One of those dirty little secrets about outsourcing has finally been challenged. The slash ‘n’ burn strategy.

Although everyone in the industry hates to admit it, the reason most executives have historically considered outsourcing is to reduce or control cost. That’s pretty much it. Yes, every IT supplier has a suite of research to indicate how the outsourcing model gives access to a global resource pool of better educated people with up to date skills and the immediacy of being able to scale up and down the resource requirement as needed. But regardless of all these strategic reasons for using outsourcing as a business model, most executives would still summarise it as a cost reduction exercise.

However, the latest research from recruitment firm Harvey Nash indicates that the theory and potential for outsourcing may finally have caught up with the reality. Three-quarters of the 650 UK-based CIOs surveyed by Harvey Nash indicate that flexibility and responsiveness are the key benefits they are looking for when outsourcing. This is a strong demonstration of outsourcing kicking away from the cut-cost approach to an access-to-experts strategy.

In fact, half of the surveyed CIOs indicated that more than ten per cent of their entire budget would be spent on IT outsourcing, so it’s becoming a serious chunk of the entire IT industry. It cannot be denied that a lot of companies explore outsourcing when they need to reduce cost, but to see a survey like this with quite a large sample of CIOs who – in the majority – are focused on flexibility rather than cost demonstrates that outsourcing is really maturing as a strategy.