Forget Outsourcing What About Insourcing?
Amid all this talk about outsourcing jobs, I am about to lose mine to insourcing: the even more insidious practice whereby a company decides that whatever it is the consultants are doing, it can probably be done cheaper in house. I just got the official word today that my project has 3 weeks left because they will be transitioning the work in house. So come April 19, I will be on the bench (which is Consultant-speak for unbillable) and since our pipeline looks thin, that could be it for me. No biggie though, since I will be leaving this place anyway in July and I wouldn't mind a couple of months to prepare for the move; but I'd miss the checks.
In this case our client, a large computer hardware manufacturer that is known for its printers, has outsourced a certain business function to us for several years now. Back in the go-go days of the late 90s, it just made more financial sense for our client to keep a non-core function outside, since we had the expertise that they lacked, they had hiring restrictions and the work was somewhat cyclical so you could add and subtract resources easily. Now, five years later, much of this expertise has been transferred in house and our client finds that post-merger, they have some people standing around looking for stuff to do. Why pay the consultants $20 grand a month when you can just have them teach the other folks how to do it, then bank the savings and show your boss how great you are. Its actually a pretty easy decision for them in this case, and I am surprised that we held on as long as we did.
Amid all this talk about outsourcing jobs, I am about to lose mine to insourcing: the even more insidious practice whereby a company decides that whatever it is the consultants are doing, it can probably be done cheaper in house. I just got the official word today that my project has 3 weeks left because they will be transitioning the work in house. So come April 19, I will be on the bench (which is Consultant-speak for unbillable) and since our pipeline looks thin, that could be it for me. No biggie though, since I will be leaving this place anyway in July and I wouldn't mind a couple of months to prepare for the move; but I'd miss the checks.
In this case our client, a large computer hardware manufacturer that is known for its printers, has outsourced a certain business function to us for several years now. Back in the go-go days of the late 90s, it just made more financial sense for our client to keep a non-core function outside, since we had the expertise that they lacked, they had hiring restrictions and the work was somewhat cyclical so you could add and subtract resources easily. Now, five years later, much of this expertise has been transferred in house and our client finds that post-merger, they have some people standing around looking for stuff to do. Why pay the consultants $20 grand a month when you can just have them teach the other folks how to do it, then bank the savings and show your boss how great you are. Its actually a pretty easy decision for them in this case, and I am surprised that we held on as long as we did.
