Reading the Indian mainstream news yesterday about India Inc.’s strategy to expand operations in Eastern Europe and hire multilinguals to serve the European finance and accounting sector does not surprise me anymore. In my April article, I talked about how Europe is becoming more comfortable with outsourcing not just to its neighboring countries but also to Asia particularly to the Philippines. The following month, I wrote an article on Philippine Outsourcing re-focusing its efforts to the European market instead in anticipation of US political and trade condition changes.

Every company needs to understand the market they cater to, to help them identify the areas for improvement as well as areas for opportunity. The research industry as a whole has gone through a lot of standardization and consolidation due to the advancement of technology. The market research industry, in particular, has changed over the years due to globalization, increasing competition, changing market demand, among other factors. All these changes paved the way for greater outsourcing.

The first quarter results show the trends the companies will take in the succeeding quarters. Companies will continually lower costs through divestitures and workforce reduction and pay cut. Revenue generation strategies will be consolidation through mergers and acquisition and outsourcing.

Information technology research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc. recently released study titled “Potential Impact of Economic Downturn on IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Prices, 1Q09”, reveals IT outsourcing services will drop by 5% to 20% through 2010. “Reasons for these price reductions are the recession, which is affecting markets worldwide, IT budget constraints and cost-focused contract renegotiations, along with other emerging forces”, says the report.