Outsource culture

Bod

TTony said:

If someone thinks that paying UK minimum/living wage is expensive ... just let them find out how expensive it is when they outsource some of that work to a "lower cost" provider

We keep being told that the overall cost of the contract, which includes a whole range of IT services and not just desktop support, is providing incredible value for money.  I keep pointing out that it's the intangible costs of a poorly-run contract that negate any perceived cost saving on paper.  I'm part of the only team left that faces the end user day-to-day, and I'm being escalated and complained to constantly.  The latest re-org has removed my team as that escalation point so people are now left to scream into the abyss.

It's got to the point that my team raise so many issues that we're just seen as serial complainers, despite the end users seeing us as one of the few that can get stuff done.  I've backed right off now hand out senior managers' contact details to the irate customers.  If they faced real people, things would soon change.

Dominic

I have to deal with a lot of Insurance related claims.....
It's become a disgrace....they take money and contract not to'make a drama out of a crisis'as CU used say.......be one day late paying premium and the policy is cancelled !
They now work every possible angle to make a claim as difficult as possible that I'm sure the process is very deliberately designed to be obstructive.
Claims Management morons (outsourced )......in the case of motor claims they are just overpriced car hire companies in disguise with a vested interest in protracted claim process to maximise overprice rental
In the case of buildings claims it's become a joke level of assessors outsourcing , not responding, purposeful delay,argueing ridiculous semantics on policies .
If they were small private business' they would be investigated for breach of contract and even fraud but they get away with it.

Offset

Offshore Business Process Outsourcing has, in some areas, been in reverse gear for a few years now - notably in the finance sector.    How many UK insurers do you now hear saying "...speak to our friendly UK-based staff" as a USP?  People switched off offshore call centres in their droves and the insurers sat up and took note.  Of course, those same insurers still use offshore back-office staff in internally-facing admin or IT roles.

digitalscream

Offset said:

Offshore Business Process Outsourcing has, in some areas, been in reverse gear for a few years now - notably in the finance sector.    How many UK insurers do you now hear saying "...speak to our friendly UK-based staff" as a USP?  People switched off offshore call centres in their droves and the insurers sat up and took note.  Of course, those same insurers still use offshore back-office staff in internally-facing admin or IT roles.

Remember, it's not going to be long before those outsourced/offshore jobs are take care of by AI bots. The state of the art models are astonishing right now, but they need ludicrous amounts of power to run - both computational and electrical. However...the really important part is that the models you can run on a £300 GPU at home today are where ChatGPT was a year ago.

Axe_meister

Right back in the early 2000s when offshoring started, I predicted that in 20/30 years time there will be a massive local issue, because everyone stopped taking on new local talent, that a) had the right IT skills. b) Where good communicators, c) were local and truly customer facing.
Now many of us are starting to go into retirement, taking our knowledge and experience with us, with noone local to back fill.
Now companies have to fly in a bunch of "senior" consultants, who don't understand our work/internal politics culture, are unable to say "No" or willing to admit to delays until it is too late.
This often results in companies giving up systems they have invested £XXXM is over 30 years and having to go to some SaaS model that only provided 1/2 the functionality of their existing system, and have to adhere to the providers maintenance schedule regardless of the inconvenience to their business.
   

snowblind

I think I have yet to see an outsourcing deal that was genuinely beneficial to anyone in the organization apart from a few senior execs. Management always tends to fail upwards so although the rest of the company might go down the toilet the upper echelons will still get their payouts one way or another.

Open_G

It’s something I’ve seen in a variety of jobs. Agency staff when working for 2 major airports? Easy to appoint, easy to get rid of, a workforce whom you can handpick from for permanent roles, no HR, no recruiting, no overtime costs, just a higher hourly rate… why wouldn’t you? Actually there’s loads of negative points from an operating perspective but if not seen by the bean counters then they don’t exist. 

Small business? Only a few employees? Why not buy in HR and payroll. It will save employing individuals to deal with it and is scalable to growth. 

TimmyO

I recently worked with a large IT/software company for whom most of their customer base are businesses wanting to build up (or back) internal software capability - they initially add to their team (or be it) then as a deliverable teach/train/help find them their own people to do and to manage all things software/product. Including for some big/well-known companies. 

Offset

digitalscream said:

Offset said:

Offshore Business Process Outsourcing has, in some areas, been in reverse gear for a few years now - notably in the finance sector.    How many UK insurers do you now hear saying "...speak to our friendly UK-based staff" as a USP?  People switched off offshore call centres in their droves and the insurers sat up and took note.  Of course, those same insurers still use offshore back-office staff in internally-facing admin or IT roles.

Remember, it's not going to be long before those outsourced/offshore jobs are take care of by AI bots. The state of the art models are astonishing right now, but they need ludicrous amounts of power to run - both computational and electrical. However...the really important part is that the models you can run on a £300 GPU at home today are where ChatGPT was a year ago.

Yes agree.  My firm is developing AI claims handlers and the more they 'learn', the less they'll need to refer to a human. Soon it will be purely by exception.  At that point the job market will start to look very different indeed.  We already use AI bots to write complex draft proposals for business opportunities - it saves a massive amount of time.

It's all slightly scary however and in case anyone thinks it's just another IT fad/buzzword - anyone remember blockchain? -  it isn't :-)

LionAquaLooper

Where I work, the management line about outsourcing/automation was "don't worry no one will be laid off.  We're doing this to free up your guys time to do more important things in your current roles".  

Spookily enough, when Sunak discussed the advent of AI with the media (this year or last?) - he said the EXACT same thing.  

To this day I'm still struggling to picture what this "other more important work that my time is meant to be freed up for" is.  Like if you're 1st line tech support and AI or a colleague in Bangalore does that now, what more important work are you, Mr. 1st Line Support, meant to be getting moved to?  2nd Line Support?  No, that 2nd Line Support's job.  Or is Sunak suggesting everyone in the UK's going to get a promotion.  Frankly I think he's either lying or repeating someone else's words without actually looking into it.   

Offset

LionAquaLooper said:

To this day I'm still struggling to picture what this "other more important work that my time is meant to be freed up for" is.

I think it's 'collecting a P45'.

snowblind

I've been trying to impress on the offspring to learn some kind of skill that is not AI-friendly. There's a lot of people who are going to find the job space they are in is being handed over to the machines. And once they come up with a robot that can flip burgers efficiently there's going to be an entire army of spotty teenagers kicking around the streets with nothing to do.

LionAquaLooper

snowblind said:

I've been trying to impress on the offspring to learn some kind of skill that is not AI-friendly. There's a lot of people who are going to find the job space they are in is being handed over to the machines. And once they come up with a robot that can flip burgers efficiently there's going to be an entire army of spotty teenagers kicking around the streets with nothing to do.

I'm gonna be a bin man when the time comes because it will never be replaced by machines.  All these innovations in the last 20-30 years, automate this, speed up that, micro size this, genetically modify that - and still no one can solve the world's waste disposal problem.  And it won't change anytime soon.  So yea - that line of work is definitely safe.

Jetsam1

Isn't that the dream of all corporate board level types? No employees to pay? Apart from a few mates and then a few skilled techs to keep things running.

Grangousier

Does anyone ever think "Hang on... if everyone does this, how are our customers going to find the money to buy our products?"

I mean, no, obviously they don't. But shouldn't they?

Jetsam1

Grangousier said:

Does anyone ever think "Hang on... if everyone does this, how are our customers going to find the money to buy our products?"

I mean, no, obviously they don't. But shouldn't they?

The only consideration is the current quarter and the next bonus. Who cares about the plebs, Governments will pay subsistence welfare to stop the revolt. Won't they? Won't they?

Then those without jobs should just "start their own business" or some such guff.

monquixote

The engineering department was outsourced 20 odd years ago. I got transferred over, but left because it became all about how to do the bare minimum you could get away with rather than doing a good service. They did things like shut down a training centre we had which existed because the type of very specific technical training that was required didn't exist anywhere else in the world meaning they effectively became unable to support the business once everyone with that skill left. The outsourcing process was eventually declared a failure very publically. 

I'm surprised it's happening so much these days given how badly it tends to go and how much more expensive effort is in places like India these days.

As others have said generative AI is the real deal and things like online and phone customer service and many basic tasks in things like Law, Finance and Insurance will be automated away quite quickly.

snowblind

We're kinda reaching the end run for the use of money. It is becoming more problematic to continue to think to think of everything in financial terms. EVs are a classic example. Climate change is a problem which is already affecting "the bottom line". Government hates them because they lose all the lovely tax revenues from fuel sales. They also lose all the other indirect income like congestion charges/emissions taxes etc. Add in the greater wear and tear on road infrastructure due to the cars being heavier and they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.Similarly if half the workforce now sits at home the demand for public transport is reduced so all the rail/bus companies end up getting starved of revenue and they will go knocking on the gov't's door for subsidies and support. Everyone needs to satisfy the demands of shareholders who are essentially parasites, producing nothing themselves but still a drain on resources. The drive to maintain profitability then leads to shortcuts in critical areas like the quality of the food supply which leads to an unhealthy general population and thence to reduced productivity and so it goes.

Maybe time to start considering a different way of doing things?

digitalscream

snowblind said:

We're kinda reaching the end run for the use of money. It is becoming more problematic to continue to think to think of everything in financial terms. EVs are a classic example. Climate change is a problem which is already affecting "the bottom line". Government hates them because they lose all the lovely tax revenues from fuel sales. 

It'll just become a mileage tax, the revenue won't stop.

Sporky

snowblind said:

Add in the greater wear and tear on road infrastructure due to the cars being heavier 

That's not actually a thing.

Even a 3-tonne car has almost no impact compared to a lorry.