As organisations the world over search for cost savings to fund growth and innovation, traditional outsourcing across IT business process and infrastructure looks poised to grow. Organisations are now looking to complement the benefit from labour arbitrage by the improved operational efficiency and effectiveness that third-party providers are delivering. They are examining what activities are core to their business and what should be done from somewhere by someone else. As a result, they are driving more work and corresponding budget to a global delivery model, especially in areas such as IT infrastructure services, business process outsourcing, enterprise analytics and engineering & manufacturing solutions, in addition to traditional application development and maintenance. This is expanding the addressable market for traditional outsourcing.

A new generation of highly distributed and virtualised business models, cloud and mobile technologies, and born-digital workers and consumers, the so-called Millennials, has inspired organisations to look for better ways to organise teams, cultivate innovation, allocate resources, and reinvent knowledge processes. IT has become an integral part of every industry and its growth strategy. Increased industry consolidation, coupled with new regulatory requirements and competitive dynamics, is demanding more innovative use of IT and IT skills across service lines and geographies.

IT careers have long ceased to be about coding skills. Companies like Cognizant provide solutions to business problems leveraging technology rather than mere technology capability. Thus, employees are now expected to specialise early in technology, project management or consulting. As companies grow up the value chain, IT professionals are required to understand the working of various industries such as manufacturing, banking, insurance and healthcare. They are required to marry domain knowledge with technological excellence.

With a significant growth in outsourcing of business processes, the IT industry has started attracting a number of professionals from varied—and not just technical—backgrounds. For example, Cognizant, as part of its KPO practice, works on a wide range of higher-end activities, such as alternative fund accounting and equity research in financial services; clinical data management, credentialing, pharmacovigilance and business analytics in healthcare; and fraud detection and subrogation in credit cards. These activities have necessitated us to recruit doctors, pharmacists, pharmacologists, lawyers, chartered accountants, statisticians, supply chain specialists and management graduates who bring in the required subject matter expertise.

At school or college, one can gain high aggregate scores even by rote learning. But in professional life, success is about applying theoretical learning to practical situations. It is interesting to note that what companies are also looking for these days are several other attributes that determine how effective a professional is. “Hire for attitude and train for skills” is the new mantra companies have adopted while recruiting. It is, of course, important to be skilled. But what is equally important is to be “employable”. This can be achieved by paying focused attention to behavioural skills, communication and presentation skills, team dynamics, business etiquette, cross-cultural adaptability, and so on. Continuous learning, flexibility, a “can-do” attitude, and the ability to think and communicate clearly are clear plus points in today’s environment. During job interviews, applicants are assessed on their attitude an ability to adapt to new environments.

Most companies work for international clientèle today. Therefore, a global mindset is among the common traits that they look for. Foreign language skills also command a premium in the IT industry today. With companies increasing their geographic footprint, there is an increased demand for people with a global mindset and knowledge of foreign languages such as Chinese, Japanese, French, etc. The next wave will be about multi-skilling and multi-tasking. Earlier, jobs were created using a homogenised hierarchy. However, in times to come, hybrid jobs—those that regularly comprise work in more than one functional area—may become more the rule than the exception. More than ever before, IT careers will have to be about a confluence of technology, industry, management and consulting skills.

The focus is shifting from quantity to quality. The emphasis is on productivity. In future, it will be all about how one can make oneself more capable and attractive and leverage one’s skills for responsibilities far more evolved and diverse than in the past. The mantra is to persevere, think big, worship quality, learn new things and reinvent oneself, without compromising on ethics and value systems.

Source:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/nextgen-it-careers-are-about-multiskilling/794287/0

CFOs are increasingly viewing IT outsourcing as means to reduce the cycle times of their current transaction processing facilitating a reduction in cost. In theory, corporate governance and compliance can be improved and control over the processes can be increased. The economic benefits in terms of lower costs are so substantial that firms often cannot afford not to tap into the potential of high quality, lower cost countries like India, China and other developing countries.

However, achieving economies of scale is one of the most commonly over cited reasons for IT outsourcing. Let’s face it, you don’t have to be Alan Greepspan to understand that IT outsourcing brings some clear economic advantages such as reduction in overhead expenses and the elimination of soaring costs associated with hardware and software maintenance.

While cost saving is quoted by a lot of major financial institutions as the most important drive to outsource, contractual flexibility and professional services integration are also becoming more important to the Financial Services (FS) industry.

Over the past few years, many banks are moving to this trend. For example, London-based Barclays Bank, one of the world’s top 25 banks, has expressed a commitment to offshoring over the past years. In 2009, it announced that it would cut almost 2,000 technology jobs, including high-level positions, in the U.K. and move them to Singapore, India and Hungary.

It is my view that many banks, brokerages and insurance companies outsource to enable them to focus on their core business. In such an information intensive industry, IT is treated as a core competitive resource with potential use in the development of new products, markets and organisational capabilities.

Three years on from the biggest financial meltdown in living memory, there is increasing pressure for banks to deliver high quality services that can satisfy customers whenever, wherever and however they need. This requires banks to use a set of complex and diversified technology to run their business. To put it simply, it has become far too difficult for financial institutions to manage the complicated IT skills entirely in-house.

In light of this, companies are looking towards IT outsourcing to provide them with early and cost-effective access to emerging technologies that have the potential to change fundamentally the firm’s IT response to business challenges .

According to recent research, IT is the back-office process most commonly outsourced by financial services organisations, followed by call centres and then HR. Other industry specific processes commonly outsourced include claims, transaction (e.g., credit card, equity trading) and back office processing activities.

Today, more and more standardised open IT environments such as mobility increase the flexibility and require improvement in the security of technology for financial firms. Take the serge throughout the recession in Merger and Acquisitions (M&As) as a prime case in point. M&A’s are frequently used in the banking industry as a strategy to develop new business and cut costs. However, IT incompatibility often makes the system integration process difficult and cause delays in operational consolidation. Therefore, inoutsourcing IT work, banks need IT to create a more flexible technology environment, which makes merge more easily and efficiently.

However, it is not just about the M&A process. Being able to react quickly to the regulation requirement and risk management are other crucial reasons for banks consider outsourcing IT, as a means of providing capacity. Regulators such as the FSA and ICB are continuously increasing and tightening banking regulation, which brings higher demand of detailed and timely financial data. For instance, the Solvency II and Basel II , require banks to set aside a minimum threshold of their capital reserves to cover operational risk such as bad housing debts. This has played a necessary role in banks’ outsourcing decisions.

In addition, operational activities such as customer on-boarding and protection can make up a larger percentage of the banks expense base. Therefore, outsourcing some or all of these processes should ensure that a bank receives higher quality and better on-time delivery at lower price.

For too long now, the financial services industry has been dominated by, what many call, obscene bonuses and overregulation and a dismissive attitude to customers, Meanwhile a quiet outsourcing revolution has been taking place behind the scenes, driven by the need for cost saving and the desire to take advantage of the changing market.

In conclusion, success in the Financial Services (FS) industry lies in the ability to improve business agility and to alter working practices. Even though FS is still facing uncertain times, one thing is very likely, important partnerships with outsourcers will soon become the de facto practice across the industry.

Source:http://www.dofonline.co.uk/content/view/5308/117/