Downturn drives UK outsourcing

Last year British businesses spent 12% more on IT outsourcing and 6% more on business process outsourcing (BPO) than they did in 2007, according to a report by the National Outsourcing Association (NOA), says ZDNet.

Commenting on the report, NOA chairman Martyn Hart said in a statement: "Outsourcing has traditionally been seen as a cost-saving mechanism for business, so in times of economic turbulence it is not surprising that the industry is continuing to grow."

The uptake in new contracts was echoed by a separate study by Pierre Audoin Consultants, which found that software and IT services revenues from the UK in 2008 had increased by 3% over 2007. Unfortunately when the fall in the value of the pound was taken into account it worked out as an 11% fall in revenues.

US companies are increasingly turning to offshoring their functions to achieve cost savings, and few plan to bring those jobs back to the US, the Conference Board said, according to AFP.

The number of US companies with a corporate offshoring strategy in place more than doubled in the past three years, according to the fifth annual report on offshoring trends, published by Duke University in collaboration with the Conference Board.

Of the companies surveyed, 53% had a corporate offshoring strategy in place, up from 22% in 2005, said the Conference Board, a non-profit business research organisation.

Sri Lanka's low costs has helped it to be ranked among the top 20 global outsourcing destinations for IT and BPO, an industry body said in a statement, reports Lanka Business Online.

The Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies quoted a survey by consulting firm A T Kearney as placing the island in 16th position among IT and BPO destinations, up from 29th position in 2007.

Sri Lanka is one of the few countries to have risen so much in A T Kearney's Global Services Location Index ranking of the top 50 countries for outsourcing globally, it said.