OUTSOURCING: Closer to home

摘要

Many technology outsourcing decisions are just a matter of simple arithmetic: The average salary of an Indian computer programmer is $7,500, one tenth that of his or her U.S. counterpart. But experience is teaching some decision makers that other numbers don't add up so easily. Take, for example, the 12,000 miles and ten time zones separating New York and Bangalore. "A lot of our businesses are very localized," notes Terry Bourne, chief operating officer of Penson Financial Services Canada, a subsidiary of Dallas-based brokerage services company Penson Worldwide. "If you're in North America, do you really want to send a lot of work to India, and how economical would that really be?" Sometimes, Bourne argues, you don't have to go halfway around the world to find the desired cost efficiencies.