Category: Outsourcing

Trump’s Visa Reforms: The Bitter Pill IT Needed | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

The Trump administration’s move to table H1-B visa bill in the house has led to a bloodbath for IT services stocks. While there appears to be near unanimity on the “absurdness” of the move, there is a silver lining most experts seem to have missed. I’ll explain this through two acts that have played out.

Act #1: Old Wine in New Bottle
In a November 2015 blog (“My Digital is Bigger Than Yours” and The Technology Pulp Fiction), I explained the rationale behind my cynicism for buzzwords that were driving the discourse on IT services. The story being told was that IT services was undergoing a paradigm shift in innovation. However, instead of witnessing a real shift in strategy, talent model, and offerings, what we have seen is a largely marketing driven illusion of change. Digital, cloud, automation, and cognitive are terms that are being thrown around without caution, giving an impression of disruption in services delivery. In reality, it’s just the natural course of progression in IT services getting embellished by these buzzwords. Analysts know it, service providers know it and – no prizes for guessing – buyers know it too.

As our January 2017 enterprise pulse report on buyer (Dis)satisfaction highlighted:

  1. Buyers are unhappy
  2. They aren’t enamored by these buzzwords
  3. While they consider their existing IT services mediocre, they are still hanging on to it.

Point 3 above is the reason why, as much as I would like to take service providers to task on this pretense of transformation, I believe that enterprise IT must take its fair share of the blame. They have been running mediocre, unimaginative, and long past use-by-date procurement practices. There are two primary reasons behind this inertia:

  • There aren’t any better services options at comparable current prices. Sure, they would love to get something like IBM Watson for infrastructure automation, but their annual IT budgets won’t allow for it. Pretty much a thought process like, “Why buy a Ferrari to run a NYC yellow cab?”
  • The opportunity cost of letting go of something that has been working fine for a decade and a half is huge. Enormous bureaucracies have been created around services procurement, and they are almost impossible to dismantle.

Net-net, labor arbitrage, offshoring, and time & materials still continue to drive the lion’s share of IT services. In the current scenario, despite all the “digital” and “cognitive” washing, there is no way this reality can be swept under the rug. Does this mean that services transformation is a lost cause?

Act #2: And then Trump happened….
All this is getting Trumped now. Visa regulations mean less access to the same cheap labor. Now, instead of paying lip service to service delivery automation, enterprise IT and providers will actually have to think about hyper-automation to keep the lights on and manage margin improvement expectations. Things will have to move faster towards autonomics and/or cognitive for service providers to stay afloat and enterprise IT to stay relevant for CFOs.

My message to the ecosystem to which I belong? – It’s time to put your money where your mouth is!

Is the Philippines More a Paper Tiger than a Real Tiger? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

The Philippines has been in the news a lot lately, for a range of negative reasons. But is its risk profile becoming such that U.S. enterprises should stop evaluating it as a global sourcing destination, or that those already there should consider pulling out?

That depends on your perspective, especially when you look at both its risk and benefits profiles. I believe one can argue that the current dynamics in the Philippines are potentially a hidden positive for the global sourcing industry. Yes, this bad thing could actually be a good thing.

Before you tell me I’m off my rocker and should be put in a padded room, hear me out.

Among other things, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made statements regarding “separation from the U.S.” This understandably caused concerns among multiple global companies with one or another type of exposure to the Philippines. But the Philippine government subsequently tried to clarify that the statements were reflective of intent in foreign and military policy, not business ties. Although a general tilt in military and foreign policy away from the U.S. may eventually hamper business relations, there will probably be little impact in the near term.

That said, while the uncertainty and noise surrounding the Philippines will cause some companies to slow or moderate their exposure to the country’s labor market, a slowing of its offshoring industry growth could be incredibly helpful.

For example, with somewhat less demand for talent, attrition rates should decrease. With somewhat lower attrition rates, employees are likely to develop in their roles to a greater level of proficiency. Additionally, salary increases are also likely to moderate and, with likely less investment into the Philippines, the Filipino peso may weaken and lead to a more attractive cost base.

In other words, assuming that the actual work environment is not disrupted by the new posture, the labor pool should become more attractive – lower cost and more stable – for those organizations continuing to operate in the Philippines.

From an economic standpoint, despite President Duterte’s saber rattling and the unnerving optics, the ties between the two countries won’t be threatened any time soon. The IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) reported that the IT-BPS industry represented revenue of US$22 billion to the Philippines, and employed ~ 1.2 million FTEs in the country in 2015. With those kinds of numbers, an economic split can’t happen.

Socially, there are very deep ties between the U.S. and the Philippines, much of which is rooted in the fact that English is one of the two official languages in the country. One of the strongest predictors of social ties is language, as the more easily you can communicate with each other, the easier it is to talk about family, share jokes, discuss vacations…topics that help forge bonds.

It’s true that the Philippines’ risk profile appears to be shifting, but largely in ways that seem unlikely to materially impact business ties. For enterprises willing to manage and continue to operate within that environment, it would appear that the benefits of more skilled, language- and culturally-aligned talent at lower prices could easily outweigh the perceived risks.

Of course, there are numerous things you and your location-scoping team should monitor when considering the Philippines as a sourcing destination. The top five are:

  • Trade agreements with the U.S.
  • Taxes and incentives for U.S. firms
  • Travel policies, including visa’s and travel advisories
  • Actions and sentiments of market participants
  • 2022 Philippines roadmap for IT-BPO; relative emphasis on the U.S.

Is your enterprise already offshoring to the Philippines, or in the process of evaluating it against other destinations? We’d love to hear your thoughts, perceptions, concerns, and experiences!

10 Golden Rules for Good Benchmarking | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Originally posted on the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) blog


Insights from the NOA “Benchmarking” Special Interests Group with Everest Group

Benchmarking is a worthwhile endeavour. When conducted properly, the practice will give you a baseline indicator of where your business is currently, where it is headed on its current trajectory, where you need to be to maximise gains and how you can get there.

Benchmarking can also act as the catalyst for a more fruitful long-term outsourcing relationship, by highlight areas that must be focused on moving forward. On the other hand, it is not the solution to every problem that relationship might have. The term is frequently misunderstood and the practice is even more frequently misused.

At the NOA’s Special Interests Group on Benchmarking in association with Everest Group, benchmarking experts led a roundtable discussion on when benchmarking is necessary, how it is best carried out and what the practice does to help business relationships between clients and their providers.


 

The Changing Delivery Location Landscape of the UK Contact Center Market | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

To participants in and watchers of the UK contact center market, it’s obvious there are many changes afoot. These include the third-party service provider landscape, the nature of outsourcing deals, and the maturity of buyers.

One of the key changes Everest Group is seeing is in the locations UK buyers are leveraging for their contact center activities. Let’s examine the contributing elements.

Offshoring

UK companies only offshore 10-15 percent of their contact center work, which in actual job numbers equates to 70,000 to 90,000. Consider this quantity in contrast to the U.S., which offshores greater than 25 percent/400,000 to 500,000 contact center jobs – a comparison we make given English as the common delivery language – and the fact that offshore locations offer 70-80 percent cost arbitrage advantage over locations in the UK There are two clear reasons for the limited share of contact center offshoring from the UK:

  • Increasing buyer maturity often leads to increasing openness to move from outsourcing to offshoring. But as adoption of outsourcing in the UK has been relatively narrow due to comparatively lower buyer maturity levels, offshoring uptake has also been limited.
  • UK buyers place heavy emphasis on cultural and accent similarity, and native English language speakers. Although the U.S. has comfort level with the Philippines as a key go-to destination for contact center delivery, the UK has not yet found its “Philippines.” Indeed, while India still has the majority of offshored UK contact center jobs, pure voice delivery has decreased over the years, with buyers increasingly leveraging the country’s capabilities for non-voice contact center services such as website, e-mail, and chat support.

UK contact centers

However, the forward-looking view on offshore locations for the UK contact center market is much more promising. There is increasing acceptance of South Africa as a delivery location for voice-based and domain specific delivery (e.g., insurance), due to accent similarity and strong cultural affinity. Recent market activity, such as the Serco-Shop Direct deal, WNS’ acquisition of Fusion, and Capita’s purchase of Full Circle are indicators of this affinity. We expect India to continue its uptake of non-voice contact center services from the UK.

Onshoring/Nearshoring

Contact center work within the UK is moving to low-cost locations in Northern England and to other areas such as Scotland and Northern Ireland. While there is still a higher concentration of contact centers in Southern England (the Greater Thames region), this is more of a legacy effect rather than the result of new or recent activity. The new/greenfield activity is largely moving contact center work up north to Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, and Newcastle-Gateshead in England, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Kilmarnock in Scotland, and Belfast and Londonderry in Northern Ireland, driven by:

  • Lower operating cost
    • Salary: Locations in Northern England (e.g., Liverpool) offer 5-10 percent savings over established locations in Southern England (e.g., Twickenham), and locations in Scotland and Northern Ireland (e.g., Glasgow and Belfast) offer 10-15 percent savings
    • Real estate cost: Real estate rentals in the northeast (e.g., Newcastle) and northwest (e.g., Liverpool) are 10 percent lower than in the south of England (e.g., Twickenham); and rentals in Northern Ireland are 30-50 percent lower than locations in England
  • Sizeable agent pool: Birmingham and Leeds, for example, have considerable talent pools (40,000-70,000 experienced contact center agents)
  • Lower attrition and unemployment: Established locations (e.g., south of England) have higher contact center attrition and unemployment rates relative to other regions in the UK, thus influencing movement to areas north of England
  • Government incentives: Most less-established locations in the UK offer multiple incentives programs, such as employment and training grants, for contact centers. This makes their value proposition competitive, especially for greenfield operations. For example, Northern Ireland provides a one-time incentive of GBP 3,000-7,000 per job created in this sector

UK Locations leveraged by leading service providers

UK contact center locations

Everest Group believes that while onshore/nearshore delivery of UK contact center services will continue to remain the predominant model over the next three to five years, offshoring will grow faster. Buyers’ comfort with the offshore model, particularly with alternatives to India, such as South Africa, for voice-based services is likely to increase. Cost pressures are liable to propel buyers to adopt offshoring and other low-cost delivery alternatives, such as less expensive locations within the UK Finally, the market movement toward multi-channel contact center delivery capabilities, resulting in higher usage of web, chat, and e-mail customer support, will further support the growth of offshore delivery.

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