From Advice to Delivery

Outsourcing is big business for the consulting industry. 2001-03 has seen a significant shift away from more traditional consulting services towards outsourcing and outsourcing-related work. Philip Geiger is a Board Director at the IT consulting firm, Xayce:

You only have to look at the number of outsourcing announcements by blue chip companies in the last few months to appreciate that the time is fast approaching when a lack of appreciation about IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) would be akin to ignoring the impact of IT in the 1960s. Clients expect their consultants to understand the many facets and implications of BPO. The upside is that this represents a significant opportunity (and one that will close as clients acquire the experience to do it themselves); the downside is that you won't be able to ignore BPO. You could get away with that for a while, but - ultimately - clients won't want to talk to you.

From the supplier point of view, the case studies in this chapter typify two distinct sectors of the outsourcing industry.