Why did your outsourced IT fall over? Cos you weren't on Twitter The days of signing off an IT contract then kicking back and scoffing peanuts for the next three years are over. Executives will have to constantly monitor their outsourcers - even if it means using social networks - if they want to get value for money, according to Gartner analysts in a startling report for 2013. Companies …
Exactly my thoughts when I read this. Anyone who thinks outsourcing the work means you no longer have to check what is happening should have been out on their ear a very long time ago.
This is normally the sort of mindless mess you get as an advert for some 'solution looking for a problem' but in this case they don't even seem to be selling anything. They certainly are not selling themselves very well.
Anyone who thinks outsourcing the work means you no longer have to check what is happening should have been out on their ear a very long time ago.
Nonsense, outsourcing is efficent and works very well, just ask any big financial institution, like RBS.
Oh! Hang on....
Some of us UK good ol''boys worked in a Euro company outsourcing in RBS.
That was a total clusterf*ck. Locked into overall sourcing contract to reduce IT revenue every year.
Of course the main costs were staff, being IT.... but still, you'd have thought, being a bank, they could have made sure we didn't get paid 7 weeks or more late on a regular basis, nearly to the point of rioting?
Strange how those same pay procedures worked perfectly well in other non-bank businsses.
And always surprising to see how many of the tech staff had been personally bankrupted. I mean, for real.
And that's on top of all the scalpers wanting their paws on our pay before we got it.
Pure, classic outsourcing.
You do know they get paid lots of money for this kind of shit? Although I think that they may have a bit of trouble charging for this particular kind of bollocks.
Anyway, The Economist reckons that outsourcing is, er, on the way out. Well, not entirely, it's more nuanced than that but worth more of a glance than Gartner's turd.
We were on a funding search once & I was told to go to Gartner to find reports that backed up our statements, any statements.
They have reports on absolutely everything, you tell them what you need to show and they tell you which of their report(s) you need to purchase. Gartner is only good if you have an agenda. They are as far away from scientific reporting as possible.
The Nexus of Forces sounds like the destination in a science fiction cartoon that I would've watched as a child. Or a spacehsip, for that matter.
And as for "driving real business value": getting workers far away in unpleasant conditions to do exactly what you want them to do, despite the fact that you oftentimes ask the impossible from them.
What you're supposed to do is friend your outsource guy on Facebook, and then when you see him post a bunch of photos titled "Me and the family at Bhandardara Lake", you can send him a nasty message saying that he was supposed to be writing you a new inventory program that week and what the hell was he doing away from the office???!!!!
"Executives will have to constantly monitor their outsourcers - even if it means using social networks - if they want to get value for money, according to Gartner analysts in a startling report for 2013.".
Now, I'm no expert mind you but when a customer asks me to do 'A', which I then estimate to get completed in 2 months, then how on earth is using social media or whatever other monitoring going to do increase the value of my work ? You'll know for sure if you got value for your money after those 2 months.
So if you want / need more value for your money then why not start with making better agreements ?
Or maybe actually doing a better job; because if you're losing money whenever $contractor doesn't perform then you're a dumbass who should have setup a much better bargain. Can't say I have much experience on this front, but two times my company also worked on a job where we agreed that if we couldn't meet the schedule the customer wouldn't have to pay the full price (was kind of a high profile job, pretty cool).
Said customer could have looked at twitter and facebook all day long, but that sure as heck wouldn't have changed zip about the agreement nor the way we did our work.
I get the feeling that someone is creating the perfect excuse here for a lot of people who will now spend most of their day wasting time on social media, while they should be doing their job. Oh well; maybe those guys can now blame it all on Gartner ;-)
Chris3
One of the supposed benefits of outsourcing is that you aren't supposed to care about that sort of thing anymore, you are paying a company to do something for you, the actual individuals involved should be irrelevant as long as the skills are there. Succession planning should be their problem, not yours.
If you have to constantly check up, and mange staff, you might as well hire someone directly and do it yourself.
"Said customer could have looked at twitter and facebook all day long, but that sure as heck wouldn't have changed zip about the agreement nor the way we did our work."
Well - Gartner have a point.
Did you not realise most companies tweet 'Slacking off nowz LOL!!!!' and a few tasteful sepia Instagrammed photos of their tech tiger teams quaffing at Hooters when they're not maximising shareholder value for you to its most maximised extent?
Good lord, what a cesspit of buzzwordy twaddle. Your Indian outsourcers aren't going to get any more diligent or intelligent just because you follow them on twitter or friend them on teh faceboek. You're going to have to be on the phone screaming at them every day in order to get the basic services you're paying for, as per usual.
Is this a contest of who makes the presentation most devoid of content and crams as many cliparts to a page as possible?
What do the gears even represent? How the hell are two completely different domains -- sourcing and monitoring -- supposed to drive one another???
Or is it just a classroom project of one of the execs' children?
Aren't there awards for this kind of thing?
What I like is this inversion of the original social media paradigm where bosses were supposed to make themselves appear more human by writing blogs, etc. Now they are supposed to keep in touch with the drones using it.
I predict harder times for Gartner.
...the problem is that too many people spend too much time on social media channels telling people how great a job they are doing rather than focusing on doing the bloody job itself.
Worker: boss, we're two months over-run and three million in the red.
Pointy headed boss: Nonense. The project must be a great success. Our contractors have said so on Twitter.
FFS Who's paying Gartner for this rubbish?
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what was the question again????
i shudder everytime i see or hear 'gartner', nervous ticks and pathetic giggles start to erupt!! but oh, wait, gartner predicted it so it will happen!!
and do gartner outsource? i think not! do google?? amazon? ha!! no, we just pay to use their spare hardware and cry when it goes down or data is 'lost' because we didnt back it up onto the cloud.. er.. oops, they ARE the could....
how exactly does twitter help me?
Good in parts and awful in others.
The first part fo the article is absolutely correct, far to many outsourcing customers sign the contract sit on their backsides and whinge because the supplier isn't making their mid morning tea like the IT staff did in the old days.
There is a need for outsourcing customers to actually read the contract and do what it says, all those minor things like providing the standards that everyone is supposed to work to, doing the work that is their responsibility, attending review meetings, etc. They also need to recognise where the contract is crap and get their sourcers to update their materials so that the next contract is better. Far to many sourcers never talk to the business and focus on their pet issues which don't help the business but do fit in to current legal fads.
And doing all the above means people talking to each other and lot of that needs to be done face to face. Social media can be used, where it is an internal social media system, to communciate between customer and supplier but believe me outsourcing is far more about relationships than it is about poking each other on Facebook (does anyone do that anymore) or trying to compose a nice 142 character comment that will get a laugh on Twitter.
Oh and not all outsourcing is done from India a fair amount is still done within the UK by UK staff and they don't want people giving them crap on Twitter either.
> Am I the only person who think Gartner only write this to give managers an excuse to be on social media all day?
More likely, an excuse to push tablets as a management tool. Outsource your IT and get an iPad!
Without new trends, an analyst isn't needed, so Gartner needs new trends, even if it has to make them up.
Just look at that supposed info-graphic. Doe it make any sense at all? Does it convey any useful information?
All it needs is a foot note: This article is proof you should not outsource your business research. If you do, you will get useless drivel like this.
People keep referring to Twitter as a Social Network. This is incorrect.
Twitter is a glorified replacement for RSS feeds. It can be very useful for this but it is no more social networking than podcasting is. (Yes I know that is RSS plus attachments but the statement still stands).
We have a number of social networks including FaceBook, Google+, Myspace and even Orkut but Twitter is just a very highly hyped communications tool. It may even be the right tool for keeping track of your contractor.That doesn't mean that it is a social network.
Why, oh why, have people STILL not just written in standards of failure into contracts? Is it illegal, or something?
You outsource a task, project or task at a price for a product and/or service. So why can't people just write into contracts the terms by which people have failed to deliver?
Rather than wasting your time and money, money and time, pissing about trying to catch out your contractor on one of the many social networks (and remember there are some favoured social networks in other countries that we barely touch or hear about here) why not just pay for a job and not pay for a failed job?
Hey Gartner people, we don't do that, we actually have an "attention span". And a *trade*.
Additionally,
-We don't buy much Apple but we loved *playing* with it. It was real purty too.
-Latte means milky coffee. You can make your own, with commonly available kitchen equipment, probably buy a pound weight of beans for that. You might have to slum it and buy some fresh vacuum-sealed stuff in what's known as a "supermarket". Save some for later, and don't chew them.
-Likewise cupcakes, 3-yr old relatives can make 'em for nearly nothing. Then you can eat theirs and run away.
-It was hovering at -15 deg C here daytime and the river is totally frozen, people buy 3ft drills in the tackle shops to go fishing. But temperatures *will* rise, otherwise we can't dig the garden. I taught my daughter to say "fat bitch car" when she sees say, a hybrid SUV. Family cars used to be less than 1300kg and 100hp? apparently they had some idea about "efficient design".
-Organic, ahh, what can I say. Sorry about that. You know how it is. In your heart.
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