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.

Last Friday, I was speaking at an ESRC event focused on career migration at Loughborough University. My talk was focused on connecting the discipline associated with outsourcing and the fluidity of the retained organisation in a globally connected world. I stressed a number of points that extended the reach of outsourcing as a business practice into the realm of P2P (peer to peer) systems, social networks, and the open source movement – with a thread connecting them all and describing how work itself will change because of the way we are engaging socially with other people using the internet.

I was really interested in a lecture by Dr MN Ravishankar (Ravi) from RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. Ravi was focused on the discourse of innovation and how valuable that is in career progression – his research was undertaken with Professor Laurie Cohen from Loughborough. In short, if employees pretend they are innovative, excited, and wired, then they do better than those who don’t or those who reject the ‘game’ of pretending that they believe in being innovative. As you can imagine, his research findings were full of humorous observations – people finding that the more often they use the word ‘innovation’ in front of their boss, the faster they get promoted. But there was of course a serious side to it – employees managing to maintain some dual sense of belief in knowing what they need to do to succeed, but not really believing in it.

Though Ravi’s talk was grounded in the academic theories of mimicry he really gave a lot of examples from the coalface of an IT services company in India that were fascinating and demonstrated something that many of us in the industry know all too well – that we use too much jargon and arcane language in the IT and outsourcing world.

I’m sure everyone has tried playing ‘buzzword bingo’ before – the game where you bring a list of clichéd management phrases into a meeting and tick them off as these tired phrases are trotted out by the boss. What was really interesting about Ravi’s research though was that he has studied how and why Indian tech companies try to reduce their sense of “Indian-ness” in the market. How employees in the tech sector mimic clients, copying their accent, dress sense, and jargon in speech, and also how most of these employees think that the idea of them ‘innovating’ when the client is specifying exactly what they should do is fanciful – to say the least.

It’s really interesting stuff, particular the idea of outsourcing supplier staff living in this duality of pretending to be innovative, but knowing that it is impossible.

I often type ‘outsourcing’ into Google to see what comes up. Obviously Google News is a useful tool, but it’s interesting to also see the organic search results too.

Usually the Wikipedia entry for outsourcing and the National Outsourcing Association come top of the list, but I was surprised today to see that the second entry (after Wikipedia) is the UK government’s Business Link service.

Business Link is a national advisory service that offers practical information and help to UK companies, typically smaller or medium-sized enterprises, and I’ve never noticed much in the way of outsourcing advice from them in the past. However, there is now a useful introduction to the subject developed by Cranfield School of Management published on its web site.

Smaller firms are going to need to understand strategic sourcing strategies even more than ever in the present market conditions so anything Business Link can do to get that message across is welcome.

What does the recent scandal at Indian technology giant Satyam teach us about the nature of 21st century business?

First, that old-fashioned trust is still at the heart of any business-to-business relationship. Buying a service from a supplier is not just a procurement exercise in beating a company down to its lowest possible price. Does anyone remember the old Japanese theories of looking after and nurturing your suppliers from back in business school?

Second, the increased use of outsourcing has blurred the edge of the traditional organisation. Academics have talked about virtual organisations for a long time, but here they are in the news every day. There are companies that would be in real trouble if a supplier such as Satyam goes to the wall – because the supplier is such a critical part of the supply chain that they are effectively a part of the client organisation.

And third, the old-school Indian habit of management cronyism has to be addressed if Indian firms are to integrate themselves further into foreign customers. However, this is not just an Indian problem. Boards are stuffed full of friends in many places, including cultures closer to home, such as France. However, we are involved in the hi-tech future of industry so the hi-tech leaders need to work hardest.

Let’s behave like it’s the 21st century and reintroduce some transparency and trust into some of these corporate relationships.

As expected, there has been a lot of talk about the massive fraud perpetrated at Satyam, and the business press has already started using “India’s Enron” as shorthand for the scale of the disaster.

Salil Tripathi, writing in the Wall Street Journal, seems to have detailed the impact of the scandal more eloquently that most other commentators. In particular, Tripathi draws attention to the question most industry watchers are thinking about, but are too scared to ask: Is the “outsourcing to India” bubble about to burst?

As I looked around the internet for more information on the scandal, I stumbled across an article on the Gerson Lehrman Group Expert Network site. Author Paul Massie says: “The revelation of such massive fraud in a company that has been public since 1991 and was considered one of the three or four top Indian outsourcing companies is inevitably going to raise questions about all the other Indian outsourcing companies.  Clients and potential clients are going to be asking the question: ‘If this could happen at Satyam, why not at Wipro/Infosys/TCS/Cognizant?’”

Why not indeed? It’s what Tripathi is concerned about. And after all, PricewaterhouseCoopers audited the books at Satyam – a name known and trusted across the world, in the same way Arthur Andersen was known and respected prior to the Enron collapse.

But the dust has yet to settle on the Satyam scandal. We are commenting on a moving target, as the forensic accountants will need to examine what has been a systematic fraud of accounting overstatement over several years. I tend to feel that this issue is confined to Satyam. I can’t imagine that every other hi-tech Indian company has been mis-stating its margin and revenue in the same way as this one company.

So I don’t feel the Gerson Lehrman comment is really valid or fair. The entire industry won’t collapse because of this fraud. Satyam will collapse for sure, but other players within the industry will absorb their clients – possibly delivering the service from India. But just imagine the nightmare for the service industry in India if another Satyam is found in 2009.

A lot of people and companies still consider social networking tools such as Facebook to be a frivolous waste of time. Yet, work consists of more networking and communication than ever before. The tools are merely reflecting the way we work today, and are becoming an essential part of the working day.

I mention this because there was an interesting post on the discussion board of the Outsourcing Experts Group in Facebook yesterday. Preet Chandhoke, a director of software development firm 01Synergy, posted up his views on the five regions to watch for offshoring in 2009:

• Argentina
• Bulgaria
• China
• Egypt
• Philippines

Preet highlighted his thoughts on the pros and cons of each location and I tend to agree with his views. But one factor I expect to become more important in the coming year is political stability – something Preet mentions with regard to both Egypt and the Philippines.

International terrorism and civil disputes are going to be considered a greater risk than before in the present climate, leading to a greater willingness to explore different options, where before it might have been a straightforward decision to go offshore. Those options might even include getting the work done in your home country by using a smaller company, or just going for a nearshore option. There is a definite increase in unease at having critical components of the supply chain halfway across the world right now.

I received an email this week from a friend of mine that gives some eye-watering figures.

Just over a year ago Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) paid $100bn for ABN Amro – 80 per cent in cash. For this amount, RBS could today buy:

• Citibank for $22.5bn;
• Morgan Stanley $10.5bn;
• Goldman Sachs $21.0bn;
• Merrill Lynch $12.3bn;
• Deutsche Bank $13.0bn;
• Barclays $12.7bn;
• And still have $8bn change

I haven’t checked these numbers, but the fact is that in the current climate it is entirely believable. It also reminds me of a recent message on the blog of US documentary-maker Michael Moore, hardly known as a friend to big business, but certainly an astute commentator.

The US auto-giants GM, Ford, and Chrysler are all haemorrhaging cash and now going cap-in-hand to the US government for a $34bn bailout. Moore pointed out that all common stock in GM could be purchased for around $3bn. So, we could save the government a load of money by just supporting earlier intervention and then supporting a massive wave of innovation in transport – a Marshall plan for the auto industry. Why bail them out with more cash when the current bosses will just deliver more of the same?

Joseph Schumpeter popularised the term “creative destruction” in which companies or industries would naturally die, to be replaced by the newer and stronger. It seems we are now witnessing Schumpeter’s vision on a daily basis.

All is well. President Barack Obama is now going to reward his kids with a new puppy for their support. I want to know if that means we are going to be treated to a new series of dog cams, in the same spirit as the “Barney cam” videos produced by President Bush. Perhaps the instigation of this video series was his finest moment in the White House? I don’t need to be impartial here. The sooner Bush is on the conference circuit earning big bucks for speeches about fireside chats with Tony, the better.

But what everyone around the world wants to know is how far President Obama will go towards fulfilling his campaign pledge to restrict offshore outsourcing. He promised a restriction on outsourcing, but was it just electioneering or a serious threat to all those suppliers in India, the Philippines, China and other fast-developing regions?

It’s obviously difficult to rein in international business. What can President Obama do to prevent Microsoft developing software all over the world, including in hi-tech Indian delivery centres? And, when Microsoft argues that this global development actually results in the healthy operation of a US company, can he seriously tell the corporation to retrench and retreat to behind the US border? Then, once Steve Ballmer is dealt with, how about the thousands of other American companies that operate globally?

Nasscom, the software and services trade association in India, is playing down the threat. They believe that Obama will focus more on the domestic economy and the creation of jobs at home, rather than shutting off links to overseas locations. Of course, Nasscom might be expected to play down the danger, but its member companies are continuing to see healthy double-digit revenue growth in a business environment where many company executives are only considering which ledge to leap off.

I don’t think Obama will threaten the offshore outsourcing industry, but not because he is not going to fulfil his pledge. I think he will examine the legal and tax framework around service transfers, but I think it is a long way down the agenda and not something that will even be reviewed for a couple of years.

Don’t forget, he made an even bigger pledge to pull US troops out of Iraq. These big-ticket foreign policy pledges and the crashing economy are far more pressing than the effect of offshoring on US jobs – which is actual terms is tiny compared to the effect of economic uncertainty on jobs.

But who knows what he will pull out of the hat in the New Year? Let’s enjoy the festive season and hope that the new US president ushers in a new confidence for 2009. Or in Star Wars parlance, a New Hope.

I’ve been talking to a lot of people recently about the issues in the banking market. Regardless of the problems faced by individual companies, the entire banking sector appears to be in paralysis because of the unwillingness of one bank to loan money to another. Who knows where this will lead us, but the uncertainty could change company strategy regarding outsourcing in many other markets.

Stan Lepeak, managing director of research at Equaterra, talked to me about knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). In his opinion there are two sides to the story: “In the short term there will be a negative effect on KPO. There is so much disruption going on in this industry, but in the longer term it is likely that more work will be generated. We are now looking fundamentally at how business is done and so the banks will be exploring the use of more third parties, more use of captives, and the rationalisation of disparate IT systems,” he said.

So that sounds positive for the KPO market in general, but Stan warned that a lot of companies are also going through a supplier rationalisation process. That’s basically a clear out and simplification of the number of companies offering services, so the contracts get larger, but for fewer suppliers.

When I spoke to Cyrill Elschinger, chief executive of Softtek in China, he had a similar view to Stan: “The current economic downtown is going to slow down or reduce the usual forecasts for outsourcing as a whole, but it is a formidable opportunity for China. This crunch time where companies are under massive pressure to keep operating while becoming more efficient and effective is going to force them back to the drawing board to look at new ideas for how to still function and reduce expense.”

Cyrill was also scathing about India, which he believes cannot supply the people for the work being demanded there. “I expect and anticipate that a lot of work will be shuffled into the China market as a result of this economic downturn. Indian vendors are becoming increasingly costly and people are really complaining about their performance,” he said.

On another note away from the credit crunch, but still related to China, I spoke recently to Dr Kevin Fickenscher of Perot Systems. Kevin runs Perot’s healthcare practice and when we got on to the topic of China he had something really interesting to say.

“If you go to places like India and China for example, they are now leapfrogging a lot of the healthcare technology we have been used to in places like the US and Europe. It’s just like the mobile telephone industry that has found the strongest service penetration in places that never had a strong telephone infrastructure using copper wire. It’s likely that we are going to find a lot of new healthcare technologies being trialled and exported back to us from places like India and China because they are the most innovative environments,” he said.

It’s nice to capture some of these executive thoughts in this blog. At least we can all feel confident that if the banking market collapses in Europe, there is probably a job waiting in China.

How many IT projects do you hear about that are really life-changing? How many IT projects have the potential to really improve the life of more than a billion people? And, how many projects like this were started by one individual putting his hand in his pocket to inject some personal cash into an idea he had while walking down Piccadilly and observing British ambulances tearing up the road to the next RTC (road traffic collision – I knew all those episodes of Casualty on the BBC iPlayer would come in useful eventually)?

Ramalinga Raju, the founder and chairman of Satyam, was the man walking along the street near to the Ritz hotel in London a couple of years ago when those ambulances went by. He wondered out loud to some of his colleagues why there was no centrally coordinated emergency service in India that could get an ambulance to a person in need within minutes.

Instead of just wondering, he put £1.5m of his own cash into a personal side project, creating a call response unit and equipping ambulances with the kit they might need for 50 or so common emergencies, including pregnancy and snake bites. From this initial programme came what is now the EMRI - Emergency Management and Research Institute.

Today, this is a free service delivered through hi-tech emergency call response centres with over 785 ambulances across the Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Uttarakhand states in India. With the projected expansion of fleet and services set to spread across more states, EMRI will have more than 10,000 ambulances by 2010. That’s a national ambulance service covering a population of more than a billion and all created within just a few years. Satyam proved what can be done with technology and now the government is coming on board to fund the expansion.

I just had a conversation this morning with Som Sarma, the European vice president of Satyam about how this project started, why it is important for Satyam and India, and how they might use this expertise in future. You can hear an audio podcast of that conversation by going to the iTunes podcast directory and searching for ‘Talking Outsourcing’ or by clicking here to play it back from the web.