UK IT heads have the outsourcing blues

Dissatisfied with results, but bravely persevere

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in IT Director, 14th September 2004 14:47 GMT

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A survey of British chief information officers reveals that 40 per cent are dissatisfied with their outsourcing projects and 11 per cent were "completely disillusioned" with their projects.

Despite the dissatisfaction 49 per cent of those questioned said they were looking to outsource more projects to India in the coming year. 28 per cent plan to outsource more projects to Asia and Europe. Only nine per cent were extremely happy with their outsourcing initiatives.

Despite the lack of confidence in the beneifits of outsourcing few businesses use proper metrics to measure what benefits they are getting. 42 per cent of respondents said they took a formal approach to measuring performance, 44 per cent said their approach was informal.

David Harrison, managing director of Mercury UK, said: "Although outsourcing is a compelling and inevitable trend, it is in need of closer governance and far better measurement in business terms." He said dissatisfaction from outsourcing stems from higher than expected costs, lower quality software code, poor application performance and applications which do not meet the needs of the business.

The survey was carried out by Mercury Interactive and spoke to 50 senior IT executives at UK companies. ®