Signs of offshore backlash growing

As the trend of IT outsourcing continues to grow, organizations may find themselves traversing a tightrope between their customers and cross-cultural considerations.

It's a lesson Dell Inc. is currently learning. The Round Rock, Tex.-based firm has been aggressively shifting its IT support to centers in countries such as India. But when Dell last November redirected some of its help support calls from call centers in Bangalore, India back to the help desks in the United States, it was a direct response to customer concerns.

Complaints about the quality of technical support caused the company to move support for its Optiplex desktops and Latitude notebooks back to U.S. call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee, according to Dell. Enterprise customers not only complained about a difficulty in understanding accents, but also claimed that the support staff was delivering scripted responses and lacked the ability to tackle complex IT issues, apparently drove the decision.

"Corporate customers were telling us they didn't like the level of support they were getting, and in the normal course of business, we made some adjustments," a Dell spokesman said.

Dell quickly reacted to customer concerns to an outsourcing issue, but what, in general terms, can organizations learn from the Dell situation?

According to Gordon Brooks, president and CEO for, E5 Systems Inc. choosing what to outsource can be tricky. But as the head for the Waltham, Mass.-based offshore outsourcing vendor noted, if there's no risk, there can be no reward. Brooks spoke on the subject in Toronto at the IT Services/Outsourcing International Expo last October.

It's important for IT executives to learn the correct approach to understanding what, how and where applications should be outsourced, versus what is strategic and core to the organization, Brooks said.

In ensuring outsourcing success, enterprises should categorize their "application portfolio" into informational, strategic, transactional and infrastructure units, Brooks said. Once organizations prioritize their application areas as core, context or utility they can better make decisions on what should be outsourced, upgraded or managed in-house.

The issue is unlikely to fade away. As Framingham, Mass.-based IT research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) recently surveyed, by 2007 approximately 25 per cent of IT support and services will be sent offshore, up from five per cent in 2003. IT outsourcing is a natural fit for general commodity-type services. Where it gets tricky is when enterprises have IT issues specific to their applications.

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