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BBC News published on Aug. 17, 2007 another interesting article on IT offshoring by Mark Hillary [Read here]. Mark reviewed for the BBC the various destinations that are emerging as potential outsourcing destinations, principally from a European perspective.
His article reminds me of a recent post by Stephanie Overby on CIO Magazine Online and called “Would You Actually Outsource to These Countries?”
I can understand why so many countries are willing to take their chance; even a small fraction of India’s $ 47.8 B outsourcing market would be enough to delight most of them.
But I am struggling to understand why a Western company should select destinations like Pakistan for instance.
I am sure that countries like Pakistan produce very talented engineers, with excellent English skills. However Iran does too, and almost no western company would consider outsourcing there, for obvious reasons.
Let’s face it. How many American or European companies would send their employees to any of these destinations on a regular basis, or would send some confidential information there? I am sure some do, but I bet it is a very marginal number.
The reasons why more and more companies are questioning India as a destination today are well known (prices, attrition rate, country infrastructure, overall quality, etc.).
But any alternative to India has to offer at least:
- Some acceptable political stability
- Better infrastructure than India
- An appealing domestic market
- Lower prices than India
- Lower attrition rate (much lower!)
- Better or similar government support to the outsourcing industry
- And foremost and in addition of all of the above, be already a recognized destination for outsourcing. In other words, provide with a pool of talents large enough to limit the risks inherent to outsourcing to their bare minimum.
And I can think of only one destination today that fulfills all of these criteria, and that is China.
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China is way off… more like the Philippines (has very good command of English (both oral and written), a carbon copy legal system of the US, and a lot more cheaper.
Left by robert on September 3rd, 2007