How to deal with attrition from the buyer's angle?

Attrition - turnover of project staff

From a buyer, you could use at least 2 means to control:

1. Insist to build in SLA on contingencies upon reaching an attrition threadshold
2. Provide more training and career movement opportunities to staff of outsourcer

CW has more coverage.

Oh, Homeshoring!

Business week talks about homeshoring. I wonder if it is that easy to realize that. Yes, you have technologies. But still you have people. People is the most difficult part for managing outsourcing.

But still, I am interested to look at the development of this interesting trend.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2006/tc20061114_312924.htm

India only account for 59% of US outsourcing spendings

India - 59%
The Philippines - 9%
Canada - 8%
Brazil - 8%
Central and Eastern Europe - 7%
Mexico - 4%
China - 3%

Besides, Gartner estimates that total IT services growth is expected to grow from $18 billion in 2004 to $52 billion by 2007.

Merrill Lynch says IT spending will go up 4.2% in 2007

Here are some summary of Merrill Lynch's Predictions:

• Overall IT spending: UP 4.2%
• Consultants and SI spending: UP 4.6%
• Large scale IT outsourcing: UP 2.7%
• BPO: UP 2.1%
  

Nearshoring in 2007

Priya writes about the nearshoring trend in 07. It does highlight a trend that buyers of outsourcing services become more and more mature. Why do I say that?

From my experience, buyers often go through several stages of mentality (simply due to they learn along the way of outsourcing):

1. Hoping for a single supplier, one-stop services & hands-free mode of work
2. Struggling on its change management upon outsourcing, typically over staff motivation problems, gap of expectations on requirements & realizing the need of process redesign
3. Process improvement and lessons learnt
4. Use business objectives as the drivers for deciding outsourcing strategies

Nearshoring is a way of balancing the cost savings, in-house staff participation and ease of access to outsourcers.

Guy Kawasaki: 11 (it may be growing) ways of using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is hot these days. Find out how Guy talks about using it more effectively on his blog.