I’ve held my tongue for quite some time because I had to keep food on the table, and a roof over my head. But now that I’m no longer employed by Nielsen Media Research (nee The Nielsen Company) I can speak out. As you may have heard from Sweet Lou Dobbs a few months back, Nielsen has engaged in outsourcing to an Indian company by the name of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). This is true, but I’m not sure most people understand just what Nielsen and TCS are doing. And more importantly, why it must fail.

Most of the time when you hear about “outsourcing” you think of call centers, service depots, or assembly plants. Which, to be blunt and perfectly honest, are appropriate things to outsource. I’m sorry to say it, but those types of repetitive, rote, by-the-numbers types of jobs can’t pay enough to US workers to allow the products or services they support to be affordable when compared to the rest of the market. But, what Nielsen (and <a href=”http://www.contactcenterworld.com/view/contact-center-news/Kimberly-Clark-Selects-Tata-Consultancy-Services.asp”>Kimberly-Clark</a>) is doing is far more insidious, and hurtful to the US job market. The “skilled” IT jobs are now being moved offshore. And while I could go on for pages and pages about how TCS is mis-managing the Nielsen Infrastructure group, that’s not the point. Even if they were making it better, the overall effort must fail.

The fact of the matter is that infrastructure outsourcing is taking jobs offshore that have not, generally, been a drag on the bottom line. While technically a cost center, a good infrastructure team can often create savings by being proactive. But what happens when you outsource infrastructure? In the case of TCS, the driving force becomes the SLA and the contract exclusive of the needs of the business. In fact Nielsen employees who have been hired by TCS have been told “you work for TCS, not Nielsen”. The meaning of course is that these people need to be more concerned with TCS’ needs than those of Nielsen. Which is generally counter-intuitive for Americans. You work for your customer. You do what you need to do for your customer. When I worked at HP we were technically the outsourcing company for Qwest Communications. But we always did what Qwest wanted. They were the customer. They were the reason we had jobs. But in the eyes of a company like TCS they think that by strictly adhering to the contract and SLAs they will make more money. Which means they will not go even one inch out of their way to help Nielsen.

Why do they do it that way? It keeps costs down. If TCS is only doing what’s on the contract and within SLA then they aren’t spending their own money. Nor will they have to bill Nielsen for any “out of scope” work. In turn, the billing comes in exactly as expected, and the balance sheets for both companies look great. What will happen is that the financials of the American company will begin to look better and better as each quarter passes. And, again, regardless of how the outsourcer performs, more Americans will lose their jobs or be forced into lower paying jobs. In turn sending the US economy into a deeper and deeper spiral. I often wonder if these executives who make these decisions have any idea that they are getting closer and closer to having no one to buy their products.

This type of outsourcing is still not that common in the United States right now. So it is imperative that Nielsen fail. Not just the Nielsen/TCS relationship, but the entire company. Nielsen needs to be no more, or at least heading in the direction of failure. And that failure must be linked to the outsourcing. If a company like Nielsen goes down, is severely damaged, or kills the outsourcing it will send a clear message to the rest of the business world.

What can we as citizens do?
- First, if Nielsen approaches you to be a ratings family, please accept. And then be difficult. I will take a second to dip into the challenges that Nielsen is facing with this deal; the business units are not delivering their data to the customers as quickly and accurately as in the past. So if you can be a stumbling block to them gathering their ratings data, that would further exacerbate the problem.
- Second, if you are a customer or consumer of Nielsen ratings data (and they have their fingers in a lot of pies; books, movies, TV, Internet, etc) also become difficult. Hold their feet to the fire. Make them keep their promises. Don’t let them deliver even one second late. Go over your agreements and contracts. Demand credits for SLA breaches. Hell, if they’re supposed to deliver to you by 8 AM, start calling if the data isn’t there by 7:30.
- Finally, if you live in the Tampa Bay area (and Oldsmar especially) keep the political pressure on Nielsen. While their statement in the wake of Lou Dobbs’ tirade was “technically” accurate about the number of people working for Nielsen in Oldsmar the truth is that each and every Indian citizen working for TCS will eventually go back to Chennai.

Make things harder for Nielsen and TCS. Force the deal to go down in flames.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Open Letter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.