My article at Law
Technology News on Milbank’s outsourcing
their wordprocessing to Chennai, India, is now up. How, you
might well ask, could control-freak lawyers possibly cope with the news
that their documents would not be processed under their noses but halfway
around the globe, out of sight? Read about the brilliant double-blind
trial period. And many thanks to Jim Lantonio, their Executive
Director, for responding to my questions and follow-up even though he
was abroad.
While Milbank’s is a success story, Deloitte has just released a report "calling
a change" in the outsourcing market. Basically, Deloitte questions
the benefits of outsourcing once one considers their "fully loaded" costs,
including the burden on management, security/privacy risks, and the potential
loss of expertise, reservations that have always seemed to me to
be underplayed. A more speculative prediction Deloitte makes,
which is entirely plausible on its face although I have no independent
means of verifying it, is that the vendor market is about to undergo
a consolidation phase, decreasing the bargaining power of would-be US
outsourcers. Bottom line (and I quote):
-
Seventy percent of participants have had significant negative
experiences with outsourcing projects and are now exercising greater
caution in approaching outsourcing. -
One in four participants have brought functions back in-house
after realizing they could be addressed more successfully and/or
at a lower cost internally. -
Forty-four percent of participants did not see cost savings materialize
as a result of outsourcing
En garde.
