The economic globalization promote the new wave of globalization of the software development and delivery (GDD, Global Development and Delivery), ion order to improve their own competitiveness, enterprises are more and more concerned about how to effectively use all available resources in the world. In the information era, services outsourcing and global delivery today has become the most urgent needs in the market, as to software business, it's also an important new development opportunities and challenge to seek new development in the market to improve their global development and delivery capacity. Only to face globalization software market demand, software enterprise can keep up with technological development and application pace on the road to the survival of the fittest.
Global delivery capabilities (Global Delivery Capability) refers to the abilities high-quality services outsourcing providers provide customers around the world with, and its meaning is more than CMM / CMMI we often say, the latter is only concerned about the software process and software quality, however, customers are more concerned about factors such as service provider's service efficiency, quality, and contributions to customer's business objectives. Since India is the lead in the outsourcing areas, it invisibly constitutes a reference to the bottom line in the global delivery capacity, other service providers only have to learn and catch up or surpass it, in order to survive in the highly competitive market.
Change of Software Outsourcing
With the development of the outsourcing market, customer requirements are gradually increasing, today's outsourcing projects are more complicated, they are no longer simple early application maintenance, or simple programming development which contains customers' detailed design. Providers need to better understand customer needs, and provide customers the solution to meet their business objectives. Customer demand shorter delivery cycle, ask to raise the full project status visibility and control, to minimize the risk of offshore outsourcing. In order to best allocate the resources and achieve the lowest overall cost by recruitment, outsourcing services providers must build a good global delivery model to ensure high-quality global delivery capabilities.
From the outsourcing service delivery model, to meet the higher requirements for customers, pure offshore model has been gradually replaced by the mixed model in shore and offshore, outsourcing providers even need to provide the multi-mode combining at-shore, near shore and offshore, Indian companies called it as a "flexible outsourcing delivery model." It can improve the contact and communication with customers through at-shore appearance, so as to enhance customer's credibility of the project implementation. In this mode, project development, requirement confirmation and change, project plan, assessment and knowledge transfer, etc. can be easily completed at the client site, problems brought about by geographic, time zone, language and cultural differences will also reduce, it reduce the project risk management and outsourcing costs, so it's popular with the customers.
IT outsourcing services giant, EDS, uses its unique advantage of global resources, raise the "Best Shore" strategy of global delivery model, which can based on the special needs of customers, and flexibly choose service delivery and outsourcing implementation locations. As business develops, China's outsourcing providers must also pay attention to and consider these models, to improve delivery capacity. Although due to firm size and strength restrictions of many outsourcing service providers currently, there're still some difficulties in the mixed mode of delivery, for the submission of a more flexible global delivery model, they could also consider using ways of developing overseas partners, to improve customer service delivery capacity.
Expansion of technology strength
In discussing global delivery capabilities, we must pay attention that our vision must not be limited to technical aspects, we should also notice business strategy, because the outsourcing market and customer needs have many aspects, and develop dynamically, any negligence of outsourcing service providers will mean the loss of opportunities. For example, in addition to the popular information technology outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO), in recent years, there have emerged knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), engineering process outsourcing (EPO) and recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), etc, they're big markets worth tens of billions dollars. India has been sensitized to these opportunities, and they attempt to use its brand to continually extend these areas to maintain exclusive status; China has its own advantages in resources and conditions in these areas, but it also must pay attention to the timely distribution planning, grasping the opportunity to live, otherwise it can not respond to customer demand in time, which is also a loss of global delivery capacity. Therefore, while we discuss the delivery capacity, we must pay attention to learning and studying new problems. A good outsourcing service provider should adhere to these emerging markets, in accordance with their own resources and opportunities.
In addition to business strategic layout, how to better provide client-oriented services is a key to evaluate delivery capacity. Many domestic suppliers are often more concerned about their own development capability maturity, so they spend more efforts on CMM / CMMI software process improvement, although there is nothing wrong, in the field of outsourcing services, they must also be concerned about outsourcing services throughout the entire life cycle. Providers need to extend the life cycle to the development of the project before opening up the negotiations, pricing, signed service level agreements till after the development of delivery tracking services, which also explains why the CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) CMMI also research and develop electronic services competency model of eSCM after CMMI.
How to develop partnerships with customer is also a very important issue in outsourcing services. Faced with wide customers, a good service provider must have a comprehensive and flexible business model, adapted to different customer needs. Such as to relatively clear define requirements and may adopt pricing method for stable projects; while for large projects with mobility demand, working hours can be the accounting methods; for long-term cooperation with the customer, can set up a special offshore development center (ODC model), to maintain stability of development team and technical expertise; for customers hoping to establish their own subsidiaries in offshore centers (Captive Center), in order to help them reduce risk and initial investment, improve cost effectiveness, suppliers can also be establish "Virtual subsidiary Centre" through the a joint venture way, or use the Establishment - Running - Transfer (BOT) model, etc, to provide a wide range of cooperation modes to be flexibly choose from.
In the knowledge process outsourcing market, out of its own intellectual property rights protection considerations, customers are more inclined to use the model of establishing its own subsidiary centre in the offshore country, which is not conducive to third-party outsourcing service providers involved, but if outsourcing services suppliers can study and use all kinds of flexible business models, with its sincere cooperation attitude, coupled with its advantages in resources, there are still opportunities for them to enter these areas, which once again shows the importance of study and research of the issue in the outsourcing field.
To enhance delivery capacity requires 4 levels
In the development stage of outsourcing services, there are also many challenges which directly impact on the customer's delivery capacity.
¡ñ one of the problems is how to build consistent and coordinated work processes with customers, to ensure that the two sides do not misunderstand and there won't have management coordination.
As both the customers and suppliers have their own work processes and management methods for development, it's impossible to achieve a complete agreement on the standard process, so suppliers are required adhere to the norms of developing their own processes, at the same time striving to learn the client's workflow.
Before embarking on the development, the two sides should have a clear definition of the coordination process, determine the convergence of two processes, and submit the standards of information and documents, to ensure that both sides understand the agreement. The issue of using different tools and infrastructure framework also needs timely communication and coordination between the two sides, in order to maximize the ability to maintain access to information, enhance the transparency of the project status information.
¡ñ another important issue of development distribution is the two sides should strengthen timely communication between members to ensure mutual understanding and trust.
In addition to providing suppliers in the onshore support, but also trying to establish channels of communication, including e-mail, telephone or video conferencing, Web meetings, Wikis and team blog, documents and screen sharing, online chatting, documents commentary and etc., in order to do this well, we should clearly defined communication plan at the beginning of the project. Popularity of outsourcing services has risen the tradition of the same project management to global project management (GPM), nowadays, the industry field has started to discuss the new challenges brought by global software development (QSD) or global software engineering (GSE), including the distribution of virtual team establishment and management issues, which is a new topic requiring study and research for outsourcing personnel.
¡ñ Need to keep up with international trends.
For the IT outsourcing security considerations, Japanese Government has raised the state-level research topic - STAGE project (Software Traceability and Accountability for Global Software Engineering), which is the engineering experience suitable for a class of buyers (that is, software outsourcing side). Through the collection, extraction and analysis for the quantitative data of supplier's experience, the outsourcing vendors initiatively know whether the software provider's development process is appropriate and software quality is high enough. For this aim, in addition to related software products, the software outsourcing providers in the future should also deliver of relevant data related with the development, known as the "software label" (Software Tag).
The aim of STAGE plan is to study what is the appropriate software tag data, develop relevant standards, data collection and analysis tools, applications and other guidelines; if such scheme comes into eventual implementation, it's bound to raise new and higher requirements for supplier's service. At current, many contracts stress that they are not only concerned about the supplier's capability maturity level, but also concerned about improving their quality of the actual data, let statistics and facts to speak, which requires providers with quantitative management capabilities.
¡ñ Only seize the new service and opportunity can seize new opportunities and advance at the height of its official career
In business process outsourcing (BPO) are, in the early stage, it mainly concentrated in low-end business processing activities which can significantly help clients to reduce costs, such as call centers, data entry services, and so on, but along with the maturation of BPO and the establishment of the relationship between clients and providers, the new service demands and opportunities appear. There are some evident trends, first is the high-end transformation from BPO to value chain, clients demand BPO service can transfer to more complex background internal processing, and they request not only simple low-cost, but the substantial improvement, in order to help enterprises to improve the revenue value and enterprise operational capacity.
In order to increase the understanding of business process, providers who have involved in IT outsourcing services should help clients use IT technology, put up business process management, reconstruction and optimization, this leads the trend of conjoint BPO and ITO.
Because the antecedent advantage, Indian software companies, especially those well-known large enterprise, have started to research this demand and trend in order to make BPO market more mature. Chinese software enterprises should learn this lesson, actively concern about and study clients' business processes, do the best to be an intimate co-worker and brainman of clients, and this can provide more advanced delivery capacity.
From "Mature Process" To "Mature Staff"
How to enhance the global delivery capacity in outsourcing service market has very high demands to the core competitiveness, it involves not only the technical part, but also how to improve service quality, efficiency and business strategy. In 2006, IAOP (International Association of Outsourcing Professionals) pointed out that since outsourcing service had become a new industry and outsourcing professionals had become a new career field, IAOP announced OPBOK (Outsourcing Professional Body of Knowledge) and COP (Certified Outsourcing Professionals), which meant that it provided an object demand and standard to outsourcing professionals and industrial delivery capacity. But now, OPBOK developed by IAOP lays particular stress on clients, that is how outsourcers manage well the outsourcing project. For China, the more demands are facing providers' OPBOK, that is how to effectively open international outsourcing service market, enhance customer service quality and efficiency and improve the capacity maturity of enterprises.
According to the current urgent need of cultivating high-quality outsourcing human resources, CSPIN has absorbed the various advantages of systematically researching international outsourcing professional training model, and also has developed OPBOK which adapts to providers, and brought forward outsourcing professional training blue print which can be geared to international standards, it can be integrated into five management aspects: business management, personnel management, technology/knowledge management, global project management and service/operation management, this programme systematically sums up the best outsourcing practice and mature experience of outsourcing industry.
The key of improving the global delivery capacity of outsourcing industry is professionals, the development goal ¨C "from process mature to staff mature" becomes the fundamental measure to overtake India. Fro the same understanding, under the support of the former Ministry of Information Industry and Ministry of Science and Technology, CSPIN has formally launched software process improvement professional project which regards talents' professionalization and internationalization as the goal, and studies Knowledge System of developing software process improvement professionals to build scientific basis for cultivating high-quality process improvement professionals, on this basis, to develop the related vocational qualification procedures, at present, there is a national professional group has been set up and put into intensive research and development work, this project will also get the cooperation and support from international experts.
To enhance the global delivery capacity has become a hot spot of current industry, this is a system engineering problem, it requires staff, technology and process start from several aspects, and also the effort together of government, industry, school, research and finance.
Global Delivery Problem Will Be A Hot Spot
IDC predicts that the global delivery will become the top issue of the entire Asia-Pacific region, and lead a tidal wave of deploying global procurement strategy. The focus of 2008 will be hybrid solution, the decision-making of enterprise will no longer be cost-oriented, but skill model.
Jenna Griffin who is the senior research analyst in IDG in Asia-Pacific region global delivery said, "The global procurement can enhance enterprises' potential ability to achieve the best business result, it can make enterprises to get the best technology and price without the geographical constraint."
As more attention on global delivery capability, the growth potential of emerging markets is strong. Jenna pointed out, "Although the domestic market, especially in the developing countries, the growth momentum may be slow, if service providers are able to provide both onshore and offshore services, then for the overall domestic market, it will form stronger growth trajectory. Not only service providers can benefit from the scale economy, the employment opportunities created by them also mean that the whole market can benefit from the greater economic prosperity."
IDC predicts that by 2011, Chinese cities will surpass India to become the more suitable places for offshore outsourcing, the reason is that China has heavily invested in infrastructure, English skill, internet condition, technical skills, and so on.
Global sourcing of service resources has become an important development strategy of multinational corporations. Outsourcers often consider four aspects when choosing outsourcing destinations: human resources, cost, market and environment. Besides abundant supply of manpower and competitive cost advantage, the large and potential domestic market is the key reason that attracting offshore service outsourcing, this is the important difference between China and countries like India. Only integrating with China's own economic characteristic and industrial advantage, starting from manufacturing, telecommunications, financial and other advanced industries, and combining domestic outsourcing with international undertaking, China can form its characteristic and core competitiveness. Each base city should also fully tap its advantages, position difference, transplacement competition, in order to create the international brand image of China's service.
In additional to actively undertake overseas service outsourcing projects, Chinese enterprises should also continue to conduct independent innovation, from business model, business process, service and other aspects to optimize and enhance. This needs the rapid development of domestic service outsourcing enterprises and extension to the upper reaches of the industrial chain.
