I attended the UK premiere of John Jeffcoat’s movie ‘Outsourced’ at the Soho hotel screening room in London last night. I was fortunate enough to be introducing the film as I started the ball rolling and created the possibility of arranging the screening in the first place.

It all started a couple of years ago when I saw this video on youtube. I liked the fact that someone had turned a current affairs story into a human-interest story – an actual movie that would interest people beyond the business community. I started using the video in some of the MBA classes I teach, as an example of business strategies crossing into general consciousness. One day I just thought I would contact the person who uploaded the video – out of interest. I was surprised to soon receive an email from the director (and writer) John Jeffcoat!

I then had some chats with John about the movie and how we might arrange a London screening. I started trying to put it together as an event that the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) could host. What I found though was that all the companies I approached for funds (to pay for the cinema, drinks etc) were all a bit scared of the subject matter. The film has some amusing sections, comic situations involving cultural misunderstandings and many of the companies I spoke too just shied away from associating themselves with comedy when the press is often accusing them of stealing jobs from the UK and sending them to India.

Eventually the NOA board even rejected me. Not that they didn’t like it – we had a private screening on DVD and the board liked it, but they were wary of using membership funds on an event that was ‘fun’ rather than educational or research driven.

However, the NOA provided a sponsor in the end. Buffalo is the marketing and communications agency that works for the NOA. I had an offer of some cash from the law firm Olswang, but it was not enough to completely cover all the costs. Buffalo stepped in and said they would match Olswang and cover any additional costs so the event could happen!

So… Buffalo did a lot of work and organised a great event at the Soho hotel screening room. There were drinks, and a really nice screening in a great theatre. What was really nice was that I managed to get hold of the actress Ayesha Dharker via John Jeffcoat – i was communicating with him the day before the screening on Facebook and he sent some text messages from the USA to the actors from the movie. She was in London and managed to change her diary for the day so she could come to the screening and also do a Q&A after the movie finished. You can see some video from the Q&A session here…

If you haven’t seen this film then I’d recommend trying to obtain a DVD copy. Yes, it’s a love story, but a friend of mine described it as a cross between Local Hero and Slumdog Millionaire. That’s not a bad description of the film – and it’s about outsourcing too.

A supplier asked me recently if I could provide them with information about which CIOs are ‘thinking’ about outsourcing, so they might have some advance warning and they can pitch for business earlier.

It struck me as a strange thing to ask. CIOs don’t just randomly share their thoughts about what areas of the business might be outsourced, and even where they might be considering an outsourcing programme it is likely they will keep it very silent. Even their own staff won’t hear about it until the strategy has been decided, because rumours and discussions about plans that are undecided could cause chaos in most companies. And I might add, that where a CIO has asked me for some opinions in confidence, I’m hardly going to repay that trust by ringing up a few suppliers with the news.

So I get tired of seeing supposedly respected news sources, like the India Times, running stories like this. If UBS wanted to go on the record and talk about their plans then there would be a story. If the newspaper can’t confirm the story then why print a rumour? Unless they just want to force the UBS public relations machine into issuing a confirmation or denial? It’s no better than the mish-mash of rumours and speculation that filled the Internet when Michael Jackson died.

If the boss of UBS wants to talk to someone who understands what they are doing and can comment on their plans without resorting to rumours then it’s obvious how to reach me.

Rob Preston’s blog in InformationWeek earlier this month caught my attention recently. He recounts a recent event in New York where the CEO of HCL Technologies, Vineet Nayar, said he doesn’t hire greater numbers of American graduates because they are ‘unemployable’.

Notice the focus on ‘greater numbers’ though. HCL does employ a lot of Americans, but when he was pressed on why they are not hiring more kids straight from college Nayar explained that he just felt that the American college system is not preparing them for work in the technology industry.

We have heard similar arguments about technology or computer science courses in the UK for a long time. Commentators always argue that the universities need to include more project or programme management, more relationship-led soft skills – not just the hardcore code cutting.

What’s interesting though is that Nayar thought some other skills were missing from university curricula in the developed world. Global history and foreign languages were two areas he cited that would prepare tech workers for life in a more global industry.

I studied Computer Science and Software Engineering and my first job was with a big German tech firm, then Japanese, then French, then American… and this globalisation of services has only just begun. I think Nayar is on the right track, but what do you feel about his comments?

When I do talks about outsourcing, I often try to illustrate different points by using video or images. Let’s face it, someone talking to PowerPoint slides for an hour is about as interesting as a rail timetable, so I try to find ways to liven it up a bit.

I like using this video when reminding people that most people out there find outsourcing to be annoying, useless, or pointless.

It’s a funny little viral that has been sent all over the web in the past couple of years, but it does explain some of the issues around outsourcing in an amusing way. The useless high-priced American is replaced by an Indian, who is in turn replaced by a Chinese computer -  so it not only illustrates human call centres, but the industrialisation of customer services.

I think it’s funny and a useful way to remind managers that not everyone sees the point of their change programme. But I was talking to an MBA class a few months ago and I used this video and one of the students said it was racist and I shouldn’t be using materials like this.

Was he just a bit touchy or do you think it’s offensive?

I was wandering around the Gartner outsourcing summit in London today and I bumped into Christoph Neut, the European head of Techteam.

Techteam was founded in the US in 1980, so it has been around for a long time, but I’m not really familiar with the company. Christoph explained to me that they have been working in Europe since 1996 – which is when he joined the company.

Techteam focused on helpdesks – the poor guys and girls who get the brunt of users’ anger when their IT falls apart. But they have an interesting angle on the old helpdesk model.

Christoph explained to me: “We all know the egg timer. Microsoft uses it extensively and we all love the symbol because we need to look at it so often when waiting for applications to open. I want to use it as an analogy for business and IT though. The top of the egg timer can be considered to be the business, and the bottom is the IT organisation. The bottleneck in the middle is the relationship between then two and that is usually through a help desk.”

Christoph’s analogy is certainly true, and IT staff are forever being asked to try behaving like the business – especially in anything that advises them on their career. What Techteam seem to be offering though is a re-organisation of the way the helpdesk is structured, so the technical team is completely aligned with the business.

Christoph went on to explain: “Helpdesks are rarely staffed with the A-team. However this needs to change. You need to reposition the role of the helpdesk and to change so it moves away from just being a part of the IT organisation. Helpdesk agents often report to a helpdesk manager who reports to an infrastructure manager who reports to the CIO. It makes the helpdesk team feel like they are stuck at the bottom of the IT organisation!”

He added: “Business owners need to operate with the helpdesk, creating a combined business and IT function. This results in the neck of the egg timer widening. It can change the whole way of dealing with IT and it becomes more of a service desk approach.”

Their approach seems very interesting. I even heard a couple of the IT suppliers from India talking about the Techteam approach with some grudging respect.

When Christoph was explaining his analogy he added: “You know that TV show The IT Crowd? That’s a lesson in how NOT to run a help desk!” I tweeted that comment after the interview only to find that minutes later the writer and creator of The IT Crowd, Graham Linehan, had tweeted a message back saying: “They’re right!”

Techteam has a new fan thanks to the wonders of Twitter.

Did outsourcing cause the expenses scandal that has rocked the foundations of the Palace of Westminster in London? It’s highly likely as The Daily Telegraph managed to get hold of more than a million pieces of information related to expense claims by British parliamentarians – all in a single place and stored digitally.

According to a report in The Times last Friday it looks as if the information that was leaked was a comprehensive collection of paper documents that were scanned and were to be edited and filed – not used in their raw form.

So, could it have been a leak from the printing firm TSO, formerly Her Majesty’s Stationery Office?

If so, it makes all the other outsourced data leaks we have heard about in the past pale into insignificance. This one could end up changing the very nature of government in the UK regardless of who wins the next election.

Hat tip: Thanks to Alan Lee at London South Bank University for pointing me to this article.

I was sitting in the Dolce hotel close to Brussels last night listening to BBC Radio 5 on the iPlayer. They were broadcasting a special programme focused on South Africa because it is exactly a year until the FIFA World Cup tournament – that’s football, not cricket. The Twenty20 World Cup final is next week in London.

But one of the commentators was reducing expectations on the technology that will be possible, claiming they can’t hope to meet the exceptionally well-organised World Cup in Germany in 2006. However, I thought that FIFA had outsourced the entire technology programme to Satyam.

Ah, Satyam - again. So has the World Cup technology been affected by the collapse of this Indian giant? Maybe someone from Tech Mahindra can give me a call to let me know because there were some serious doubts on the BBC last night…

Following on from my recent blog about the public sector in the UK, I’m going to expand on the theme and explore some more public sector questions in more depth.

This time, I’m interested in how the government views the suppliers that fulfil their IT contracts. Is there a group of suppliers more ‘favoured’ than others or just more experienced at playing the public sector bidding game? And when will we start seeing more contracts going to the Indian firms that are charging into the public sector marketplace?

When I started this discussion with Wipro, they almost took offence at me suggesting they were up-and-coming, rather than seasoned. Geoff Llewellyn , Head of Public Sector Business Europe at Wipro said: “Companies like Wipro are global. It’s just a logical move to leverage what we have done elsewhere in the world and to bring those skills into the UK public sector. We think that we can bring some new thinking. There are some well-established players, but we have a lot to bring to the party.”

He added: “We have a lot of public sector experience in other markets than can be brought to the table in the UK, even if we have not had a lot of experience here. Wipro is a grizzled and experienced campaigner and has worked with many private sector companies like gas and water – where those companies were public sector until recently, so we are not on completely unfamiliar ground at all.”

Llewellyn has a point. And what’s worth noting is that most of the big Indian suppliers have plenty of staff on the UK payroll too – using an Indian company doesn’t have to mean the deal involves offshoring.

When asked if the Indian suppliers stand a fighting chance, Stuart Ford, Head of Public Sector, Europe, at HCL Technologies said: “I must think so, or I wouldn’t be with HCL. I think things have slipped the other way now. The really big suppliers are out of favour. Senior civil servants are actively looking for some new players to enter the market. If you pick all the top five players, you can find a major screw-up at every one of them. “

Tata Consultancy Services has been a high profile winner of a major government contract, the technology required to deliver the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission – a replacement for the disastrous Child Support Agency. Brian Woodford, Public Sector Director at Tata Consultancy Services said: “There is a difference between what people think about the market emotionally, versus how procurement processes create winners of different suppliers… clearly the government wants to see a wider set of suppliers and engagement is really happening – we are proof.”

The view from inside government is that most managers are tired of the small pool of suppliers who keep popping up when contracts are tendered. Mo Ali, Former Head of Procurement for e-Government Services in the Cabinet Office, said: “There is no group of favoured suppliers. It just so happens that when we go out to bid, it tends to be the same suppliers who always apply. It’s not that they are favoured, and in fact there is usually some frustration and desire to get fresh blood, but many of the other companies have a lack of understanding of the bidding process.”

But there is a tendency to avoid risk, as observed by Dr Colin Ashurst of Durham Business School: “No one ever got fired for buying IBM. That’s a part of the problem here. The system itself is complex because of the scale and so smaller suppliers cannot afford the overheads of large bids.”

Addressing the initial point about the same old faces cropping up, Alan Downey, Head of Public Sector UK at KPMG said: “It’s not favouritism. It’s more related to experience of those companies. When you are talking about offshoring then it’s a much bigger risk. Theoretically it’s not a bad thing for a company to be headquartered in India, but politically it’s very sensitive. No department wants to be on the front page of The Sun for offshoring.” Downey stressed that the reality of security in India is good, but it’s still a sensitive subject in government.

He said: “I went to India recently and looked at some of the delivery on the ground there. I found that in most cases the security was better than the UK. The people were good. The private sector has already bought into this model because they see the benefits, but the government has this additional consideration of how it looks politically. They will always be more risk averse than a bank.”

Mark Brett, Member of the Management Group (Partner, Public Sector Advisory) at PA Consulting added: “I don’t agree that there is a favoured group of suppliers. There is a small group that were very successful at winning government business, but many of them are on the wane now. It’s never been seen as a favoured body from within the government. There is a view from the inside that feels that many of these companies are better at bidding than at delivery. Some are improving delivery and some are really struggling to deliver at present. “

Andrew Warren, Head of Public Sector Practice at Vertex, mentioned the NHS and Steria joint venture – where the finance and accounts for many primary care trusts have been offshored to Steria teams in India using a joint venture scheme to return value to the NHS: “I don’t believe that there is a favoured list. I do believe that there are some companies in this country that have had a lot more experience in the public sector than others. In the big transactional departments there is a strong desire to increase the quantity and quality of private sector supply. The government departments have targets for contestability that drive them to actually widen the group of suppliers they use, so I can’t believe they really exclude anyone.”

Warren adds: “If your premise is that you are going to offshore work, then that is a totally different conversation with the state. There is the NHS joint venture with Steria, but can you name another big offshoring example? I can’t speak for IT services, but the conversations I have had with people make me believe that there is no appetite at all to commission offshoring in BPO. There is some interest in working with suppliers that use offshore services in some way, so the offshoring is indirect. So there is an interest, but no appetite to be seen offshoring to far off locations – where people are really interested in is deploying people across the UK and taking advantage of services delivered from the Highlands of Scotland for example.”

Two clear issues emerge from these comments. There is no intentional favouritism, but it is certainly confirmed that more experienced suppliers know how to bid for contracts far better than new entrants. There is an attitude within government to help and encourage new suppliers though and I personally recall a conversation I had with government CIO John Suffolk in 2008 where he suggested that he is trying to make all government contract bids entirely open – even to the extent of all document submissions – so smaller suppliers could easily learn from the submissions of the big players.

Secondly, there is no political will at all for any form of offshoring of services. It is just too sensitive to be seen offshoring government services overseas. New entrants may be coming into the market, from countries such as India, but they will compete on a level playing field using local staff – not as low-cost offshore businesses.

Here is something interested that happened to me today. Someone added me to their phone book on Skype. I wasn’t sure who the person was – other than the name meant it was obviously a tech firm – so I said hello on chat. It turned out to be a firm called GKS Technologies in India.

First, it’s a big surprise to me that anyone would just randomly trawl Skype looking for potential customers to call in locations that just might have some business – will they call everyone in London looking for some IT work? Then, wouldn’t the process of using unsolicited Skype calls like this alienate anyone who might even potentially give them some business? By switching to chat, it also highlighted some pretty dreadful presentation skills on their part.

You can guess what I think of GKS Technologies, but just so you can see what happened, here is the conversation:

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
hello
hello?
you just added me

GKS Technologies
hi

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
hello

GKS Technologies
hi mark
This Is Neha from Mumbai/India

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
hello

GKS Technologies
This is Neha

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
Hello Neha, what can I do?

GKS Technologies
Mark, we offer cost effective web site and software solutions from India, and was wondering if you may be interested in outsourcing your web /software development services to us
are you interested?

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
I'm not sure where you got my details or who you think I am - have you looked at my web site?

GKS Technologies
It’s just an random search performed on Skype

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
Based on what criteria - being in London? I'm just wondering how you found me - you added me to your Skype address book earlier. Was that because I am in the UK?

So, at this point Neha stopped talking to me. Then another Skype user picks up where she left off:

Software & Web Developing Company Based In India
Hi Mark

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
Hello

Software & Web Developing Company Based In India
This is Gulab Nihalani here

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
Hello Gulab

Software & Web Developing Company Based In India
Earlier Neha have had a chat with you on Skype

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
I saw that yes

Software & Web Developing Company Based In India
Mark just to clarify it was purely a random search performed on Skype

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
That's fine. I am just interested in how you found me though if it was random - you mean based on my location then?

Software & Web Developing Company Based In India
Yes, am sorry if you have been disturbed

I had a meeting this morning with a group of consultants who are trying their best to come up with a way of selling advice on services, without it sounding like outsourcing. Their dilemma is real, because if you break up the value chain within a company, only a small section of it is related to outsourcing at present, but we were having a discussion about how they might create a grand unified theory of services.

One of them even declared that the IT outsourcing supplier community, as we currently know them, will eventually die off – they are too general and try to be all things to all men.

I’d have to say I certainly agree with that. I’m about to enjoy a beer in the English sun with Dr Richard Sykes, co-author of my book ‘Global Services: Moving to a Level Playing Field’. When we wrote that book two years ago, we predicted that suppliers would have to specialise, they would have to know as much about a business area as their clients do. If they can’t offer that expertise, then what else are they going to offer? IT skills.

Hmmm, how hard is it for me to source commoditised IT skills? The supplier community had better wake up because the contents of that book are becoming even truer today, as companies are demanding better ideas from their suppliers – just to survive.