I bought a few diverse items recently. The only thing they had in common was a) Me and b) They were cheap.
Here is what they were:
1. A pair of shoes at ShoeZone, which I renamed Sh**eZone;
2. A pair of trousers at Dunnes Stores;
3. A St Benedict medal at a famous Catholic Church in London.
Q: What did they all have in common?
A: They all started falling apart soon after purchase.
This is one reason why I think outsourcing is finished. It’s gone too far. It’s leads to diabolical quality and unhappy customers.
Another example: I was tinkling the keys of a child’s toy piano in a shop, recently. It was simply broken; some keys wouldn’t play if you pressed them in a certain way. You could feel the shoddiness as you played it. There was no point in buying it; it … simply … would … not … last … all, not even as a child’s toy.
A more famous example: the recent Ulster Bank embarassment. Thousands of customers got a wake-up call as to what would happen if their bank was incapacitated in any way. In this case, RBS had outsourced their IT to India and some gonk had overwritten all the data backups. This is a real amateur mistake: the sort of think a 2-man webhost might do, if both were drunk.
Note: This is where your personal financial data is being handled, folks. These people have your future in their hands, and they’re amateurs. But hey, they’re cheap!
Western firms can’t compete on price any more. They have to compete on quality. They can also compete on speed, as they’re nearer the customer but that’s secondary. Quality is the way forward. Be the best!