VietNamNet Bridge - Sharing work is what Vietnamese information technology (IT) outsourcing firms, most of which are small, should do to satisfy requirements set by foreign clients. However, they hesitate to share work because of a lack of confidence.

 

Most Vietnamese IT outsourcing firms are small and medium enterprises (SMEs) owned by young people, each of which has 100 workers or less.

According to Van Thi Bich Ty from the HCM City Computer Association (HCA), the small businesses sometimes meet difficulties when implementing contracts because of labor force problems.

Unlike BPO (business processing outsourcing) which requires simple skills, IT outsourcing is believed to require more complicated skills. 

The workers who have ‘more complicated skills’ are seriously lacking in businesses, while new graduates still cannot satisfy the requirements of the work.

In this case, according to Duy Anh, the representative of a mobile web firm, an outsourcing firm, a good solution is that domestic firms share their labor force to create groups of workers to implement outsourcing projects.

If they can do this, they will get benefits, while the projects will not go to other countries.

The participants at the meeting between the organization board of VNITO 2015, the biggest IT outsourcing firms’ event, and IT outsourcing firms in Hanoi all agreed that if Vietnamese firms could not cooperate well, they would be able to attract more big projects to Vietnam. 

Vietnam has been doing IT outsourcing for the last 20 years. However, analysts noted that foreign partners still find it hard to seek information about Vietnam. 

In other words, Vietnam still cannot build up the “Vietnam IT Outsourcing” brand, therefore, the big potential of Vietnam still has not been fully exploited.

Regarding the work sharing, Ta Son Tung, director of Rikkeisoft, a company specializing in doing IT outsourcing for Japanese partners, noted that this was an impossible mission for Vietnamese firms because they do not understand and believe one another.

Tung said he knows that a Vietnamese firm rejected many orders from its Japanese partners because of a lack of workers, and refused to share the jobs with other firms.

The firm’s director feared that other firms would be his rivals in the future and could compete for orders from Japanese partners. 

He also feared that if other firms could not fulfill the contract, his prestige would be affected.

However, an expert said creating confidence and sharing work was the best solution for Vietnam to fulfill the increasingly high number of orders from foreign partners.

Gartner, in its report released in January 2015, listed Vietnam among the leading emerging markets in IT outsourcing, together with China and India.

Buu Dien