CIOs need to check for “outsourcing bloat.”
Many companies in mature, offshore, FTE-based outsourcing environments experience substantial bloat. From our knowledge of our clients’ situations and our research for companies seeking objective data to help them determine the return on investment in outsourcing, it’s clear that many companies today are paying too much for the resources. And they’re blissfully unaware of the outsourcing bloat — which means that they are paying for 30 percent or more of FTEs than they need. Moreover, they don’t have visibility into what could be done to rationalize the bloat. This is a significant problem.
The outsourcing bloat grows in two dimensions: (1) paying for too many FTEs and (2) paying too much per FTE. The problem has an even bigger impact when you consider that outsourced FTEs will cheerfully respond to system problems, but not address the underlying issues which cause them. Our observation is companies that have fixed underlying systemic problems are operating with 30 to 40 percent fewer FTEs.