When do Indian outsourcing services providers fail to fit the mould? This is the question Stephanie Moore, VP at Forrester, raised at their annual Services and Sourcing Forum.
In terms of outsourcing, India may not always be the best decision for a business, explained Forrester.
…India does have its drawbacks as an area, said Moore in her keynote. India is more expensive than many locations, travel can be difficult and the India’s infrastructure has difficulty supporting its growth, Moore added.
“One of the most important issues companies struggle with is time zones,” Moore said, adding “you don’t want critical systems supported by someone on the night shift, who probably isn’t the brightest in the company.”
Also businesses need companies with similar language and cultural efficiencies because “with translation very poor, there is even more risk on the communication capability of the relationship,” said Moore. It is difficult for many European companies to offshore to India because Indians generally only have knowledge of Hindi and English.
…whereas European providers such as
EPAM Systems have much better onshore presence in non-English speaking regions. For instance, it maintains an account management office in Germany to serve local customers with no language barriers.
These statements also support many recent studies that proved that outsourcing success is all about the communication between the customers and providers. Never can SLAs be that sophisticated to foresee all possible challenges, so without close trusty relationship between the parties IT outsourcing deals simply will not work.
Of vital importance are also project management methodologies implemented by the service providers. Mature vendors make heavy investments in advanced tool set development. One of such proven products is
Project Management Center, a unique web-based collaboration environment for software development and other IT projects.
Although China is often assumed to be the answer to the problems occurring in India, because of its large amount of resources and strong education systems, China is not that appropriate for Western companies”, Moore said, adding “China will be an answer at some point but not for the next three or four years or so.”
China has language issues and intellectual property issues, such as companies are hyper sensitive about privacy related customers data, Moore said. “Also, there is not a mature market there yet, with the largest indigenous service provider having just under 2000 people.
In terms of outsourcing, Eastern Europe is “a great option for European companies” in terms of skills, time zones, cultural compatibility, and communication flexibility, especially if you choose a large local player with sufficient scalability. For instance, the market leader in software development outsourcing in Central and Eastern Europe, EPAM Systems, has over 3,500 resources and focuses primarily on large, mission-critical projects. The company has made successful deliveries in 13 languages in 30+ countries.
Source:
IT Week
