Taking Offshoring To The Max

On 10 May, Nyenrode in collaboration with the Dutch Ministery of Economic Affairs, the World Bank, Tata Consultancy Services and Allen & Overy organized the seminar ”Taking Offshoring to The Max”. Renowned industry practitioners, academic experts, and policy makers discussed the ins and outs of offshoring and outsourcing and provided tools for managing activities that are relocated to foreign locations.

Offshoring in the Netherlands
The seminar was opened by Dr. Désirée van Gorp, associate professor of international business and director of Nyenrode’s International Department. She summarized the results of her study about offshoring in the Netherlands. While offshoring in the past was mostly done by large companies looking for cost advantages, nowadays also more strategic considerations are taken into account when it comes to the choice whether to relocate activities abroad or not. These days, offshoring is about issues such as finding talent, increasing or maintaining competitive advantages, entering new markets and being more flexible as an organization. More than before, SMEs are involved. In addition to  back office IT related activities, core activities are also more often offshored. Moreover, activities are not only offshored to low income countries but to countries with a high income level as well.

  Experiences with offshoring
  After Désirée van Gorp, Herald Jongen, partner at Allen & Overy, took the floor and lectured about
  the legal implications and the risks of offshoring. In his view, offshoring is a “military operation” that
  requires good preparation and takes a long time to do it well.

  Jeroen Tas, founder of MphasiS and partner of Exigen
  Capital, held a plea for building a dynamic business
  case for managing the risks that accompany the 
  offshoring of activities.


The next speaker Ged Roberts, head of the business excellence unit of Tata Consultancy Services, addressed the issue of managing cultural diversity in organizations.

  
  Hans van Grieken, vice president business innovation of Cap Gemini, advised companies to get
  involved in crowd sourcing and not to do too much research by themselves but to try and copy or
  buy good ideas from the outside world and add value to them. His motto: “Somewhere someone
  will have solved your problem.” 

Panel discussions
After these individual presentations Jongen, Tas and Van Grieken talked about their experiences
with offshoring in a panel discussion together with Patrick Simons, strategic deal executive / big deal management at T Systems, and Christoph Neut, SVP business development at Stefanini IT Solutions.

The potential of specific offshoring regions such as the Middle East, North Africa and India was discussed with members of a second panel. These were:
• Nadereh Chamlou, senior advisor to the World Bank
• Neveen El Tahri, chairperson and managing director of Delta Holding for financial investments in
  Egypt
• Ramnath Narayanswamy, professor at the India Institute for Management in Bangalore and visiting professor at Nyenrode
• Robert van den Ende, chairman of the Club of Notes and executive director of the Notepad Factory.

While many companies still see the regions discussed by the panel in strong stereotypes, many of those countries have a large pool of talent and a young, highly educated population represented by talented men and women.

Lecture by Minister Van der Hoeven
After this discussion, Maria van der Hoeven, Minister of Economic Affairs, held a lecture about the importance of offshoring for the Netherlands. In these times of crisis, looking for opportunities in
other countries is extra important for companies to strengthen their competitiveness. At the same time, the Netherlands must take good care of its own investment climate and strengthen its cross border trade relationships. Therefore, she pleas against protectionism by stating that raising walls
for foreign companies in the Netherlands would hurt us.

  Global Sourcing & Innovation Award 2010
  At the end of the day, the Global Sourcing & Innovation Award 2010 (sponsored by Tata
  Consultancy Services ) was presented. It was awarded to Sergey Lugonov, a student at the
  Manchester Business School, for his essay on ‘Building the company of the future’.

Please mail your comments on this article to: Businesstopics@nyenrode.nl