Outsourcing

Outsourcing is a business practice in which services or job functions are farmed out to a third party. In information technology, an outsourcing initiative with a technology provider can involve a range of operations, from the entirety of the IT function to discrete, easily defined components, such as disaster recovery, network services, software development or QA testing. Companies may choose to outsource IT services onshore (within their own country), nearshore (to a neighboring country or one in the same time zone), or offshore (to a more distant country). Nearshore and offshore outsourcing have traditionally been pursued to save costs.

source: Daxx

Outsourcing was first recognized as a business strategy in 1989 and became an integral part of business economics throughout the 1990s. The practice of outsourcing is subject to considerable controversy in many countries. Those opposed argue that it has caused the loss of domestic jobs, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Supporters say it creates an incentive for businesses and companies to allocate resources where they are most effective, and that outsourcing helps maintain the nature of free-market economies on a global scale.

Outsourcing Services

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is an overarching term for the outsourcing of a specific business process task, such as payroll. BPO is often divided into two categories: back-office BPO, which includes internal business functions such as billing or purchasing, and front-office BPO, which includes customer-related services such as marketing or tech support. Information technology outsourcing (ITO), therefore, is a subset of business process outsourcing.

While most business process outsourcing involves executing standardized processes for a company, knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) involves processes that demand advanced research and analytical, technical and decision-making skills such as pharmaceutical R&D or patent research.

IT outsourcing clearly falls under the domain of the CIO. However, CIOs often will be asked to be involved in — or even oversee — non-ITO business process and knowledge process outsourcing efforts as well. CIOs are tapped not only because they often have developed skill in outsourcing, but also because business and knowledge process work being outsourced often goes hand in hand with IT systems and support.

History of Outsourcing

20th Century
Following the adding of management layers in the 1950s and 1960s to support expansion for the sake of economy of scale, corporations found that agility and added profits could be obtained by focusing on core strengths; the 1970s and 1980s were the beginnings of what later was named outsourcing. Kodak's 1989 "outsourcing most of its information technology systems" was followed by others during the 1990s. In 2013, the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals gave recognition to Electronic Data Systems Corporation's Morton H. Meyerson who, in 1967, proposed the business model that eventually became known as outsourcing.

IT-enabled services offshore outsourcing
Growth of offshoring of IT-enabled services, although not universally accepted, both to subsidiaries and to outside companies (offshore outsourcing) is linked to the availability of large amounts of reliable and affordable communication infrastructure following the telecommunication and Internet expansion of the late 1990s. Services making use of low-cost countries included

• back-office and administrative functions, such as finance and accounting, HR, and legal
• call centers and other customer-facing departments, such as marketing and sales services
• IT infrastructure and application development
• knowledge services, including engineering support, product design, research and development, and analytics.

Early 21st Century
In the early 21st century, businesses increasingly outsourced to suppliers outside their own country, sometimes referred to as offshoring or offshore outsourcing. Other options subsequently emerged: nearshoring, crowdsourcing, multisourcing, strategic alliances/strategic partnerships, strategic outsourcing.

From Drucker's perspective, a company should only seek to subcontract in those areas in which it demonstrated no special ability. The business strategy outlined by his slogan recommended that companies should take advantage of a specialist provider's knowledge and economies of scale to improve performance and achieve the service needed.

In 2009, by way of recognition, Peter Drucker posthumously received a significant honor when he was inducted into the Outsourcing Hall of Fame for his outstanding work in the field.

Limitations due to growth
Inflation, high domestic interest rates, and economic growth pushed India's IT salaries 10 - 15%, making some jobs relatively "too" expensive, compared to other offshoring destinations. Areas for advancing within the value chain included research and development, equity analysis, tax-return processing, radiological analysis, and medical transcription.

Offshore Alternatives
Japanese companies outsourced to China, particularly to formerly Japanese-occupied cities. German companies have outsourced to Eastern European countries with German-language affiliation, such as Poland and Romania. French companies outsource to North Africa for similar reasons.

For Australian IT companies, Indonesia is one of the major choice of offshoring destination. Near-shore location, common time zone and adequate IT work force are the reasons for offshoring IT services to Indonesia.

Growth of white-collar outsourcing
Although offshoring initially focused on manufacturing, white-collar offshoring/outsourcing has grown rapidly since the early 21st century. The digital workforce of countries like India and China are only paid a fraction of what would be minimum wage in the US. On average, software engineers are getting paid between 250,000 and 1,500,000 rupees (US$4,000 to US$23,000) in India as opposed to $40,000–$100,000 in countries such as the US and Canada. Closer to the US, Costa Rica has become a big source for the advantages of a highly educated labor force, a large bilingual population, stable democratic government, and similar time zones with the United States. It takes only a few hours to travel between Costa Rica and the US. Companies such as Intel, Procter & Gamble, HP, Gensler, Amazon and Bank of America have big operations in Costa Rica.

Unlike outsourced manufacturing, outsourced white collar workers can choose their working hours, and for which companies to work. Clients benefit from telecommuting, reduced office space, management salary, and employee benefits as these individuals are contracted workers. However, ending a government oursourcing arrangement has its difficulties too.

Reasons for outsourcing
While U.S. companies do not outsource to reduce high top level executive or managerial costs, they primarily outsource to reduce peripheral and "non-core" business expenses. Further reasons are higher taxes, high energy costs, and excessive government regulation or mandates.

Mandated benefits like social security, Medicare, and safety protection (OSHA regulations) are also motivators. By contrast, executive pay in the United States in 2007, which could exceed 400 times more than average workers — a gap 20 times bigger than it was in 1965 is not a factor.

Other reasons include reducing and controlling operating costs, improving company focus, gaining access to world-class capabilities, tax credits, freeing internal resources for other purposes, streamlining or increasing efficiency for time-consuming functions, and maximizing use of external resources. For small businesses, contracting/subcontracting/"outsourcing" might be done to improve work-life balance