Source:www.cio.com

The current stampede toward offshore outsourcing should come as no surprise. For months now, the business press has been regurgitating claims from offshore vendors that IT work costing $100 an hour in the United States can be done for $20 an hour in Bangalore or Beijing.

If those figures sound too good to be true, that’s because they are.

In fact, such bargain-basement labor rates tell only a fraction of the story about offshore outsourcing costs. The truth is, no one saves 80 percent by shipping IT work to India or any other country. Few can say they save even half that. As just one example, United Technologies, an acknowledged leader in developing offshore best practices, is saving just over 20 percent by outsourcing to India. (For more, read “Inside Outsourcing in India,” www.cio.com/printlinks.)

That’s still substantial savings, to be sure. But it takes years of effort and a huge up-front investment. For many companies, it simply may not be worth it. “Someone working for $10,000 a year in Hyderabad can end up costing an American company four to eight times that amount,” says Hank Zupnick, CIO of GE Real Estate. Yet all too often, companies do not make the outlays required to make offshore outsourcing work. And then they are shocked when they wind up not saving a nickel.

In this article, we will explore a new TCO — the total cost of offshoring. We will uncover all the hidden costs of outsourcing—areas in which you’ll have to invest more up front than you might think, places where things such as productivity and poor processes can eat away at potential savings, and spots where, if you’re not careful, you could wind up spending just as much as you would in the U.S. of A. (For more on how to calculate your own TCO, see the worksheet “Do the Math” on this page.)

“You can’t expect day-one or even month-six gains,” Zupnick says. “You have to look at offshore outsourcing as a long-term investment with long-term payback.”
The Cost of Selecting a Vendor

With any outsourced service, the expense of selecting a service provider can cost from .2 percent to 2 percent in addition to the annual cost of the deal. In other words, if you’re sending $10 million worth of work to India, selecting a vendor could cost you anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000 each year.

These selection costs include documenting requirements, sending out RFPs and evaluating the responses, and negotiating a contract. A project leader may be working full time on this, with others chipping in, and all of this represents an opportunity cost. And then there are the legal fees. Some companies hire an outsourcing adviser for about the same cost as doing it themselves. To top it off, the entire process can take from six months to a year, depending on the nature of the relationship.

Vice President of Program Solutions and Management Ron Kifer spent several months on vendor selection before contracting with Bangalore, India-based Infosys to handle a whopping 90 percent of development and maintenance work for DHL Worldwide Express, a shipping company. “There’s a lot of money wrapped up in a contract this size, so it’s not something you take lightly or hurry with,” Kifer says. “There has to be a high degree of due diligence making sure that the [offshore] company can respond to your needs.”

Even when there is an existing tie between customer and offshore vendors, the expensive and lengthy step of vendor selection is a must-do for successful outsourcing. The chairman of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a Mumbai, India-based outsourcer, sat on the international advisory board of Textron, a manufacturing company that owns such brands as Cessna Aircraft and E-Z-GO Golf Carts, for several years. However, when David Raspallo, CIO of business unit Textron Financial, began exploring offshore outsourcing in 1999, he still spent five months doing what he calls “the usual Betty Crocker Bake-Off” with service providers Covansys, ITS, TCS and Wipro. Ultimately, he went with U.S.-based Covansys, which has three development centers in India. Selecting the vendor took 500 hours in total, involved Raspallo and three senior managers, and cost $20,000 in additional expenses.

At this stage, travel expenses enter the picture as well. A trip overseas helps CIOs get comfortable with their choice. After all, offshore vendors can send their best and brightest over for a dog and pony show, but checking out the company on its home turf provides more insight. John Dean, the CIO of Steelcase, an office furniture manufacturer, spent several thousand dollars to send one of his IT executives to Intelligroup Asia in Hyderabad, India, for a week before signing on the dotted line.

“You can read everything you want to read and ask for advice as much as you want, but you have to make it a fact-based decision,” Dean says. “So it was important to visit India to validate our thinking.”

Bottom line: Expect to spend an additional 1 percent to 10 percent on vendor selection and initial travel costs.
The Cost of Transition

The transition period is perhaps the most expensive stage of an offshore endeavor. It takes from three months to a full year to completely hand the work over to an offshore partner. If company executives aren’t aware that there will be no savings—but rather significant expenses—during this period, they are in for a nasty surprise.

Source:www.designnews.com

Experts at National Manufacturing Week today said that outsourcing of manufacturing processes continues to gain momentum, as product makers begin to turn their attention beyond China, to such countries as India and Viet Nam.

“People tell me that we’ve probably got about three years in China before their standard of living goes up,” said Richard Ligus, president of Rockford Consulting, a firm that specializes in manufacturing, distribution and supply chain strategies. “After that, they’ll probably go to India. And after that, to Viet Nam.”

Ligus joined other speakers here at a session titled “Offshore Outsourcing.”

Ligus cited U.S. Commerce Department statistics showing that import of assemblies to the United States vastly outnumbers exports, especially in printed circuit boards and motor vehicle electronics. Ninety-eight percent of circuit boards in the U.S., for example, were imported in May 2007, representing a trade imbalance of about $1.62 billion. Similarly, 79 percent of electrical and electronic vehicle assemblies were imported in May, representing a trade imbalance of about $650 million.

Speakers at the session told audience members that the cost advantages of outsourcing component assembly are largely attributable to labor costs. When all costs are considered, they said, total benefit runs between 15 percent and 45 percent. Another major advantage is that outsourcing of manufacturing and assembly of minor components enables companies to focus more effectively on their core competencies. They added that 83 percent of CEOs said they have outsourced processes, and 66 percent of those said it helped their companies be more profitable.

In a talk titled, “Strategic Outsourcing: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” Ligus also warned manufacturers that there are hidden costs to outsourcing. Those include inventory carrying costs, legal issues, theft, piracy, training, shipping losses, additional paperwork and loss of control.