the globe. This has accelerated the Indian economy to the heights, progressively boosting the statistics depicting the growth in the years to come and it has been however forecasted that by 2020, more than 80% of the world of business process outsourcing services will be served by the Indian companies. Marked as the best place to attain superior quality services globally, the BPO industry is strengthening its foundation in India.
Kevin, that’s interesting how you see Brazil having an expertise in high-security systems – are you based in south america?
Interesting report. We’re starting to see offshoring to different countries and each country having certain specialisations.
For example, Information Security and Brazil. Large Brazilian organisations have huge scale (serving 200 million population), high growth (10% pa) and certain legal and law enforcement challenges. Hence culturally they take risk, physical security and now information security very seriously.
There are a handful of specialist local InfoSec firms who have developed to support the demand. Some of these are now well placed to exploit cost advantages and highly skilled specialist workforces by outsourcing in Europe and North America
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