Andrew Baxter finds law, architecture and actuarial services just a few of the areas set to follow the lead of accountants and taxation
Accountancy and taxation have been outsourcing for years and now other professional services are following their lead.
Worries about security and confidentiality are being eroded as familiarity grows.
The legal sector is one where outsourcing and offshoring - outsourcing overseas - are relatively new. According to Paul Thompson, professional practices partner at Deloitte, there are opportunities for competitive advantage. A survey of top UK law firms, published by Deloitte in April, found almost all were outsourcing, with document production the most frequent activity.
Mr Thompson says law firms "are looking at some of the more complex areas - IT, data centres, finance and practice management systems - and paralegal activities. The business case is based not only on reducing costs but on improving efficiency and quality of infrastructure."
Steve Naylor, head of legal services at outsourcer WNS Global Services, sees document management as the start of offshoring. Other candidates, he says, are automated legal processing, such as remortgage conveyancing; judgment-based legal processing, for example house move conveyancing or personal injury claims; and legal research.
The concerns law firms have about offshoring are illustrated by the planning behind a pilot project that began a few weeks ago at Clifford Chance, which is outsourcing some document production to Mumbai.
Setting up the process involved investing a tremendous amount of time and effort in ensuring security and confidentiality, says Sal Curreri, US director of administrative services. "If you lose the confidence of the attorneys or the clients, you have failed, whatever costs you might have taken out of providing the service."
The need for client contact limits the potential for outsourcing. In architecture, proponents of outsourcing suggest more time can be spent on clients, developing skills and new projects.
A survey last year by the McGraw-Hill publication Architectural Record of 25 of the largest US architecture firms, found eight that acknowledged offshoring.
Arup, the big construction design and management company, has been wary of "traditional" offshore outsourcing, because of control and cultural issues. So when its software subsidiary Oasys decided recently to outsource work, it identified an individual it could encourage to set up in India a company from which it could buy time, with the same human resources policies and IT system as Arup.
For core activities companies such as Arup need to be very careful, says David Whittleton, commercial director, because client contact is so important. "If a client wants to look at the designs every 10 minutes, the idea of outsourcing in Basingstoke, let alone Bangalore, would not work."
Other professional services are candidates for offshoring. According to Simon Tennant of PA Consulting Group, these include actuarial services for insurance and pension companies.
Outsourcing recruitment has also been getting busier, says Chance Wilson, chief executive of Resource Solutions, the recruitment process outsourcing arm of the Robert Walters Group.
David Poole, vice-president of business process outsourcing (BPO) operations at Capgemini, says some outsourcers are too aggressive pushing full offshore solutions when a combination of "near-shore" and offshore may be more appropriate.
In this "right-shore" approach, for example, it may be cheaper to have accounting work for an Italian company done by clerks in Italy than by Italian-speaking graduates in Poland, even if labour costs are generally lower there.
