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Steady as we go: keep heads cool

Coming out of a recession is rather like emerging from a ten mile stretch of road works on the motorway; you just want to make up the time that has been lost. But there are risks: you might focus so much on the objective of making up for lost time that you forget to concentrate enough on speed, navigation, engine management or the people with whom you are sharing the road and who also need to make up lost time.

Certainly, BSkyB won’t be hurrying into any contracts (outsourcing or otherwise) in the future and, from the other side of the argument, nor will EDS. The historic UK High Court ruling in the broadcaster’s case against the service supplier has the potential to shake up the outsource sector in a way that it hasn’t experienced before. Similarly, the firms who are guilty of having cut investment in IT during the recession (as identified in the BT Global Services survey) now seek to make up for lost time by rushing towards emerging ideas such as the Cloud. But unless they deploy the same proper care that should always be applied, they may end up with a system and a risk not entirely to their liking.

This will be particularly true of what has all the hallmarks of an outsourcing bonanza – the apportionment of UK public sector work. But, again, service providers need to be wary of what might appear to be ‘free money’. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. In fact, it may be that the best outsourcing opportunities in the future are those coming this way from what we have previously and rather patronisingly referred to as the emerging economies.

The watchwords must be that, even emerging from a recession, business is still business and the usual standards and protocols must continue to hold good. Otherwise we risk piling up the problems that will create the next recession or being bypassed as, by hook or by crook, the global economy passes into other hands.
© Copyright EMP Media 2006

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