Impact of IT Outsourcing Trends on IT Professionals: Career Guidelines

There are a growing number of business forces having a material impact on the career of the IT professionals. Notably two of them relate to outsourcing. These are: 1) Increasing outsourcing of business- and IT-related services of all types, and 2) Continuing rising interest in global sourcing especially for development and maintenance activities of IT solutions. The IT outsourcing is moving offshore in a big way. A significant number of CIOs are actively investigating or pursuing offshore outsourcing for 3 main reasons: 1) Cost savings, 2) Accessing to specific skills, and 3) A general belief that internal staff cannot be trained quickly enough to meet constantly changing needs of customers and at the same time not effective in new skills.
The major implication of this worrying trend is that offshore markets will become the primary source for skills in legacy applications, emerging technologies and web services. The business forces and the outsourcing trends are challenging IT professionals in many skills areas and areas of untapped knowledge. IT professionals who maintain a static technical and business mindset will face medium- to long-term risk. Whether they work for end-user enterprises, IT service providers or IT vendors, their professional differentiation will come from understanding customer demands, tapping into critical business processes, identifying industry behaviours, designing effective services and products, and last but not least, integrating information. So, how should IT professionals develop their careers and build professionalism in the face of ever changing global IT needs?
The following are but guidelines to help IT professionals face the on-going challenges of keeping themselves relevant and current to the industry at large: 1) Deliver professional and impact-full value personally that leaves its marks in the minds of the customers. IT professionals should interact personally with business sponsors and look for opportunity to add value in both the business and the technology domains. Value delivered personally and professionally creates long lasting positive impression for the customers. IT professionals should continuously strengthen their skills in communication and business case development. 2) Refocus on roles and knowledge that the organizations they work for would want to retain. The changing roles of the IS organizations from one of internally managed services to depending largely on external expertise means that IT professionals must re-look into their personal contributions especially in the areas of IT leadership, information management, vendor and contract management, business process integration, strategic planning, enterprise architecture and solution design. 3) Be ready to face new business initiatives and the challenges of those initiatives. Organizations will need new business initiatives progressively to compete in the global arenas. IT professionals must be able to face those initiatives squarely by adding values second only to none. The values that these professionals can add will mean that they will be deployed with each new initiative and thus maintain and grow their positions within the organizations. 4) Be prepared for cross discipline opportunities and responsibilities. IT professionals should seek knowledge breath across different disciplines and other industry domains. They should look towards championing new technologies, developing new relationships across different internal departments as well as external partners, initiating workplace communities, joining professional associations, designing new roles and enrolling in further formal education. 5) Serve as the business evangelists for the organizations they work for. Organizations are beginning to seek astute business-IT people to shape, strengthen, navigate and manage relationships between business clients’ requirements and external service providers. Opportunities now focus less on just the technical skills and more on competencies and behaviours associated with negotiation, commercial mindset and service management. 6) Champion new initiatives in services, development, process improvement and measurement. Today’s IT organizations lack the foundation of structured and repeatable processes as compared to the external service providers. It suffices therefore to emphasize on the need for IT professionals to champion new measurable initiatives in services and development, and process improvement. 7) Aim to be versatile as needed. More concurrent and diversified roles within the IS organizations are expected of the IT professionals. CIOs have constantly commented that IS personnel without the drive and ability to be versatile are of little value to the organizations. IT professionals should start to synthesize business management, behavioral and technical competencies. Those with broad insight and deep process- and industry-oriented competencies will help enterprises capitalize on their investment in IT. 8) Be proactive to identify new uses of technology that will potentially rip good returns on investment. IT professionals who become more involved in identifying applications of technology beyond the discovery of technology will credibly connect IT investments to the enterprise’s mission, core business processes and the competitive spirit. 9) Actively manage one’s career. IT professionals are wholly responsible for pursuing their own opportunities. They have to watch for changes in skills and knowledge as well as changes in the marketplace. They have to build on new experiences, roles, industry perspectives, relationships and behaviours and ultimately drive their own destiny in the ever changing IT arenas.
To conclude, there is no one clear direction to take one’s career forward for the IT professionals but a combination of different adoptions of business and technology strategies. Ultimately the success of the career progression of an IT professional depends to a large extent on his or her resolve to move on with the ever changing business and technology landscapes. Tay Kheng Tiong Member, SCS Academic Chapter Director, Centre for Professional Development, Republic Polytechnic