Foxtons cuts IT costs with offshore move

Estate agent Foxtons has cut its IT budget by 40 per cent after outsourcing application development and support to India.

Pushing the services to LogicaCMG's offshore facility will save between £400,000 and £500,000 annually, and has allowed Foxtons to increase the size of its UK in-house IT team and train them to focus on more strategic activities.

Foxtons' bespoke Microsoft-based CRM and workflow applications were originally developed by LogicaCMG in the UK over an 18-month period. The roll-out across the firm's 14 offices around London was completed in June last year.

The offshore move has now allowed Foxton's inhouse IT department to focus on systems integration, network support, system performance tuning, and database management of core systems.

IT director Tim Carter told vnunet.com: "We had a huge number of Logica developers on-site. It was expensive so we wanted to look at other options but wanted to retain ownership.

"We continue to work on first-line support for the applications and still work on some areas of functionality, but it frees our in-house team to think more strategically about other in-house applications."

Foxtons evaluated a number of offshore IT services companies in Russia and Eastern Europe before finally deciding to stick with LogicaCMG, but using its offshore facility in India.

"We went to India based on the massive amount of skilled labour, the fact that English is the mother tongue, and because we'd already had a positive experience with our US company," explained Carter.

But Carter warned that visits to offshore facilities are an essential part of the evaluation process. "It helps you understand the nature of the beast. I absolutely recommend it," he said.