The Optimus Primes of Outsourcing

Parents of young, robot-obsessed children will recognize Optimus Prime as the chief hero of the good guys in the Transformers line of toys, comics and the blockbuster movie now in theaters (other brand extensions hitting your pocketbook soon).

There's a neat synchronicity here: The most visionary companies are starting to recognize transformation as the hero of outsourcing, with the best service providers filling out the ranks of the good guys. This is no small vision, as the tide today is taking a great number of companies toward the offshoring model, as I wrote last week.

Part of what's great about the buzz about transformation in outsourcing is what it's not: "Transformation" has long been bandied about as "consultant speak," but the transformation that we're hearing more about is something bigger – and we're hearing it from clients and contacts, not consultants.

I've written previously about the increasing use of outsourcing to drive change around the scope of the deal itself – and beyond it: When services are outsourced, with attendant standardization and consolidation, that process serves as a catalyst to enhance how all the work that touches those services is organized and delivered. Clients are factoring these derivative benefits into their cost evaluations and giving the best service providers an opportunity to create broader benefits for the clients.

Now we're also seeing the truly visionary, ambitious clients look to outsourcing as a way to migrate older operations – systems, applications, and processes – to Brave New World models. In this new world, the contract is less about defining which assets are affected and more about capturing the emerging capabilities of BPO, software-as-a-service, and other models for improved efficiency.

For these firms, the essential make-versus-buy question is swinging toward "buy," because the alternative of carrying forward legacy operations increasingly is untenable: Can I modernize myself, or should I outsource – and structure the contractual terms accordingly – to produce real, fundamental change and to pay for services in a very different manner?

The Transformers – the companies and organizations really seeking fundamental change – are stepping up, looking to move beyond complex, costly, and confused legacy applications. They look like heroes to me, and I'm betting their own customers will come to feel the same way.