Q/A: A New Group Fights for Transparency of Offshored Market Research
November 30th, 2009The global services outsourcing industry may have a lot of things going for it, but in most cases the industry as a whole is not winning any awards for transparency. It is the view of Tom Anderson, who recently founded the Foundation for Transparency in Offshoring, that clients or buyers have a right to know where their business process (and more importantly IP) is being handled. 
His group is particularly focused on the practice of offshoring market research.
We asked Tom recently about the reason he founded FTO and why transparency is such a big deal.
Why did you launch FTO?
New Foundation Formed to Promote Outsourcing Transparency
November 19th, 2009Press release
Chantilly, VA (November 19, 2009) – The Foundation for Transparency in Offshoring (FTO), a non-profit organization dedicated to establishing offshoring disclosure standards for companies that deal with clients’ intellectual property and customer survey or database information, officially launched today.
FTO Founder & Chairman Tom H.C. Anderson, Managing Partner of the research consultancy Anderson Analytics, says FTO does not advocate for or against offshoring, but was created to bridge “a serious transparency gap between research providers and clients. Very few buyers have sufficient information to assess the relative strengths and risks associated with offshoring,” said Anderson. “In most cases, research buyers don’t even know that their projects are being offshored.”
Illustrating this discrepancy, FTO fielded a survey among 850 U.S. and international research buyers and providers in November 2009. When asked whether their organizations offshore research projects––compared to their research agency counterparts––nearly 20% more clients said no, 40% fewer clients …
