Consequences of the outsourcing model

As offshoring takes over, the question to ponder is what does this mean for the future. Obviously, as companies get distributed across the world, a new kind of skill set needs to be developed in companies. To sum up, these skills need to be
- Global outlook and open-mindedness. Easier said than done. What this really means is we need more listeners who actively solicit other peoples' opinions no matter where they may be. Also related to this are people comfortable and experienced in working in different business environments. Adaptibility to different working models becomes important too.
- Stong ability to educate best practices. After you break through the culture barrier the next step is to work with your partners to lead them through the ramp up of your business, working method etc. This needs exceptionally good communicators, that can really get others to change the way they work and think.
- Integration. Once you get others doing what you need them to do, you have to integrate them into your company. The integration challenge is to change the way you work because of your interaction working with third parties. Sometimes, to realize the cost/quality benefits of working with third parties, it is better in the long term to standardize or change the way you work instead of insisting your providers create custom programs for you. This was learnt the hard way in the software world, where a profusion of custom processes lead to massive duplication of IT resources across companies as each tried to re-invent a wheel instead of collaborate on the best development of a wheel.

But what about ways to make commerical interest of the outsourcing trend that is separate from the trend itself. Here are some thoughts there
- Helping develop the skills to allow third world countries to compete in the outsourcing wave. This could involve working with private enterprise, government, telecommunications companies, universities and sources of capital to build a successful environment. Look at what NASSCOMM achieved in India.
- Build a market for individual outsourcing. Just like large multinationals are outsourcing en masse, is there a market for individual employees to outsource their jobs. The model here is that the employee is in charge of recruiting, qualifying and ramping up the resource or resources to get the job done. The individual employee makes a margin but passes on some of the cost to the employer. The employee carries on doing some tasks themselves that require them to be in the originator country. Issues could involve discovery of the provider, trust, security, getting employer buy-in, etc.
- Figure out how to use technology to mitigate time-zone problems. How? No idea
- Build an auditing expertise that can qualify and guarantee your process guidelines are being followed among your providers