I was recently scanning through the Offshore Futures report by consultancy Alsbridge. It was published about a month ago, and I saw I had been quoted in there, but given that I have lunch with the author on Friday I thought I should give it a closer inspection.

One thing that jumped out at me relates to human resources. Many in the industry have argued for a long time that partnering with companies demands a different skill set to procurement and purchasing. For long-term outsourcing to work, suppliers need to be included within the supply chain – and therefore to share in the success when the operation is working well.

The author of the report, Paul Morrison, states: “Outsourcing specialists would be a career evolution for procurement professionals, technical specialists and industry experts. A successful function is multi-disciplinary. A big core will come from IT and procurement because they are natural starting points.”

I agree with Paul, but I have not seen a lot of firms really specify this kind of multi-discipline approach in their hiring – it’s just the same old “have you got some experience of outsourcing?” I’d be interested to see just how this develops over the next few years. Perhaps those of us with a good combination of technical, industry, and communication skills might have a bright future after all?