Right now NAB bank are scrambling to fix a computer glitch that has left most of their customers stranded with no access to money or wages paid. A major nightmare that I can attest to, as a friend of mine is still unable to access his funds. While the exact issue hasn't been pinpointed, the rumour mill conspiracy theorists are already pointing to NAB’s outsourcing of their IT to IBM – who themselves have recently made a massive shift to primarily moving IT employment to India to avoid paying the benefits associated with employing Americans citizens.
A few weeks ago it was Virgin handing out pizzas and drinks to fuming customers stuck at airports all over Australia. An estimated $20million lost and to add salt to the wound much of that went to competitor airlines to take Virgin passengers. Qantas has had an horrific time this year, with multiple mechanical failures the last couple of months alone really driving them into the headlines.
Qantas have been outsourcing their maintenance more and more over the past couple years and strangely enough their incident rate seems to be rising at a relative pace. Coincidence?
Outsourcing is a credibly and, if done correctly, reliable means of cost cutting. The problem today is that far to many industries are seeing it as a silver bullet and making decision based on the bottom line alone. Profit now, fallout later. The people responsible for measuring and mitigating risk, the CIO’s and CTO’s of these companies, are under constant pressure to do more with less. Risk awareness can start to skew when the the last line comes from the CEO who is solely focused on maximizing profits during his ‘bonus years’ without understanding the technical consequences involved down the line.
For Virgin, fingers are being pointed and people being sued, but the damage is already done and no amount of scape goating will override the fact that these companies let something slip. Like the rest, they failed in due diligence. They didn't dot their i’s or cross their t’s. Their public perception has taken a massive nosedive and they’re scattering to save what face they have left.
Some will fair better than others in the fallout, only time will tell. Ironically, their best chance of PR reprieval will be engaging customers and the general public through the best means available – Digital. Online, Digital Social media engagement will be the telling difference between the winners and losers in the tale of public perception polls.
For their sake, I hope they’ve outsourced their social media campaigns to the right people.