SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : THE NEW JOBS : GETTING HELP FROM OUTSIDE : MANY FIRMS ARE HIRING SPECIALISTS TO MANAGE DATA

Consultant Ken McCrocklin believes that computer “outsourcing” will be to the 1990s what the rapid development of software was to the 1970s: a business worth billions.

“The software industry went from nothing to billions of dollars, and I think this is going to be the same type of thing,” said McCrocklin, whose Thousand Oaks consulting firm, Ke-Re, sells advice to companies that provide outsourcing.

Outsourcing is a catch-all term for a firm’s decision to farm out its computer data processing work, usually to a company that specializes in such information technology.

McCrocklin said he believes that outsourcing will create lots of jobs for technically trained workers in the next few years.

“As outsourcing continues to grow, there’s going to be much more demand for customer-service type people . . . who can help solve technical . . . or business application problems. . . . and for people in marketing who want to sell something new,” McCrocklin said.

In addition, there are jobs in outsourcing firms for:

* Information specialists and consultants with good business, accounting, human resource or manufacturing backgrounds who can help client companies figure out how to get the computerized information they need.

* Trainers to teach clients’ employees how to best use the new systems.

* Computer operators, programmers, systems analysts and executives.

Outsourcing has its roots in the computer time-sharing of the 1960s. Depending on who is defining it, it also includes entrenched practices such as facilities management, in which one company contracts to operate another’s computer, and more recent innovations in which companies sell their computers and networks, and sometimes transfer their data processing staffs, to outsourcing firms.

This newer form of outsourcing got its biggest boost in 1989 when Eastman Kodak decided to transfer its data processing functions to IBM, Businessland Inc. and Digital Equipment Corp. for $500 million over three years.

As part of that deal, IBM is building a new facility in Rochester, N.Y., that will combine five separate Kodak data processing operations, which will be owned and operated by IBM.

Dozens of other companies have made similar moves.

* Foodmaker of San Diego, which operates fast-food chains, contracted with Litton Computer Services to run its data processing.

* H. J. Heinz has outsourced its data processing operations to Genix Enterprises.

* First Fidelity Bancorp, in New Jersey, shifted all of its data processing last year to Electronic Data Systems Inc.

* Hyatt Hotels has contracted out its payroll.

“What’s happening is that chairmen of the board are saying, ‘I don’t need someone in house to do this,’ ” McCrocklin said.

Their object is to save money and headaches.

“You used to be able to run a (data processing) shop for a million bucks. Now, it costs a Fortune 500 company probably $100 million,” McCrocklin said.

It’s also a problem for companies that are not in the computer business to keep up with rapidly developing computer technologies.

“The rate at which new technology is being made available is getting faster and faster,” said Mike Simmons, senior vice president of North American operations for El Segundo-based Inference Corp., a builder of artificial intelligence systems used for everything from credit-card approvals to determining whether the Soviet Union is testing nuclear weapons.

In a large corporation, management information systems (MIS) managers may already be responsible for literally thousands of systems at various stages of technology.

But vendors are always showing up with more of the latest and greatest, Simmons said, helping to create lives of constant turmoil for MIS managers, who are frequently told to spend less and provide more.

Not surprisingly, slightly more than half of all MIS managers have lost their jobs in the past five years, Simmons said.

In a curious way, outsourcing can help keep the peace at a company, by giving the MIS managers somebody--namely, the outsourcing vendor--to kick around.

“MIS managers don’t have anybody to beat up,” Simmons said. “They’re getting beat up all the time.”

Outsourcing also has a more profound advantage. It allows non-computer companies to concentrate on their main businesses rather than data processing.

Experts say companies that outsource can save 15% to 40% of their data processing budgets, depending on how efficiently their data processing operations were run to begin with.

Outsourcing firms offer expertise and economies of scale.

Some, such as Dallas-based EDS, have bought shares in struggling companies to get their outsourcing work.

Outsourcing vendors gamble that they can do a better job than the company did for itself, providing a bargain to the company while making a profit.

To make sure that they’re not getting in over their heads, outsourcing firms study a prospective clients’ problems--for free--before committing themselves.

Estimates of the scope of outsourcing vary widely.

One industry publication, Telecommunications Products and Technology, recently estimated that the market for outsourcing--not counting facilities management--is less than a billion dollars a year.

But Input, a Mountain View, Calif.-based computer consulting firm, pegged outsourcing operating revenues last year at nearly $6 billion.

John Oltman, worldwide managing partner of integration services for Andersen Consulting of Chicago, predicted that more than half of all large, multinational corporations will use outsourcing by the middle of this decade.

A major McCrocklin client, Litton Computer Services of Woodland Hills, began by offering services to its parent aerospace company and found that it had a lot of computer power left.

It decided to market its computer expertise commercially, said McCrocklin, who until recently was vice president for West Coast operations of Atlanta-based Management Science America, the largest independent software house in the world.

Litton, he said, is “into that business full steam ahead now. They believe they can go from $30 million to $300 million in a few years.”