Making Outsourcing and Offshoring Work

by Bublu Thakur-Weigold, André Kuper

After the rush to outsource, the realities of operating in a global labor market start to sink in. Reflecting on a variety of experiences, multinational companies are actually paring down wholesale efforts to outsource knowledge-based activities like IT. ¹ Most IT managers today will eventually ask the inevitable question: "Should we outsource or offshore?" Unfortunately, this question oversimplifies and glosses over complex business dynamics. In order to achieve the results -- usually savings -- that their organization hopes to realize, these managers will have to grasp a number of elusive success factors. This challenge is the subject of our discussion here.