CIO Insight offers a slideshow presentation of results from a survey it did on outsourcing and offshoring practices and experiences.
The biggest companies — those with revenues over a billion dollars — seem to stand out from the others in their willingness to do more of both in 2007. For example, whereas 45% of the total population of respondents report offshoring IT activities in 2006 or the intention to do, that number cranks up to 70% for the largest companies.
What’s being outsourced? Application and Web development leads the way for 48% of respondents. Although only 13% of companies are outsourcing security functions, that garners the highest satisfaction — 53% say they’re "very satisfied," and 35% say they’re "somewhat satisfied." The service in which organizations are overall least satisfied is helpdesk/end-user support, but there it’s only 29% reporting dissatisfaction (down from 38% in 2006).
When outsourcing fails, these respondents believe it’s most commonly due to the fact that "management lacks skill at overseeing outsourcing vendors" (55%). That’s followed by cultural/language barriers (49%). Interestingly, these same organizations overall believe they have effective processes in place for selecting outsourcing vendors (65%) and deciding what, when and where to outsource (62%).
If you’re building a business case for or against IT outsourcing, the facts in this study may help you one way or the other. You can find it here.
