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Abuse of work permit system threatens UK IT
Abuse of the work permit system by companies that bring in IT
workers from abroad (Computerweekly.com, 14 August) has been
gathering pace for some time.
My company worked for a global consumer goods group for nine
years, providing project managers, business analysts, developers,
testers, helpdesk and other staff. We had an excellent relationship
with the company, and we were always ultra competitive on
rates.
Three years ago the consumer goods group started importing staff
from India and we were no longer invited to bid for work or provide
staff. The entire business stream dried up, with the group
employing more than 100 Indian IT personnel in its City office and
outsourcing the remainder of the work to India. Other clients have
been doing the same thing.
Every business has the right to make profit and keep costs down,
but if the government wants to retain a viable knowledge economy,
it must prevent firms abusing the system. The Indian staff were not
providing some niche specialism that could not be found in the UK.
We could have provided equivalent skills with better teamworking
and business understanding, but our costs would have been higher as
an Indian IT worker can be hired to work in the City for a fraction
of a UK worker's rates.
The industry needs to reverse the decline in use of our
indigenous resource before we lose the ability to compete. We can
do so by preventing abuses of the system for short-term benefits
and shortsighted gains.
G A Simpson, managing director, European Project
Consultants
Relationships are key to outsourcing
success
Gartner warned recently that half of all businesses involved in
business process outsourcing contracts would be hit by cost
overruns and unacceptable levels of service over the next three
years (Computer Weekly, 29 August).
While it is true that firms that fail to adopt the right
approach to an outsourcing engagement will be liable to these cost
and service problems, it should be noted that there are a number of
logical, yet often overlooked considerations which, if addressed
from the start, should prevent this grim fate.
The brief to the delivery team must be more precise than most
businesses are used to giving, as successful outsourcing requires a
high level of discipline. The brief must be focused on the results
the business needs: if you don't know what you want, you don't know
what you are going to get.
The key to a successful ongoing outsourcing deal is
communication and trust. Once these are established you have a
stable platform to grow from and can start to push the envelope of
what is possible. Research sponsored by LogicaCMG found that good
relationship management can create a "trust dividend" of 20% to 40%
difference on service, quality, cost and other performance
indicators.
In the future, expect an increased emphasis on the relationship
aspects of outsourcing, hinged around more interaction and
transparency between customer and supplier. A move away from "best
price" deals towards "best value" deals will mean that Gartner's
predictions are unnecessarily pessimistic.
Adrian Cole, LogicaCMG
New maturity will head off grim BPO
predictions
The race for cheap labour rates is over and a new maturity is
entering the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, despite
Gartner's dire warnings (Computer Weekly, 29 August).
Outsourcing to destinations such as India has long been proven
not to be a cure-all and it is clear that there is more to
successful outsourcing than cost concerns.
The next three years are not likely to see the downfall of BPO,
but rather the rise of a considered, mature approach to a
combination of far and nearshoring, which assess the project's
needs as well as geographic, time and cultural differences, and, of
course, costs.
The hype is over. Long live the new maturity.
Graham Underwood, GFT
Boards need to see the business impact of
IT
I agree with Steve Burrows' opinion that IT must be represented
in the boardroom (Computer Weekly, 1 August), but it is not just
the people that should have a presence, but the technology itself.
It is too often referred to in low-level terminology, making it
inaccessible to those who are not technologically minded.
Instead of looking at the tools being used and what they are
being used for, businesses should be talking about IT in terms of
what impact it has on the business.
Michael Jannery, Entuity
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