While many companies are looking to outsourcing to control costs and free up resources, most aren't sending their jobs offshore, according to a report by Enterprise Systems.
Of the 744 companies surveyed, a third are currently outsourcing projects; 43 percent are evaluating outsourcing providers; and 24 percent either don't plan to outsource or don't know what their outsourcing plans are, Enterprise said.
Among those currently outsourcing projects, 70 percent choose a domestic provider, while 22 percent have gone the offshore route, and 3 percent have invested in "near-shore" options such as Canada and Mexico. The remainder haven't chosen a provider yet.
More than half of respondents said that no positions were eliminated in their last outsourcing project. Among companies that eliminated positions, Enterprise said that up to 22.6 percent of displaced employees either transferred elsewhere in the company, or were able to obtain a position with the new service provider.
Respondents cited reducing and controlling costs (25.5 percent), gaining access to information technology resources unavailable internally (16.5 percent), and freeing up internal resources (16.1 percent) as their top reasons for outsourcing. Other reasons cited included gaining access to high-quality resources (14.0 percent); accelerating a project (14.0 percent); improving business focus (10.6 percent); and reducing time to market (6.6 percent).
When asked what IT work was outsourced in their most recent outsourcing project, most respondents cited application development (20.6 percent), followed by Web site development/management (12 percent), help desk support (10.6 percent), network operations (8.9 percent), data center operations (8.6 percent) and application management (8.6 percent).
