San Antonio is a Better Offshoring Destination than Moscow or Budapest
As they say, better late than never. AT Kearney has finally released its 2005 version of its ranking of offshore locations, six months later than expected.
It seems all the time and energy of its officers was focused on talking to parent EDS on the negotiations to become independent. Good news is: the talks, spanning over months, reached a conclusion in early November and the firm announced that its officers have reached an agreement to purchase A.T. Kearney from EDS. Upon closing, the officers would become partners in a newly independent A.T. Kearney.
Back to our interest area, this year’s study is not surprising on the first look, as there’s an “unexciting” stability at the top. India, China, Malaysia take the top spots as they did in 2004.
But ignore the rankings. For what is far more interesting is that the firm chose to include developed nations in the “offshoring” study, of course making suitable adjustments to the nomenclature, calling the ranking “Global Services Location Index”. Last year, they called it Offshore Location Attractiveness Index.
See…we are not the only ones to choose the name Global Services.
And guess what…the Unites States, represented by a low-cost city San Antonio fared impressively, far ahead of offshoring hot spots like Mexico, Russia, and Ireland. In fact, the press release has rightly highlighted this fact.
That is significant, especially when you consider that the study just ranked the locations and did not measure the business and social cost of offshoring to these locations.
Had it done that, I wouldn’t have been too surprised if it would have reached a conclusion that there are cities and towns within the US that are far better locations to “offshore”, for at least small and medium companies, who do not want to take the long gestation period to stabilize offshored work.
It may be worthwhile to find that out. Any takers?
[By the way, I must mention, other developed countries do not fare half as well as the US]
My take is that there are tons of cities just like San Antonio with a population that could easily fulfill most outsourcing jobs at, or near minimum wage. All you need is a broadband link and a building. Just look at all the job losses up in Detroit and Flint,MI. You think those folks wouldn’t like to have a job?
There has got to be some kind of savings in setup costs to do the deal over here, in cities like San Antonio and similar towns.
Quite interesting to note that there are destinations within USA who fit to be off-shored. Mainstay, India China Malaysia continue to be top ranked spots.
How the top rankers move up on the value chain may hold the key for future.
Malick