UK outsourcing market set for continued growth

Research from EquaTerra reveals onshore providers still dominate in the public sector

Cost and efficiency concerns will fuel the growth of the UK outsourcing market with the public sector set to continue spending billions of pounds with onshore providers.

Research from EquaTerra examined trends across 650 IT outsourcing deals worth a combined total of £14bn – more than two-thirds of the total UK outsourcing market.

The advisory services firm also quizzed 220 of the UK's biggest-spending IT consumers, and found 87 per cent intend to use outsourcing the same amount or more over the coming years. Some 61 per cent believe they will "probably" or "certainly" outsource more.

Three-quarters of end users are making use of offshoring. Of the remaining 25 per cent that are maintaining use of onshore providers, two-thirds are in the public sector.

But the top offshore providers were the big winners in the client satisfaction stakes this year. Indian players Wipro and Mahindra Satyam and US firm Cognizant topped the charts with ratings of 80, 78 and 77 per cent respectively. Other firms scoring highly include onshore providers Capgemini and Siemens and "best of breed" player Computacenter.

Firms' main motivation for looking at outsourcing remains the desire to drive down costs, but increasing flexibility is an increasingly close second.

Lee Ayling, managing director of EquaTerra's IT Advisory, claimed providers should not see facilitating cost base reductions as the be-all and end-all.

"Outsourcing contracts which deliver cost savings alone do not lead to higher client satisfaction," he explained. "But successfully delivering cost savings plus another driver, such as access to skills or time to market, does positively impact general satisfaction – highlighting that both end users and service providers should not focus on price alone before and during an outsourcing relationship."