London (12 August, 2010) — EquaTerra’s 2009-2010 European Service Provider Performance and Satisfaction Study offers deep insights into the changing dynamics of the outsourcing market in Europe. The findings point to outsourcing proving to be an increasingly popular and effective business tool to help organisations succeed today and in the future.
This year’s European study investigates over 2000 outsourcing contracts held by over 750 of the top IT spending organisations in Europe. The total annual value of the contracts included in this study is over €20 billion and all commercial sectors are represented in the study, as is the public sector, including both central and local government organisations.
The focus of this research is on IT services outsourcing contracts with an annual value of more than €1 million and on IT service providers that are active in at least three of the following regions: Benelux, Germany/Switzerland, the Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) and the UK.
Key findings include:
1. Different outsourcing service providers lead in client satisfaction rankings across different process areas
Outsourcing buyers participating in this study scored their satisfaction with their service providers’ performance across a range of key performance indicators. While overall rankings are interesting, what is more relevant is how providers ranked in the areas that represent their core service offerings. The top three service providers in terms of general satisfaction across the three main IT process areas covered are:
Application Management (AM): 1.Cognizant 2.TCS 3.Steria
Infrastructure Management (IM): 1.Logica 2.Siemens 3.Capgemini
End-User Management (EUM): 1. Computacenter 2.Logica 3. Fujitsu
These results highlight that service providers are specialised, and all have their own areas of strengths and weaknesses.
2. Most outsourcing service providers are doing a good job
Eighty-four percent of all participating organisations are satisfied with their service providers and 86 percent of buyers would recommend their service provider(s) to another outsourcing buyer.
3. Outsourcing usage levels are still increasing in Europe
The importance of satisfaction with outsourcing is underlined by the findings on respondents’ future outsourcing plans. Eighty-two percent of all respondents involved in this study confirmed that they will continue to outsource at the same or higher levels, with 54 percent indicating they will ‘probably’ or ‘certainly’ outsource more. Less than 10 percent of all respondents plan to reduce levels of outsourcing going forward.
4. Outsourcing delivering results
Critically, buyers are achieving the benefits they seek from outsourcing. Regarding the degree to which customers believe that outsourcing met the predefined primary objectives, 73 percent of the study participants say that outsourcing has contributed significantly or moderately positively to meeting the primary drivers.
5. More organisations are utilising offshore outsourcing
Fifty-five percent of the organisations which participated in this research study are currently making use of offshoring. Noteworthy is that the UK has the most developed market in the use of offshoring with 71 percent of the polled organisations utilising offshore outsourcing. The percentages of organisations that currently use offshoring capabilities are significantly lower in the Netherlands, Nordics and BeLux at 55 percent, 52 percent and 51 percent respectively.
Bill Thomas, Executive Director, Europe & Asia Pacific commented, “This extensive research study highlights that the adoption of outsourcing as a business tool to deliver strategic objectives continues to grow in Europe. More importantly, findings show that the vast majority of European organisations are happy with their service providers and outsourcing contracts are successfully meeting predefined objectives.”
