With the pending shortfall and inevitable fact that more and more companies will need to outsource their IT and Finance functions, it’s important to take a look into what is really driving change in digital transformation. The current statistics show that by 2020, the U.K. alone will have a shortfall of 800,000 tech workers and at the same time, 80% of companies will rely on contingent workers.
The offshore model is no longer sufficient because software development needs to be executed in real-time and at top quality, which means the notion of culture comes into play. Many CIO’s now claim that successful digital transformation initiatives must be accompanied by culture changes, so what should companies do to ensure that they are outsourcing not only business requirements but also their culture?
IT directors and CIOs know that culture can speed up digital transformation through smart technology choices, which ultimately aligns technology design processes to form and mold the required work behavior patterns. It has recently been quoted that by 2021, 80% of midsize to large enterprises will change their culture in order to speed up and accelerate their digital strategy initiatives. Gartner, Inc. predicts that by 2021, CIOs will be as responsible for culture change as chief HR officers.
With huge changes happening in business, it is critical to adopt a proactive approach to look at how culture can speed up digital transformation strategies. Working with HR is critical as CIO’s will have a huge part to play in driving change and adoption. Organisations need better decisions made quickly and accurately at the front end. Front end teams need to be made up of diverse and multi-skilled professionals that take responsibility and accountability. This is a problem if you outsource to an offshore company as the culture barrier is an issue. Poland is a very popular outsource destination as culturally there is very little difference between Poland, the U.S. and other European countries. In addition, Poland offers a stable and healthy economy, a highly skilled workforce, a dynamically growing IT market and U.S. and EU standards in IP protection and data security. This contrasts with China and India, which are the top outsourcing software destinations.
What is the answer?
When outsourcing IT Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) functions there are several things to think about. As IT is driving tremendous change within company culture, executives need to look at not only at outsourcing business functions but also their own culture and company DNA. This can be achieved by working with a partner that understands the importance of embracing their client’s cultural habits as this ultimately speeds up digital transformation initiatives. Company execs need to really look at culture when outsourcing as the ramifications of not doing so can be very damaging to their longer term business objectives for growth. Not only do companies need to look at retaining their top talent, they need to future-proof their business by partnering with next generation outsource thinkers that recognize and get the importance of embedding company culture from day one. With the rapidly changing lT landscape and technology shifts, there is little room for error. Companies need to think ahead of the game and put their culture at the forefront when considering outsourcing any ITO or BPO function to a third party.
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