Insourcing and “Onshoring”
I was not at all surprised to see this article on CNET, published yesterday, about global outsourcing giants in India suffering sluggish growth. All three of the Indian outsourcers (Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro) blamed global economic conditions. Maybe they should blame corporate cluelessness instead (not for the decline, but for the original business).
(Note on July 27, 2008: For an example of such cluelessness, please see my later blog entry here.)
Guess what? Although Europe is apparently forging ahead with outsourcing and offshoring, I know of one major Silicon Valley company that is bringing some of its offshored operations back onshore again! Yes, there are a lot of reasons for NOT offshoring (I wrote about them earlier), but corporations flailing about (as many corporations are prone to do) for short-term profits (hey, those are the only ones that COUNT in our system, right?) plunged into outsourcing and offshoring without thinking about those reasons (and probably contributed a lot to global economic uncertainty in the process).
I call that new development insourcing and “onshoring.” It will be interesting to see what happens to insourcing and onshoring if global conditions become even more uncertain and any new wars break out soon. (Remember those submarine cable breaks?)
As corporations onshore operations, either as a result of failed offshoring, or because of global conflicts and uncertainties, there is another question that they will need to ask themselves, “Will there be enough workers to meet their needs?” (Sorry, when you “shoot yourself in the foot,” there is not always a hospital close by.)
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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