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The Perils of Prognostication

Only a day to go before submissions close on SSON’s epochal (you better believe it) “Predictions for 2009” feature; I’ve been loving reading the entries so far and I’m sure you’ll feel the same when we publish the best of them at the end of the week.

While going through your masterpieces I was thinking about my own predictions for 2009. Other than predicting (with the help of the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar) with total accuracy how long I’ll be paying for Christmas, it was a tough ask to come up with anything with complete confidence – certainly I don’t have a list to match my co-blogger Phil Fersht’s forecasts. However, I can’t reach out for predictions from you guys and not go the extra yard myself – so next week in my last post before Christmas I’ll be putting my views up to be blasted down over the next twelve months (be gentle with me…).

One of the problems – a most significant one – is that the second half of 2008 absolutely annihilated so many hitherto unshakable certainties. Who could have foreseen only a year ago that by the turn of 2009 we would be living in a world where the US president-elect was an African-American with the middle name “Hussein”; where several western governments - including that bastion of economic liberalism, the United States – had effectively nationalised major financial institutions; where oil prices would stand at the end of the year at effectively one-third of what they were halfway through it; and where Oprah had finally turned her back on dieting for good? Not I: too ridiculous to contemplate. But all those things have happened – and who can say what 2009 will bring (apart from our hardy correspondents of course!)?

But of course those of you looking to make major decisions next year simply can’t stick your heads in the sand and pretend this unpredictability isn’t happening. It’s time to step up to the plate, like it or not: reputations just have to go on the line as organizations look to stay afloat using every weapon in their armories. Trying to pick the right offshore spot to outsource to, for example, when currencies are behaving like the BFG after a few glugs too many of his finest frobscottle, might seem an impossible task – but it’s got to be done regardless.

Tangentially, but on the subject of offshore outsourcing: Soeren Dressler from the Offshoring Institute wrote to me yesterday demonstrating some strong opinions about what he sees as some very worrying trends. Over to Soeren:

“In recent months many people believe that there would be a new trend of ‘insourcing’ meaning that BPO and ITO have failed on a great scale that most providers are not able to deliver. Hence, companies need to take back processes in-house in order to re-stabilize and ensure quality. There might be many insourcing activities going but the truth of the matter is that it’s not providers that have failed but the companies starting the outsourcing process in the first place. Insourcing of formerly outsourced activities is a clear statement of complete failure on the client side. It demonstrates clearly that project managers in charge have not assessed correctly the risks and complexities of these kinds of projects, that they have chosen the wrong providers and locations and displayed very, very poor project management skills. So the ‘trend of insourcing’ is a result of lacking knowledge and skills on the companies’ side in order to manage ITO/BPO engagements correctly. And the same applies to captive nearshore/offshore engagements. The key challenge for 2009 is developing skills and knowledge. We at the University of Applied Sciences are the first and only that have developed a master program on BPO – we are addressing the urgent need for outsourcing knowledge proactively.”

Nuff said? You can have your say too: let me have your thoughts.

Jamie 

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