Outsource your company CULTURE to speed up Digital Transformation

With the pending shortfall and inevitable fact that more and more companies will need to outsource their IT and Finance functions, it’s important to investigate what is really driving change in digital transformation.

Due to the offshore model no longer sufficing since software development needs to be executed in real time and at top quality, the question of culture comes into play. With many CIO’s now claiming that successful digital transformation initiatives must be accompanied by cultural change, the question arises on what companies must do to ensure that they are outsourcing not only business requirements, but also their culture. The current statistics show that by 2020, the UK alone will have a shortfall of 800,000 tech workers. With culture playing such an important role in IT, and with an estimated 80 percent of companies relying on contingent workers, the question arises on how to overcome the culture issue when outsourcing as this is a mission critical element to the success of any IT programme or project.

IT Directors and CIO’s know that culture can speed up digital transformation through smart technology and methodology choices which results in aligning technology design processes to shape the required work behaviour patterns and habits. It has recently been quoted that by 2021, 80 percent of Enterprises will change their culture in order to speed up and accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. Culture change in IT is so important, with Gartner also claiming that by 2021, CIOs will be as responsible for culture change as chief HR officers. CIO’s will need to closely partner up with HR to set up programmes for measuring and monitoring purposes.

Diversity and Inclusion

While we talk about speeding up digital transformation through cultural change, we must also not overlook another important element which is driving tremendous change and that is Diversity and Inclusion, or, D&I. According to Gartner, Diversity & inclusion (D&I) is critical for the success of organisations to hit their financial goals quoting that by 2022, 75% of companies that embrace D&I will over achieve their business and financial objectives. Simply put, this means that companies that integrate diversity and inclusion strategies within their organisations will outperform any competition that does not.

Huge Change

With huge changes happening in business, it is critical to adopt a proactive approach to look at how culture can speed up digital transformation strategies. This is a problem if you outsource to an offshore company as the culture barrier is an issue. Poland is a very popular outsource destination as culturally there is very little difference between Poland, the US and other European countries. In addition, Poland offers a stable and healthy economy, a highly skilled workforce, a dynamically growing IT market and US and EU standards in IP protection and data security – This contrasts with the top outsourcing software destinations – China and India.

What is the answer?

When outsourcing IT, there are several things to think about. As IT is driving tremendous change within company culture, executives need to look at not only outsourcing business functions but also their own culture and company DNA. This can be achieved by working with a partner that understands the importance of embracing their client’s cultural habits. Company execs need to work with their internal HR officers when considering outsourcing and be conscious to include a well-defined D&I strategy as the ramifications of not doing so can be very damaging to their financial objectives. Companies need to future-proof their business by partnering with next generation outsource thinkers that recognize and get the importance of embedding company culture from Day 1. With the rapidly changing lT landscape and rapid technology shifts, there is little room for error. Companies need to think ahead of the game and put their culture at the fore-front when considering outsourcing any IT function to a third party, with a well-defined D&I strategy.

The Author: Graham Fell serves as Executive Vice President for FlexDev for the U.S and Asia Pacific. He is also responsible for marketing and building out the go to market strategy and partner eco-system. Graham has extensive experience in marketing and strategy and has held senior positions at Intel and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Before FlexDev, Graham was CEO to PROLIFY – a global sales and marketing services company for the high-tech industry. At FlexDev, Graham is also responsible for building out the Next Generation Delivery Center concept (NGDC+) to help future-proof enterprise. Graham regularly participates in discussions and think tank forums to discuss the future of outsourcing. Graham speaks at universities and technical institutes on the current technology shifts/trends in IT and the challenges that come with it. Graham works in the US, Poland, and London. https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamfell/