Reply to: M & S Outsources to Tata

[darmstadt]

Most seems to be outsourced anyway:

TCS will become M&S's "principal technology" supplier, replacing agreements with Fujitsu, Sapient and Daisy Group. The outsourcing business will also try to identify areas of inefficiency at M&S and create a "new Technology Operating Model", which sounds more than a little nebulous.

Previously, Fujitsu had managed on-site IT support for M&S, Sapient helped managed its online platform and Daisy Group provided some managed services.

[tazdevil]

Outsourcing bad, hosted services too

It's not just outsourcing that's bad for business its hosted services which can be costly as well. I've heard suppliers such as Siemens say that when the customers data gets to their systems its the suppliers and not the customers data! Google make good use of the data we give them with our casual searches and others do too. I've recently lost business because my clients moved a service to a hosted one and all of a sudden I can't access the database to supply my service and part of the clients facilities cease to exist and despite all the promises that they'll sort it out later they never do Government data is moved out of jurisdiction and put into huge shared databases with flimsy partitioning with some of these services. I had a case where an integration started doing strange stuff because all of a sudden it could see everyone's CRM data and not just the specific clients This was local authority data where strong data protection should apply Trying to explain the impact of some of this to customers is a bit though.

[woohoo]

We had this discussion on here a few years back - and we agreed that anyone who comes in and suggests outsourcing should be immediately sacked because they are clearly looking for a short term gain over long term profitability and stability.

But I guess if everyone on the exec board of a company is just looking for a quick buck then.....

Unfortunately, not many of us are on the boards of these big companies.

[original PM]

It's all about short term profits, new person comes in, increase profits by slashing costs. They look good and move on up or to another company and do the same. By the time the issues of poor support and quality start affecting the business no one remembers who instigated the whole thing. It's a good way to move on up the ladder for these execs.

Seagull management.

Astonishing companies fall for it.

We had this discussion on here a few years back - and we agreed that anyone who comes in and suggests outsourcing should be immediately sacked because they are clearly looking for a short term gain over long term profitability and stability.

But I guess if everyone on the exec board of a company is just looking for a quick buck then.....

[Mordac]

It seems the jobs will stay where they are. However Tata will be used to cut their cost. So the quality will go down.

M&S have much to learn.

I was there 20 years ago, and they had a room full of Wipro bods - see what I did there - who were far worse than useless. They put a major rollout back by over a year because they weren't testing it properly. M&S didn't learn then, and they won't learn now. Still, much cheapness is good, yes?

[woohoo]

Seagull management.

Astonishing companies fall for it.

I'm not that astonished. I've seen some amazingly bad decisions made but people won't speak out. They don't want to lose their job/pension/position so people go along with it. I remember a guy who was made redundant, hired back as a consultant and he spoke to the CEO of large company that you have all heard of.

He was up front (nothing to lose) and told him the mess that was happening. The CEO had no idea and asked why aren't I being told about this. Shoot the messenger an all.

Exec and management in our country are not trained and they are expected to make results fast in the short-term, so they make bad decisions. Then you have the sociopaths who understand this and play it to their advantage.

The people that care and really understand a business are just fodder and in my experience of medium to large companies they rarely make it to the top, though there are exceptions.

[BrilloPad]

So the crux of it is, shareholders are bad for big business?

Short term management is bad for big business.

[scooterscot]

So the crux of it is, shareholders are bad for big business?

[ProInDisguise]

The quality of service will suffer but will it remain good enough ? M&S hope it will. They are gambling that their competitors also have a half-assed IT function, with a barely "good enough" service.

But the reality is that it will cost them more to get a crap service compared to what they have today. The projected savings on these deals are never realised, the opposite happens. Once the procurement is done then its handed over to delivery folk who are generally contractors or consultants. Delivery is focused on one thing only and that is getting it delivered on-time. There is no management to ensure that the contracted costs for transition are adhered to. When the service goes live then its usually significantly different to what was envisaged at the outset and guess what... its far more expensive. I have seen this over and over again, its par for course at this stage

[unixman]

The quality of service will suffer but will it remain good enough ? M&S hope it will. They are gambling that their competitors also have a half-assed IT function, with a barely "good enough" service.

[BrilloPad]

It's all about short term profits, new person comes in, increase profits by slashing costs. They look good and move on up or to another company and do the same. By the time the issues of poor support and quality start affecting the business no one remembers who instigated the whole thing. It's a good way to move on up the ladder for these execs.

Seagull management.

Astonishing companies fall for it.

[woohoo]

It's all about short term profits, new person comes in, increase profits by slashing costs. They look good and move on up or to another company and do the same. By the time the issues of poor support and quality start affecting the business no one remembers who instigated the whole thing. It's a good way to move on up the ladder for these execs.

[NotAllThere]

All will work will until a major indecent happens and original staff have all left

Nice and relevant typo.

[original PM]

Any third party you engage is solely interested in making as much money as possible out of you.

[tazdevil]

I've not seen an outsource yet that actually saves money in the long term. At worst it leads to extinction through loss of IP, strategic control and in most cases greater, not less, costs.

We've given away our control over IT strategy and spending, outsourcer can you do it cheaper and better and in line with our needs, err no we've got you over a barrel

Worse try selling to businesses that have outsourced. Customer reckons I've got a great product at a great price and they want to buy it. But the outsourcer will kill the deal every time if they can because they're interested in their business and not mine If they can't kill the deal they'll put technical obstacles in the way, a sort of work to rule. Want any changes their side, that's £500 plus paperwork plus a T&M charge. Want to use an API, nope not if it's not specified by standards and their contract and they'll charge the client 10x what you cost to provide it if they insist