Over 4 in 5 American CIOs likely to start outsourcing by end-June

FLORIDA, UNITED STATES — More than four in five (86%) Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in the U.S. said that they “would likely” outsource some of their functions by the end of June 2023.

According to a survey conducted by digital marketing and data consultancy firm Making Science, outsourcing will be more popular to CIOs in the coming months due to budget reductions and the tight labor market.

The surveyed leaders also believe that outsourcing makes them “flexible” and provides ample opportunity to adapt to dramatic changes in the event of an economic downturn.

Nearly half (47%) of CIOs surveyed also revealed that they are already working with freelancers/contractors, consulting companies, or staff augmentation companies.

The report also highlighted company size as a “determining factor” for outsourcing tech-related functions and roles. 

Companies with up to 1,000 employees reported the top reason for outsourcing as efficiency and productivity (54%). However, the top reason for companies with more than 5,000 employees is recruiting effort reduction (51%). 

For those who reported they are likely to be outsourcing tech-related functions, the function they are most likely to expect to outsource is Cloud Systems Administration (34%), followed by Quality Assurance (32%), Project Management (32%), and Data Engineering – ETL, BI / Data Visualizations, dashboards (32%). 

Less commonly, the anticipated outsourced functions reported include mobile development (26%) and web development (26%).