Egg-nog & Fog

‘twas a dark and stormy night when the message came through “find out what’s up in 2012 for sourcing”

The old Source-rer pours out the last glass of egg-nog left over from the festive season, and stares rheumily into his crystal ball, endeavouring to see the future through shrouds of fog....

·      The euro crisis rumbles on. Scandinavian countries seen as economic safe havens see their currency rise creating renewed impetus to outsource to achieve cost savings, particularly in IT. If the euro breaks the same happens in the euro-core clustered around Germany

·      Britain implements the recommendations of the Vickers commission and forces separation of retail banking from the jazzier, casino variety

·      A wave of consolidation and technology-enabled cost-cutting occurs as retail banking operations attempt to achieve a profit running a service which has been free to most customers for 20 years in exchange for the bank taking occasional spins with their pay cheques on the roulette wheel. Banks grapple with innovative outsourcing deals to make this happen

·      America has a presidential election. Votes are gained by promises to put the brakes on off-shoring of jobs

·      A couple of Indian majors buy struggling American outfits to get round the rules

·      Congress yet again fails to agree to a debt reduction strategy and the dollar falls off a cliff.  The Indian majors make the best of a bad job and set up massive call centres in Birmingham, Alabama

·      Large numbers US school-leavers are given intensive training on Coronation Street and the Premier League and begin to service innovative outsourcing deals for British retail banking customers in Birmingham, England.  Nobody understands anybody

The phone rings. A guy somewhere in the north of Scandinavia, a big manufacturing and distribution organisation with crazy service levels, needs to take cost out but got to be a positive outcome for the elves, can it be done by the end of the year…? 

He drains the egg-nog and puts the crystal ball back in its box, starts a browser and checks out flight times to Ivalo in Lapland. Not a lot of flights out of Heathrow in January, for some reason.