In the Sept. ’07 issue of Global Services magazine, through our article Buy-side Sourcing Careers, we introduced readers to the initiative that has set out to define the skills and attributes of the outsourcing professional, we’re pleased to report that significant progress has been made.
In many companies, nearly 24 percent of the executive budget is dedicated to outsourcing. Although the number of individuals involved in outsourcing has mushroomed into the tens of thousands, little has been done until now to declare and define it as a profession. Since the outsourcing profession includes a number of specializations and outsourcing professionals increasingly work across a wide range of functional areas, a common framework spanning IT outsourcing, business-process outsourcing and areas such as real estate, logistics, and manufacturing, is being established. As a result, the new framework needs to be readily adaptable to both existing as well as new trends and specializations within outsourcing such as R&D and product development. Additionally, the career mapping should cross the boundaries between the customer, provider and advisor on a global basis, reflecting the fact that an increasing number of outsourcing professionals move between different types of organizations throughout their careers.
As the term “outsourcing professional” is relatively new, it is understandable that companies might not have defined the skills and the job profile for this role. So the skills, knowledge, experiences, and capabilities required for success as an outsourcing professional need to be explicitly articulated. In addition, the profile should also show how this profile might change as the individual moves through career levels from individual contributor to a senior executive. Let’s take a look at some of the essential components of an outsourcing professional’s career.
Skills. Let’s focus on five key skills, offering specific attributes an employer can look for in hiring a qualified outsourcing professional. A perfect-fit outsourcing professional will have strong communication, business-process analysis, strategic business analysis, financial analysis and negotiation skills. Three out of the five contain the word “analysis” indicating that the truly effective outsourcing professional will have a solid understanding of the business practices and processes of a company.
Knowledge and experience. Successful outsourcing professionals have knowledge based on real-world experience. They have been through situations where a company has had to outsource, or have helped some organization in choosing to outsource. The five critical business knowledge/experience areas for outsourcing professionals include: Team leadership, program management, global delivery experience, relationship management and change management.
While most hold true for any professional, an important filter exclusive to the outsourcing industry is the global delivery experience. An outsourcing professional must be one who has lived through the limitations and advantages of being in a global practice and must be well versed with team leadership, cross-cultural aptitude, adaptability, influence and innovation.
Customers, providers and advisory firms have varying titles within the outsourcing profession, but generally, they fall under the categories of Analyst, Manager, Director and Vice President.
Now that the skills, knowledge and capabilities for the sourcing profession have been defined, we, as individual professionals, need to develop organizational structures and development practices to foster these characteristics.
Lori Blackman is Founder and President, DNL Global, a talent-management solutions provider. Allan Schweyer is President and Executive Director, Human Capital Institute.
