Will bots kill the call center outsourcing business ?

I was at a conference where an animated, heated, passionate discussion was happening between members representing the technology players’ leadership team and some customers. It was quite obvious that there was a difference of opinion leading to a disagreement on the subject. There were multiple points of view which added to the liveliness of the debate. The conference organized by an independent organization was on one of the currently hot technologies – artificial intelligence and its manifestation in the form of bots.

The Structure of words determine segmentation methodology and parsing for semantic analysis, tasks that can now be done with higher accuracy though complete sentences require additional facts and external world knowledge. For written text in a chat session, the bot is able to hold fort quite successfully when addressing well-defined tasks and decision trees. Many online portals and businesses have already deployed chat bots to supplement agents who step in when the bot is unable to parse and respond to a question.

Eliza was seen as a breakthrough, so are personal assistants who respond to and act upon simple tasks using basic language parsing tools. While the technology is nascent, attempts to make computers chat with humans have been around for over half a century. Current experiments indicate that they can be purposed for specific tasks. Excitement revolves around automated interactions to improve efficiency and reduce cost in comparison to current models of humans talking to customers for customer support issues.

The Natural Language Processing (NLP) journey that began with SHRDLU has improved significantly with Machine Learning and Deep Learning. The ability to pass the Turing Test (the test investigates whether people can detect if they are talking to machines or humans) is still some time away, though we are getting closer to the milestone. Though some may claim that Eugene passed the test a couple of years back, many do not agree with the results. Artificial Intelligence barrier is yet to be crossed convincingly.

As bots mature and they are evolving fast, their ability to manage specific tasks is already giving organizations the benefit of consistent responses to basic and mundane queries; use cases around query and response of HR systems on leave balances, tax options, and others have been successfully deployed. Externally airlines and hospitality industry have taken the lead while inside our homes personal assistants are making an appearance; the biggest driver however has been the smartphone listening, responding and taking actions.

Call centers and IVR systems continue to drive customers crazy with long decision trees and stupid obvious questions; wait times add to the woes of the frustrated customer. Offshore call centers did reduce the cost but faced backlash on other social impact it created. Bots promise to take up the challenge and address the customer with agility and surprisingly improved outcomes. The rich repository of information and past interactions helps the rules engine train effectively and take decisions objectively.

As the cost of deployment continues to fall with mass development and niche players, companies are slowly embracing this revolution. Which brings to fore the point that will they be able to replace humans in call centers as the bot learns and graduates to the next level of interactions ? Recent times have seen the rise of hullabaloo about jobless growth and the disappearance of low end jobs to be replaced by machines; as the gap to the Turing Test reduces, the probability that they can starts staring us in the face.

The job loss is indeed going to impact destinations that build their business models around calls and low end business process outsourcing (BPO). Many existing players have already started upgrading skills as well as retrain staff for other roles; enterprises will ruthlessly choose efficiency over distant loss of employment even if it involves initial high investment. Are there options available to current players ? It is a race against time for incumbents to move up the value chain or become irrelevant to their customers.

Unless, unless they embellish their services with bots and attack their own business before someone else does. A handful of providers with strong technology backing from within or their parent companies are beginning to offer value added services using bots thereby changing their customer acquisition and retention strategies aligned to the new reality. They are using their rich knowledge repository to train the technology solution towards addressing existing and new problems thus opening up opportunities.

A system is as good as the people who build it; in the end it will be humans who will continue to create the differentiator !

Running IT like a business is good but are you prepared to lose your customer and money ?

I received a phone call from a CIO friend wanting to talk over a drink, which I agreed to since he was good company to be with. When he arrived I could see he was internally raging; he looked shades of red I did not know he could. Without asking he started: What does he think ? Asking me to justify why I am getting paid what I am getting ! Cut cost, reduce expenses, my business does not want expensive IT and highly paid staff ! This is even when we benchmark against the industry with lowest cost of providing IT.

He had been in a meeting with one of the business unit heads who had given him the run down on the annual IT costs that were charged back to each business unit. Within the diversified group for which he was the CIO, chargebacks were a way of life; for every support function, there were different metrics based on revenue, headcount, transaction volume or profitability. Every year there was a negotiation with the business on support costs; the previous year not having gone well, the discussions now were loaded.

In the early days of evolution of IT and the CIO role; few companies had broken out by carving their IT departments into separate entities; it became a fad with many attempting to replicate success. Entrepreneurial spirit fueled by case studies gave a ray of hope to aspirants. Quickly the trend disappeared with boom and bust giving fertile minds an opportunity to create a new goalpost. Run IT as a business – became the new mantra and it caught the fancy of some CIOs who otherwise struggled to stay afloat.

How do you run IT as a business ? The hypothesis created by some consultants revolved around charging a fair price for all the services, solutions, technology, business as usual, keeping the lights on, running the innovation lab, providing training, fixing the printer, any touch point that required parts of the IT organization in whole or bits to take any action, triggered by an event or otherwise. Charges were calculated based on simple and complex formulae depending on the creativity of the CIO and indulgence from the CFO.

Chargebacks became a discussion, debate, and topic of angst for many customers of IT (even though internal). Quality of service and Service Level Agreements became the metrics for measurement putting some IT teams in a spot. If I am going to pay (even notional), then I am fair in demanding not realizing that before it became explicit, they were anyway paying in adjustments done by the CFO for all support functions. Negotiations started on why the price is not lower, expecting justification for every line item as experienced by my friend.

Consultants then convinced Management to outsource the entire IT organization to experts offering efficiency of scale, repeatability and predictability to process, tools and technology enabled remote support and fix, again shrinking cost per unit. The big wave of outsourcing promised the moon with numbers that convinced Boards to give it a serious look. IT is not your business or core, so create complexity to manage; give up to the experts, focus on what matters. CIOs struggled through this phase balancing cost and deliverables.

Downturns offered reality check; long-term contracts became sparse, enterprises reflected on the gains which were not as rosy as they had been painted in the beginning. The CEO of IT services or the CIO suddenly had a crisis at hand with ever demanding but dissatisfied customers; changing technology landscape, evolving and opportunistic business models threatened the uneasy balance, with the realization that neither had a choice of providers or customers. It was fragile truce which required maturity rarely observed in corporate world.

The devils choice extinguished the discussion for many enterprises though a few continued to tread down the uneven path. Changing business dynamics have now redefined the platform from running IT as a business to running business with IT. The new paradigm led by the now mature business savvy CIO is raising the bar; they are not interested in running IT or taking a subservient position,  they want to run the business and they are succeeding. I believe that CIOs can safely drop the games and achieve heights they truly deserve.

My CIO friend wiser after the discussion offered services from external large providers as an alternative and benchmark to the CEO, willing to give up his team should there be commercial gain for the business. Accepting the offer the CEO wholeheartedly supported the exercise and participated in the discussions investing time and effort as he learned about the complexity of managing IT. Three months later he signed the paper with the CIO realizing that he had a good deal to begin with. 

Awry Outsourcing Anguish

Recently I met a friend whose company had signed a strategic outsourcing deal a few years back with much fanfare and was talked about as one of the first in his industry. His company made news in restricted industry circles and the vendor gained good leverage out of the deal. The long-term deal was expected to create efficiency which were acknowledged by the Management and the Board. The teams were excited with the prospects of the new engagement and the benefits outlined.

From initial discussion to closure of the deal, it had taken a lot of groundwork between both the teams who toiled for over a year. Setting the baseline was the most rigorous task which required everyone to agree to the “as-is” scenario; number of assets, age and residual life, upgrade and replacement norms, scale-up of the business operations, revenue growth targets, additions to workforce, industry outlook; everything was required to be put in writing to ensure that the contract survives the signatories.

I asked him on how it was going; after going down the journey for close to three years, had they started seeing the benefit of their decision ? How was the service delivery and how had the users taken the change ? What would be his advice to others who may want to go down the same path ?  After all not many had signed long-term deals in recent times. He looked at me hard as if trying to understand why I was asking him all that. Seeing no ulterior motive in my query, he responded:

We have decided to terminate the deal; it is not working out. Our problems started during service transition. The team misinterpreted almost every clause and intent; we had to involve the pre-sales team and escalate across layers to get to the shared understanding that went into the contracting. The people on the ground had skills deficit and were unable to come up to the same level of service pre outsourcing. In every review meeting they promised improvements and then nothing changed.

The commercials were based on certain assumptions of growth and efficiency. They were expected to make upfront investments on tools and technologies which took longer than committed to materialize. Business had also started slowing down and the cost was beginning to hurt. The vendor was unwilling to accept this and review terms of engagement even though one of the primary benchmarks, cost as percentage of revenue, was broken and going north instead of the promised south.

After much discussion, escalation and negotiation, small tweaks were done to the model which survived a stormy year. When business growth eluded us as per original plan and required deferral of certain initiatives and hardware refresh, the dialogue was not very encouraging. All the spreadsheets that made lot of sense prior to commencement now appeared to be work of fiction. The contract did not allow significant change downward while it captured the upside. Short of suing each other the only recourse was termination.

In recent times there have been many outsourcing contracts that have run into rough weather; what seemed like a great idea in the late 90s and turn of the century have lost charm. Back then everyone was racing to outsource; now it seems that everyone is in a race to find a way out. Most contracts that are coming up for renewal are finding favor with neither incumbent vendor nor new partners. Have the outsourcing benefits suddenly disappeared ? What has changed that suddenly makes enterprises shy away ?

It is evident that for many who outsourced with large long-term deals with big service providers have not gained the promised benefits. Where did it fall short ? Sales organizations did a great job of painting a rosy picture while the delivery and execution team ran out of color red. The gap between intent and execution and the inability to adapt to variability of business has resulted in both sides feeling shortchanged.  The advent of newer services and scenarios like RIMS and BYOD has anyway changed the game.

One of the models that I have found survive over others is a deal where service parameters and expectations are reset every year. It requires IT, business and the vendor to work on the same side of the table. I have observed many successful deals that survived multiple challenges; they had clearly defined ownership. When you outsource, you still are accountable and responsible; it is not abdication of responsibility. New models of outcome based engagements are appearing on the horizon, their efficacy is yet to be experienced.

Requirement gathering, the saga ends

A heated debate ensued between the two project managers, from the development vendor and the customer respectively on change in scope of the project. This was not a late stage discussion or changes requested during UAT; in fact the project was just a week old with the Requirement Specifications still being formulated. The key user who was also the subject matter expert sat through the charade wondering where she should step in. With no resolution visible, they all decided to go to the CIO for arbitration.

It was supposed to be a quick win project that typically delivers what everyone refers to as low hanging fruits. The project brief was a working model on a spread sheet of the solution to be developed. So it was assumed that the solution should be easy to create and scale up. The timelines and costs were agreed to and the vendor team arrived on site to finalize the project scope and integration points. So what could be the reason for the conflict ? If something is working, how can requirement change ?

The CIO heard the point of view from each stakeholder, the user, IT project manager, and the vendor. For the user, she had clarified how the model worked and what was expected from the system that the spread sheet was unable to deliver; the IT project manager stressed upon the integration to various masters and the scalability expected of the solution; and the vendor project manager completed with a complaint that some of this was not in the original scope that was outlined prior to commencement.

So what was the issue asked the CIO ? Wasn’t the current discussion to clearly define the functionality expected from the system ? Where is the conflict in the integration definitions ? Does expansion of the concept and explaining in detail qualify as scope enhancement ? They had an advantage over a standard software development model that a working prototype was available. There was a discomforting silence for a while until they all decided to go back and close the discussion amicably.

So when I bumped into the CIO many months later, I enquired about his story from our last meeting. He mentioned that it had gone live but did face challenges in the initial days. This was discovered during deployment that the system needed elaboration.  The functionality was evident common sense but missing from the system (I shall not get into the details here which my CIO friend explained to me to my surprise). He quizzed the team for the missing parts of the whole; the user said it was obvious, the PM agreed, the vendor did not.

It is not in the system since you did not ask for it. Technically correct but does not solve the problem. So now that the system is accepted, deployed and support phase over, this is a Change Request and will have to be managed as such. The ineffectiveness of any argument was evident and the only recourse was to give in to the demand in the interest of the project and the business. That vendor has not been welcome to new initiatives since then; even the support has been moved to other partners.

My friend the CIO had no recourse ! Do we ? With the outsourcing trends taking the direction that they have, everything has to be now explicitly stated and included as a part of the Requirement Document. If you do not have an internal team of business savvy IT team members actively involved through the cycle such outcomes are quite likely. Invest in your team, keep them actively involved in the project and not just to manage at a high level. Keep a watchful eye open. Assumptions hurt; try “ass u me”.

This is hopefully the last post in this series. If you would like to see the earlier ones, they are linked below:

Part 1

Part 2

One Stop Shop

The IT industry has many types of vendors; some focusing on niche solutions, some specializing in specific technologies or domains, some who offer a menu of products/services ranging from infrastructure to applications, and then there are large diversified companies who do everything from consulting to implementation of technology solutions or packages backed by support services in a local, offshore or multi-location model. The big guys manage all kinds of requirements and bring to the discussion table a comprehensive long-term engagement model.

Different vendors set different expectations on what they can deliver; the niche providers do not promise a breadth of services, they stay focused on their expertise. The big ones claim to have expertise across the legacy to contemporary and cutting edge; they have industry practices and business consultants who profess incremental to transformational change capabilities. You name it we can do it; even if you cannot put a name to it, we will find a way to do it !

The large one-stop-shop engagements typically begin with setting of scope and expectations on delivery, timelines, and quality of service, rewards, penalties, force majeure, arbitration, cost, escalations and a lot more. The larger the scope, or the longer the time period of the contract, the governance becomes complex. We know that Total or Strategic outsourcing can cover everything; in recent times though the number of such deals has been dwindling.

So it was an interesting debate when a few CEOs on a panel berated the one-stop-shop companies giving it a new twist. Consider you wanting to reach a far-far away destination and the only option is to go by bus. Every bus gets you there, some are slower than others, some offer many comforts through the journey; the cheaper ones just get you there. Depending on what you can afford, there are many options to choose from. Caveat is once you have bought a ticket, a change is difficult and painful.

When someone advertises one-stop-shop the conventional understanding is that I get from where I am to the final destination with no stops with the advertised and agreed comfort. Reality as we know is not always as advertised. A CEO remarked on his journey with one of the global biggies; he signed up for a long journey wanting to focus on his business. Very quickly he was on the discussion table with the bus driver, conductor and the entire fleet management company.

Why is my journey so excruciatingly slow ? Why is the transformation promised not happening ? When will I see any impact to my employees, stakeholders, customers, or for that matter any efficiency to business operations ? Whatever happened to the pre-sales promises made by the various function heads of your company on various domains and technologies ? Pat came the answer, “we are a one-stop-shop company; we go one stop at a time. This is what we promised; we did have a driver change and a breakdown; that is part of the contract. We meet defined service levels.”

Both are right in their frame of reference; so where is the problem ? I believe that any such engagement should have common definition of reference points with clear understanding of step-by-step process, impact and governance. Otherwise the semantics of the one-stop-shop can be painful for everyone involved, the deliverer and the recipient. The bus is still moving but not in the way that makes the journey a pleasure. CIOs will be at the receiving end if there are such gaps.

OMG = Outsource, Manage, Groan

My CIO friend was looking glum, really glum if you know what I mean; and he is not the type who normally gets harried by issues, always cheerful, and willing to help others. He goes around telling people about thinking positive and choosing your attitude. It was surprising to see this side of his demeanour. So I asked him about the root cause of his worries.

He has always been a proponent of outsourcing over his illustrious career spanning more than two decades, more like a trendsetter than a follower. In that he had worked with outsourcing companies large and small, local and global, structuring large deals that were acknowledged and appreciated by the companies he worked for as well as the vendors. When someone needed advice on managing tricky situations or contracts, he was the person they approached.

Building on an existing contract that did well he had extended the scope of services and support for a longer tenure. Considering that the outsourcing vendor had been working with him for a long time it was seen as a natural and logical extension. There was merit and value in the deal for both sides.  It was like a no brainer deal. Going into execution he did not foresee any challenges barring the initial teething troubles when any new service is commissioned.

The slip between the lip and the proverbial cup or intent to execution started going awry very quickly. Process review and tool deployment planned, the timelines slid with consistency that was expected of improvements. Existing services that had been working well for many years also started deteriorating. Monthly review meetings attended by increasing levels of management made the right noises but delivery failed to align to commitments. Whatever happened to ITIL led SLA and global best practice ?

I was surprised to hear of his misery considering that the relationship with the vendor preceded his arrival into the company and that successful outsourcing was child play for my CIO friend. Large deals have a way of coming to life on their own; they do not always follow a predictable pattern, instead they find their own lowest common denominator in which they settle down before improvements begin. He acknowledged this hypothesis and queried how should he respond to adverse business impact or disruptions to critical business processes ?

This was discussed in the review meetings and the team said they were committed to making amends. Reality being different, he was exasperated with selective and partial information sharing. It is not the way relationships are built and sustained. What causes this gap ? I do not believe for a moment that there is mal intent present; but how to bring the train back on track ? Was it about transition from courtship to marriage predicament where partners take the relationship for granted ? The nuptial agreement spelt out everything, but … Not wanting to proffer advice to the wise, I sought his game plan.

Forget the SLA, the contract, that can come back later; it is people who make things happen. For the situation to change, the people have to be brought back to the table with a rigour to the review that sticks accountability to senior leaders and individuals. Review and monitoring by the day on the plan by everyone and change people if they are unable to run with the required speed. Keep the pressure up until they deliver or want out of the relationship. It is critical and important to keep the end objective in mind, and that is linked to business expectations and improvements.

I wished him luck and promised to connect back in a few weeks again.

Is Outsourcing cheaper in the long run ?

Once upon a time many moons back, the IT industry discovered multi-shore sourcing, I use this term to encompass all types of (out)sourcing initiatives, and with that came long-term contracts, 10 years was normal, 5 was seen as short-term. A lot of these that termed themselves as Strategic Sourcing also built in innovation, new technology, business process linked contracts with broad intent on changing market and business dynamics.

The fever spread across the globe and no markets or sectors remained untouched. Big or small, almost every company was expected to embrace this new wave. The euphoria within the enterprise as well as IT companies was such that companies that did not enter into such arrangements were seen as stakeholder unfriendly or just plain dumb for not acquiring the obvious value.

As the years passed by many companies reported rumblings of discomfort and missed expectations. Analysis appeared to indicate specific issues with companies and individuals for not putting in their best effort, safeguarding the model with zeal lest the industry collapse with an unsustainable framework if there were indeed cracks in the carefully crafted Contracts, Service Level Agreements and Reference Architecture that represented the blueprint for the future. Business, profitability, political and other pressures forced reviews and scale down.

Prudent and rigorous reviews also exposed that long-term contracts had advantages of consistency and predictability, but lost on taking advantage of swings in the IT industry as well as did not bring in the level of efficiency or capitalization of quick market trends requiring agility that was possible with short-term relationships or with the ability to review and recast the terms of engagement say every alternate year. This was reflected in the drying up of the decade long deeds and most engagements focused on a 3-5 year term. Maybe “familiarity breeds complacence” also took root with in most cases both parties working hard to keep the marriage going.

There is no implication that these did not deliver to promise; some of them did and continue to do extremely well; some required significant investments in governance. Leaving aside labour arbitrage, the value captured did stretch the boundaries of discussion and measurement models.

New models now seem to be emerging with focus on outcome based payment schedules, collaborative investments in new technology exploration, but the basic framework has survived the troughs and waves of the economy and resultant impact. The challenge of growth (manpower retention) has mutated the needs and solutions into new forms with service providers hungry to get back to growth of the past, but discarding the learning of unsustainable linear growth assumptions.

Outsourced contracts or strategic sourcing contracts will thus become expensive and non-tenable with linear growth not aligned to market/business or the (in)ability to manage sudden shocks or black swans that keen coming back to surprise us. Periodic review of terms of engagement even if they imply disruption is the need of the hour; the IT industry however is not very excited.

Outsourcing travails

Almost every mid to large size organization now outsources the basic maintenance of desktops, laptops, printers and other end computing devices to service providers under the broad framework of facility management. Some have also given away the tasks of managing servers, backups and networks. As far as I remember, this practice is definitely more than 15 years old, considering that the first time I came across this concept was in the early ‘90s. So by now, one would assume that the vendors and service providers (along with the CIOs), would have fine tuned this basic support activity to a level where it does not require significant management time and attention. However, recent discussions bring out a different story.

Essentially, outsourcing of the basic break-fix and first level support (typically personified as the IT Helpdesk), broadly constitutes a centralized number, email or web based form for users to log their calls. The person at the other end is expected to acknowledge the call, and attempt troubleshooting via phone or remote control of the computing device. If this is not feasible, he’s then supposed to provide desk side support through an Engineer. Track progress of the call until completed, repeat ad infinitum. Sounds simple enough!

Add a dash of best practices, frameworks like ITIL, service level agreements, and periodic reviews—everything should be hunky dory?

As computers get ubiquitous, cheaper, sturdier, and easier to use, the expectation levels have also risen. Today the expectations veer towards near instant resolution, which reflects the high level dependence as well as time pressures that are typical of today’s workplace. Mobility adds to the complexity, while security concerns mount—new and old threats challenge existing solutions, and compliance add to the challenge. To add to this, budgets are shrinking, and attrition is on the rise. So is it fair to expect service levels to sustain and improve, quarter on quarter?

CIOs with reason are right in their expectations from facility management, as this is what the enterprise demands in a hyper competitive environment. On the other hand, service providers have been struggling to rise up to these challenges and seize the opportunity. A few CIOs mentioned that they were reviewing alternatives, even though the contract period was far from over. In these circumstances, root cause analysis points towards many reasons that contribute either singularly or collectively.

Key amongst these factors remain people (See Challenges of an upturn), where service providers did not plan for attrition, with growth coming back; thus the pipeline dried up, and customers saw an adverse impact. If the person exiting is a Project Manager, it can take up to six months to recover. And we are not yet talking about quality of resources on the ground, which is deteriorating slowly and surely. Most new hires were fresh out of institutes, with very limited or no soft skills orientation. Customer service is not just about fixing the problem, but also with respect to addressing the person behind the computer and his downtime.

The second big issue is process compliance, with or without ITIL. Every outsourcing engagement has a plethora of checklists and processes which need to be rigorously followed to ensure success. However, for the person on the ground, this is a distraction, and sometimes seen as policing. Inconsistent data and incomplete checklists lead to increasing grievances with the users.

Weekly, fortnightly or monthly review meetings are at best a post mortem of the issue; instead, daily exception management between the vendor and customer Project Managers is required to ensure that these do not get discussed at the Management table. CIOs need to conduct periodic assessments to remain connected to the process, a practice which also keeps the teams’ focus on deliverables.

Non Disclosure Agreements

In not so distant a past, I had an interesting set of meetings with four of the top 10 global IT vendors and consultants who were bidding for a large engagement. Without exception, each party wanted the deal badly enough, considering the scope of work and the market expansion it may create. However, at the end of the evaluation process, I was feeling really nervous, not about the project, but about client confidentiality and what it means.

In the early part of the century after the recession brought about by dot-burst and 9/11, the IT industry had a lot going well for them. Many traditional industries started outsourcing and offshoring, and in one case, an inadvertent mention of a client name in a small newspaper column resulted in a written apology from the vendor CEO to the client PMO and VMO. It also resulted in a reduction in future business prospects.

Fast forward to the present, where vendors do not put in the customer name in presentations, but the words and context gives away the customer to anyone who can use a bit of market intelligence. This is obviously to protect the customer identity. So you may get referred to as “Top 3 FMCG company in India”, “Global 5 retailer” or “Large merchant banker in UK”. The case study that follows almost gives away the name, but still leaves a little room for guess work.

Going back to the incident, all the above mentioned safeguards were present, and guess what! Without exception, each presenter mentioned the customer names, stating that it was confidential. Talk about various non disclosure agreements that lawyers may have spent months preparing! Or warnings given by the CIO, PM or the business head!

Are NDAs worth even the paper they are printed on ? And in India, they are indeed printed on non-judicial stamp paper. When I asked some of them on this “slip”, there were no convincing answers. I’m not sure if there are any measures that you can take to address this situation.
Have you seen similar behavior? How do you protect your and your company’s interest in such a scenario? I would be very skeptical in doing business with such vendors, especially if it was something that brings competitive advantage in the mid-term.

This post was written for TechTarget.In and can also be seen at http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/Oh-I-See/

Does Outsourcing create value ?

Last week I participated in a sponsored group discussion which discussed outsourcing in the Indian context and the value it brings to the Indian CIO. It was an interesting debate with CIOs from multiple industries airing their viewpoints on subjects ranging from data center outsourcing to total outsourcing and everything in between like infrastructure, helpdesk and maintenance etc. Across the spectrum, the conclusions were not what the sponsors hoped for, but when you have a dozen bright minds together, it's unlikely that a consensus can be reached.

It was indeed evident that outsourcing is being scrutinized carefully by every enterprise in current times of tight budgets. A minority had significant outsourcing initiatives while the rest had the tactical operational stuff being done by external agencies. Reality being that outsourcing does not provide the Indian CIO a cost benefit, but helps manage variable demand and induct skills that may be hard to come by.

TCO & ROI are a way of life with ROI still remaining elusive; and the model varies by company and industry. The favorite buzzwords of IT and the consultants are passe, everyone has already done the virtualization, consolidation, renegotiation, while SOA, Clouds and SaaS and its variants are of limited value.

So future of outsourcing in India remains tactical to a large extent, big deals will be far and few, it's about creating short-term value, compromising at some level on what you cannot foresee.