Anonymous

international

self-employed

Outsourcing the hen-house to the foxes…

I stared off my career in IT working for an outsourcing company, so none of the recent failures has surprised me. Most such deals have involved outsourcing care of the hen-house to the foxes.

To be successful, an outsourcing contract requires the company to know its requirements in detail, be able to articulate them in precise legal language, be able to monitor the work precisely – and – be able to withdraw from the contract quickly, cleanly and cheaply at the first sign of trouble.

That’s hard enough to do if your outsourcer is local and cooperative and the goods or services straightforward and easy to measure e.g. telephone service. It is, in my experience, nearly impossible if the upper management isn’t “hands on”, and the outsourcer is geographically remote and and has a different language and culture distinct -- or if the outsourcer is deliberately non-transparent. Would you say I have just described the situation in all of the recent IT fiascos?