At the 2011 Gartner summit in London, analyst Helen Huntley provided insight into how managed IT services and IT outsourcing will respond to globalization, weakened global economies, a new generation in the workforce and other IT trends in the coming years. Forward-thinking IT outsourcing companies should take note of the predicted trends and begin to make preparations or risk getting left in the dust of what is now considered one of the latest cutthroat industries.
Globalization
Globalization has broken down barriers and opened the world up to a multitude of information technology outsourcing choices. Consequently, Huntley warns chief financial officers of new risks. You are going to find more international IT outsourcing companies, particularly in North Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Now that international outsourcing is less taboo, newer managed IT services may piggyback on the reputation current IT outsourcing companies worked hard to earn, but may not deliver the same quality of services, particularly to larger companies. With the predicted surge of managed IT services and new business relationships, business owners will highly benefit from assessing the risks associated with younger IT outsourcing companies.
Eco-Friendly Managed IT Services
Inches-thick manuals are out, and sleek tablet computers are in. In an effort to reduce the amount of paper used and leave less of a carbon footprint, more companies will look to information technology outsourcing services to help them become paperless. For example, instead of providing pilots with flight manuals that are more than 1,000 pages long, they may receive the same information in the form of a slim tablet with a touch screen. Moreover, IT outsourcing companies will assist with this endeavor by electronically updating such information via the internet, making collections of old manuals that accumulate dust a thing of the past.
Customer Service and Interactions
Information technology outsourcing, according to Huntley, will continue to affect and change the manner in which businesses interact with and serve customers. In addition to communicating via fax machines, email and telephones, IT outsourcing services can help businesses connect with customers through social networks, web chats that are more reliable, and user-friendly video conferencing technologies.
Benefiting from Economic Woes
Global economic hardships contributed to the surge of managed IT services. Because it may be less expensive to contract with IT outsourcing companies than hire new employees, businesses have had to change their business models and the manner in which they provide services in order to pinch pennies and pass the savings on to customers. Huntley predicts that up to 20 percent of companies will no longer have IT specialists on their payrolls in 2012.
Pleasing Generation Y
The Generation Y crowd, those born between 1982 and 2000, are the newest members of the workforce in 2011. With easy access to technological advances at their fingertips, businesses that want to grow may want to consider using IT outsourcing companies to keep Generation Y customers intrigued and satisfied, because as much as one-third of consumers and workers have grown up with Internet technologies. Internet technology outsourcing companies can help businesses interact with employees and customers through different forms of cloud technologies, mobile communications and business analytics.
Cloud Strategies
In the upcoming years, omitting a cloud strategy from a software business proposal is like committing suicide. With the amount of data companies need to transfer reliably, IT outsourcing companies will experience the need to increase staff that specializes in cloud computing and related IT technologies.
Externalization
Managed IT services are going to have to incorporate the practice of anticipating client needs into their customer service routines. This aspect of service management will shift the focus from what IT outsourcing companies do for their clients to how they complete such tasks.
The world of IT outsourcing is always evolving, and the changes are not likely to slow down any time soon. Keeping on top of the latest trends and keeping current with those that are predicted can help an IT outsourcing company stay ahead of the competition.
[ Photo by: Frogman!, on Flickr, via CC License ]
