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Archive for the ‘Outsourcing’ Category

There is a great chance that you own a computer or any other piece of electronic equipment. There is also a great chance that you ran into some problems with these devices and called the manufacturer for technical support. There is a good chance that the technical support you called is located thousands of miles away from the company in another country.

This is called outsourcing. Companies today are now considering outsourcing their jobs in other countries, such as the Philippines, Mexico, India, and China because of cheap labor. The reason why outsourcing is very popular among companies today is because of cheap labor, quality services and it allows the company to focus more on important factors involved in letting the company grow.

Help desks, and technical support services aren’t the only outsourced jobs today. Now, companies are also outsourcing their payrolls, their business process, data entries, human resources and a lot more. Because of the growing competitiveness of other countries in the information technology, outsourcing companies are now widely available.

Here are some of the advantages of outsourcing services and the reason why companies are considering outsourcing their jobs:

• Lower personnel costs
• Allow the company to focus on more important factors
• Free up space in the company building for other important uses
• Increase productivity
• Effectively manage the jobs of a company
• Reduce cash flow
• Free up management time
• Increased company efficiency

However, with all the advantages of outsourcing, there are also disadvantages that you should consider. Here are some of the disadvantages that outsourcing will have:

• Loss of local jobs, particularly jobs related to customer service and technical fields
• The company losses direct control over the management
• Quality problems
• Slow response time, which can lead to frustration and anger of some of the customers
• Foreign agents sometimes have different accent that may be hard for local consumers to understand
• Slow resolution times
• Reduction of product sales because of frustrated customers or people who boycott a company’s products because they outsource

These are some of the disadvantages of outsourcing. However, if your target is cheap labor, you can definitely consider outsourcing. But you have to make sure that the quality of the services of an outsourcing company should be at par with your standards. For example, if you need a call center to be outsourced, you have to make sure that the employees of the call center company should be competent and qualified to get the job done. You should also consider the fact that they should be able to speak fluent English with an accent that is easy to understand.

Outsourcing has a lot of benefits that your company can take advantage of. However, before you outsource, you should first weigh the advantages and disadvantages and know whether outsourcing is for you.

If you want to provide jobs for your countrymen, then you shouldn’t consider outsourcing or you should consider outsourcing your company’s jobs to local outsourcing companies.

These are some of the things you should consider when you plan on outsourcing. You have to keep in mind that there are a lot of advantages as well as disadvantages in outsourcing. You have to be able to weigh it in order to arrive at a good decision in whether you want to outsource or not.

Does outsourcing work for your advantage or disadvantage?

For a layman (or an individual who understand the concept of outsourcing in a sea-level understanding), outsourcing is a complete waste of time and financial resources, which can end up with unwanted complications. Why assign work to other individuals if you know what will be good for your business? Why delegate the work to outsourcing professionals abroad if you can do much better right at your own territory? You know what is best for your business, and you don’t need other individuals to deal with things that you can handle by yourself, or with the help of in-house personnel.

For a politician, outsourcing will just be a political subject that can be argued on debates within the walls of Congress and newspapers. The issue will serve as a “fortified objection” to take away jobs from your own countrymen, making your business “unpatriotic”. Politician’s sympathy with regards to the outsourcing issue may win him a few votes in the upcoming election, nothing more than that.

However, it is the businessman who will be using the outsourcing process; not the layman, and definitely, not the politician. Thus, outsourcing for businessman is a “modern day boon”. Many businessmen are aware that outsourcing provides them the freedom of dumping all of their non-core yet important aspects of their business and delegating the work to an individual or group of individuals who can give justice to the process. Thus, it will leave businessmen free from additional responsibilities and focus instead on the core of their business. On the other hand, the outsourcing firm can also focus on the specific work delegated to them, thus a cost-efficient business operation. That is one of the primary advantages of outsourcing.

Another enticing advantage of outsourcing is being one of the cost-effective measures that you can take for your business. Businessmen are aware that information technology (IT) services and human resource in United States or in Europe are expensive, which can affect the way they hire additional manpower in case of business expansion. Outsourcing provides an option in getting highly-productive manpower in a cheaper rate. For instance, offshore outsourcing (delegating the work to off-shore destinations such as India and Philippines) is popular to U.S.-based businesses because of the cheap working rate. An ordinary American who will earn an average of $300 to $500 per month is just a small sum, but for Indians and Filipinos, they would be quite happy with this salary range considering the currency conversion rate. Thus, this is a “win-win” solution for the company you are outsourcing to as well as for your business.

Another convincing advantage of outsourcing is saving substantial amount of money in terms of the development of some aspects of your business (such as IT development). Since outsourcing involves reduced expenditures on your part, you will be able to maximize the value of your money to have your IT services developed into the latest and most powerful modern information tool. In addition, you will avoid recruiting new personnel who will handle the development as well as training them, thus reducing the recruitment and training cost for your business. The purchase of necessary technology will now be handled by the outsourcing company, thus saving money in the long run which you can use on other important business aspect.

There are other advantages of outsourcing, yet the aforementioned advantages are the most noted ones. Do not be misled by rumors and gossips about outsourcing. You are the business owner—and you know what is good for your business.