Not Just Providers Cost savings historically have been the biggest enticement to outsource. Today, cost savings have fallen to the bottom of the list of why companies outsource, according to Cynthia Doyle, an analyst with IDC, an IT market research firm in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Technology is the main driver changing the face of outsourcing.
Gone are the days when the board of directors agonized over handing over a process to an outsourcing provider. Today, she reports outsourcing is a given in most boardrooms because companies can't keep up with the mach speed rate of change in the IT world by themselves. Doyle, who covers the landscape of the large IS outsourcing providers like IBM Global Services and EDS, says traditional brick and mortar companies have age-old distribution channels that typically don't involve technology. Now they see that their competition is doing business on the Web and they want an Internet presence and ecommerce abilities, too. Unfortunately, they rarely have the internal resources to make this 180 degree change themselves.