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New Delhi, April 10 Indian offshore providers eyeing continental European IT business need to change their risk-averse attitude, and invest in building sizeable local capabilities to win European deals, a report by Forrester Research said.

“European firms are interested in sending their work offshore, but at the same time need more confidence to do so,” said the report ‘Offshoring Strategies For Continental European Firms’, based on recent interactions with Pan-European firms as well as Indian and MNC offshore providers.

“We found that most pan-European firms are still not fully convinced of the offshore model’s suitability or benefits for their business, while offshore IT providers are yet to have enough capability on the continent. Several European firms sent large teams to India during the past six months as a way to test the offshore waters, but we found that these initiatives lacked a solid vision and strategy for the type of work to be sent offshore. But these firms are rapidly becoming more interested in sending work offshore as some service providers are working furiously to improve their European capabilities,” Forrester’s Senior Analyst, Mr Sudin Apte, said.

Forrester highlighted that both Indian and European offshore providers have problems helping their European clients go offshore. “We found that Indian providers still struggle to build up meaningful local presence — their risk-averse approach means that they won’t make even smaller local staff acquisitions unless they see a direct and immediate increase in their European sales books. Also, clients we spoke to complain that the Indian firms they’ve worked with so far often fail to demonstrate commitment to the service levels promised,” Mr Apte said.

In addition, European firms’ federated as well as relatively stringent and demanding procurement approach to offshore, unreasonable language fluency expectations from vendors, coupled with difficulties in getting the staff onshore to the client site for longer engagements due to Government regulations regarding visas, were some of the key obstacles listed in the report that service providers were facing in Europe.

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