Even as long as a year ago, disturbing (management-issues) reports (CNN Money) began to emerge about the hidden costs of outsourcing, especially in front office IT and in customer service. The tide is now clearly turning (ZDNet Asia). Today, innovative companies have moved beyond outsourcing, bringing some functions back in-house and rediscovering the virtues of "old school" diligence in vendor selection and management in light of their damaging experiences (ComputerWorld).

At Fusion, we like to term the new vendor/customer relationship Co-Sourcing, and it is completely different from the tired self-destructive clichés of "out-sourcing".

Simple system deployments become shambolic drawn-out efforts that drain management time. Outages that should only last minutes turn into nightmares of systems repeatedly falling over themselves for weeks, with the blame always seeming to lie with unaccountable third parties. Sound familiar? The need for capable responsive staff in the same place (and timezone) has been clearly learned from the disasters caused by outsourcing to staff that are out of control, remotely located, unresponsive, poorly accountable and have probably been committed to multiple conflicting customer requirements behind your back.

Sophisticated consumers of consulting services have always understood the old saying "penny wise, pound foolish". They know that vendors have an A team, a B team, etc. They refuse to let themselves be sold on an A team only to be serviced by the D team. 'A' team staffers supporting pre-sales for offshore outsourcers have a very short half-life. In most cases, the developers that impressed you on the conference call have quit and moved to the first world to work for savvier companies than yours even before the contract is concluded.

As companies in all industries have invested heavily in IT over recent decades, perceptions of IT's strategic importance have changed as the necessary evil of back-office maintenance has grown to the point that back office spending considerably outsizes spending on front office systems development. In the context of partnering with a vendor for front office/line-of-business systems development, perceptions based on the increasing weight of back office systems maintenance are misleading (nicholasgcarr.com).
Yesteryear's adage is the rediscovered truth of today - front office IT remains a strategic source of competitive advantage since it is where the money is made. The most sophisticated adopters of technology for competitive advantage - the world's top tier investment banks (many of whom count as valued Fusion customers) - never forgot this.

What defines Co-Sourcing?

* Nearby, responsive consultants on-site as needed
* Capable, dedicated "A team" staff
* Multi-disciplinary teams that appreciate business priorities rather than blinkered, over-specialized technicians that demand intensive management
* A "we're in it together" risk-sharing approach to partnering with customers
* Transparency and accountability
* Minimized external third-party dependencies to reduce project risk and increase accountability
* Deep technical expertise supporting front-to-back systems engineering and troubleshooting of any problem regardless of whether its "in scope"
* No excuses for failure
* Travel world-wide to work with the client anywhere at any time without arbitrary restrictions