Consulting + Offshoring : Next On The Innovation Agenda?

I wrote in offshoring new technologies that even pure play consulting is increasingly getting offshored. I also brought out in february that amongst the innovations that indian headquartered offshoring firms are bringing,the ability to distribute work between various locations and the set of benefits that come along stands tall. Now we are seeing the benefits that offshoring has provided for technology solutions are getting extended to consulting as well. It is an age where increasingly we are seeing that western firms are getting more and more comfortable with offshoring vendor's technical and business process outsourcing capability. This means engaging them for technical and management consulting tasks — at a fraction of the cost of blue blooded consulting vendors say the Accenture's and IBM. (Note :Like all other posts this is my personal view and not in any way related to my employer.)The truth of the matter is technology's power and reach is becoming so entrenched that invariably it is becoming to be a case of technology and business consulting getting intertwined.

On the eve of Mr.Narayanamurthy’s retirement, he is being interviewed by the media and I found this one on the next in the innovation agenda for Infosys quite interesting:

What's next on Infosys' innovation agenda?
We are working on a huge initiative where we are bringing the power of our business model to activities which were hitherto thought unviable for (outsourcing). For example, the conventional wisdom is that consulting is an on-site activity, a customer-site activity. We're saying that there are many, many activities in consulting that can be delivered from countries like India. For example, preparation of the proposal, research, analytics, simulation. All of that can be done from India. It could be as much as 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the total effort.

I have heard Mr.Murthy saying this 3-4 years back. I see a few doing this in action now. There are some who have been doing this before that as well. It is very likely that Infosys itself does this in some form. May be he is talking about substantially scaling up the model here - which itself is a really tough thing to do and can be definitely seen as being innovative. Afterall, consulting is about delivered value and it is part of the solution -to-the solution conundrum. All these are happening while the traditional big consulting firms are happy featuring golfers!!