Outsourcing information services in investment banking

Abstract

This article draws on the experiences gained by the investment banking industry in outsourcing to describe the process of outsourcing and offshoring business information research and assess the advantages and drawbacks of the process with particular reference to continuing concerns about confidentiality, quality of work, and the need to maintain good relationships between researchers and end users. It discusses the two processes of outsourcing and offshoring, noting that outsourcing has been used to some extent by libraries and information centres for over 30 years and has come increasingly to be used in the sense of offshoring; where a significant amount of research capacity is passed not only to a third party vendor but also to geographically remote locations such as India. The article focuses on offshoring in the context of UK investment banks and discusses the issues arising from: information use in investment banks; business information delivery in investment banks; how and why business information services are outsourced; managing an outsourcing project; cultural factors influencing the research process; and the future of outsourcing business information research. The conclusion is that, if offshoring is to continue, then information professionals need to address the issue of whether offshore researchers can provide in-depth or value-added research to the same degree as their UK-based counterparts.