Interesting article on "Institutional Memory", and the loss of knowledge caused through wholesale outsourcing of key customer services. I came across a (very tiny) example of this at work recently, where turnover of staff in a small department over a couple of years meant a steady incremental decline in skills/knowledge for a specific semi-technical job, resulting in nobody who really knew the capabilities of the technology in use. I also just had a "courtes ycall" from BT, a very polite chap in New Dehli. I chatted to him briefly about the whole outsourcing thing, and wondered if he was aware of Indian outsoucers losing out to "even cheaper" places, like the former Eastern Europeans (like Poland). He said he was aware of competetion from the Philippines, but not Eastern Europe. I think that there's a lot of very stupid short-termism involved in the kind of management thinking which doesn't value customer service staff, and generally agree with the points raised in the article.
Related Links:
Earlier item on "the new paradigm of the support economy" and "Deep Support"
Infrastructure can't match business boom in India's high-tech city
