HfS Survey: Rebranding of Outsourcing–Time to Lose the “O” Tag?

Our recent survey drew 871 sourcing industry respondents split across enterprise buyers, outsourcing providers, and advisors to debate the future of that dreaded word “Outsourcing.”

• The majority of both Buyer and Provider respondents would prefer to drop the term “outsourcing”, but struggle to come up with any meaningful alternatives
• “Outsourcing” as a term doesn’t convey business value creation, innovation, or achieving nimble global operations, but this industry needs to demonstrate it is genuinely moving away from the labor arbitrage model, before we can rightfully name it something different.  The “O” word will go away – and we – at HfS – will only use the term when we have to , but the industry needs to prove it is winning the battle of the Four Industry Challenges before we can genuinely use new terminology that make real sense.