Leading grocery retailer
Egremont Group, 2005
IT offshoring programme in India
Summary
The business case for this project was predicated on shifting engineering roles to India by February 2008. A ‘captive’ IT department had been set-up in Bangalore in 2003. Some of the support areas had been offshored but progress had slowed down (the low hanging fruit had been done).
The teams were now facing the challenge of transitioning development roles. The client had a high degree of nervousness that key skills, experience and knowledge in the UK would be lost. There was a fear that the Indian team did not understand retail (although highly skilled IT professionals).
The UK workforce and leadership team were nervous that the Indian team may not deliver same level of service and the Indian management team needed to build capability fast. The programme had been highly UK centric (little involvement from the Indian team). In some quarters, there was feeling of ‘I don’t believe it will work’ and emphasis had not been placed on engaging the business in the process of change.
