Some 77pc of IT professionals who work in organisations say their outsourcers have “made up” work in order to earn extra money, according to a survey taken at the recent Infosecurity Europe 2011 event in London and the RSA Conference in San Francisco.
The survey, carried out by Lieberman Software Corporation, reveals that 43pc of IT professionals work in organisations that have outsourced a significant proportion of their IT.
Nearly 500 IT professionals participated, all of whom were partly or wholly responsible for an outsourcing function in their organisations and many of whom came from Fortune 100 companies.
A surprising result of the survey is that 62pc of respondents said that, compared to their original plans, their outsourcing agreements had cost them more than anticipated.
According to Philip Lieberman, president and CEO of Lieberman Software, the unfortunate by-product of the quest for lower costs and fewer headaches was “a situation where corporate collective knowledge, as well as loyalty and intellectual talent, has been lost”.
“Once upon a time, IT was seen as the lever arm of the company – a group that could use technology to make the organisation more competitive, exciting and different in the marketplace,” he said.
“Industry analysts and consultants in the area of business process management came up with the idea that every job could be fully described and therefore outsourced to the lowest bidder.
“Given that the advice came from a ‘credible source’, these executives were able to achieve remarkable reductions in cost and liability for awhile, until business challenges began to appear that required flexibility, corporate knowledge and dedication to the company. The experts never considered dedication and loyalty as elements in their ‘process re-engineering’ – it was deemed as not quantifiable.”
Lieberman said the survey confirmed that many organisations are growing frustrated with IT departments “consisting largely of outsourced employees who come and go at the whim of outsiders”.
“If organisations are going to outsource IT they must measure their outsourcers’ performance across the appropriate set of criteria – not only cost, but resiliency, transparency and data security,” he said.
