Outsourcing

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

Heather Campbell posted the following question recently:

I find myself wondering, have we outsourced too much?

Its a great question and one that should be asked more often.

Heather describes the IT Outsourcing Cycle thusly:

The outsourcing model goes something like this:  individuals are assigned to your account for a period of say two years.  And then, once experienced in your systems, cycle off to another account to learn something new.  This is how outsourcers keep their staff in a highly competitive environment.  You get what you pay for.  Just like many consulting organizations, you end up with a pyramid of expertise, many juniors on the bottom, a few seniors on the top and a 2-4 year cycle of new people coming on board and learning your systems from scratch.  How do you achieve excellence in this scenario?

Sounds about right.

When you first approach the outsourcing model (whether in IT or in any other part of the organization), you are looking for expertise. You are looking to outsource parts of your business that aren’t key to your competitive advantage.  Therefore, you can accept a small ‘turn-up’ period whereby the outsourced contracts are getting up to speed.

But…remember…you are paying for expertise. You outsource your operations and expect to have a cadre of IT Operations Experts arrive on-site to manage your operations.  And, most times, that’s exactly what happens. But…those people need time to get up to speed and become experts on YOUR systems and by the time they’ve picked up the nuances of your systems, they are moved off to another project.

So, in effect, you are paying your outsourcing company to help them keep their benches clear and train their consultants. Nothing wrong with that…thats the business.  But…you are also paying to lose knowledge. As long as you are aware of this, pay away but don’t be surprised when, in a few months or years, you have new people re-learning your systems.

Like I said, this is the way of the outsourcer and a reason that you should never outsource your most critical pieces of your business.

The trade off decision that needs to be made when outsourcing is this: First…can you afford to outsource this function (in both time and money). Second…Is the time / effort of training / retraining people over time worth it to you?  Third…can you afford to bring this function back inside of outsourcing doesn’t work?

So…my answer to Heather’s question isn’t a “yes” or a “no”. Its a “maybe”.   Maybe some organizations have outsourced too much and maybe some organizations haven’t outsourced enough.

But…the real question (to me) is: Have we outsourced the right stuff?

Image Credit: Questions By Valerie Everett on flickr

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.