Can outsourcing continue to grow at the rate we have seen over the last decade or so, during which it has become the management tool of choice for many major corporations, as well as the engine of growth for an army of suppliers drawn not only from the traditional ranks of the hardware suppliers, systems integrators and consultants, but more and more from the new industrial heavyweights of India?

To answer that question we need to look at how this growth started, what sustains it now, and what options are open to the current protagonists.

The current outsourcing boom has its roots in the IT outsourcing deals pioneered in the 1980s by the likes of EDS and IBM. The levers used were a mixture of focused expertise, economies of scale and financial and commercial engineering. These disciplines were expanded in the 1990s into wider functional areas â?? finance for example, with Accentureâ??s landmark deal with BP in 1991 â?? and BPO was born. Clients bought into the concept for a number of reasons, high amongst them the management theory that organizations should focus on what was core, and leave everything else to someone else.

Tags: corporate

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 4:00 am and is filed under Corporate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.