Outsource Work to Insource Success!

The definition of outsourcing is ‘an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for an existing internal activity’. Simply stated, outsourcing means contacting a third party to undertake activities within a company because the third party offers an undeniable incentive for undertaking the work. The incentive could be cost cutting, efficiency or optimizing. The dual advantage of outsourcing is that it lets the company which has outsourced its activities, to concentrate on the activities it is better at, thereby increasing their expertise on the issue (and potentially becoming third parties for other companies to contact in regards to their specialties). There are many reasons for outsourcing. Some of the most prominent ones are:
- Maximizing the use of resources (external and internal).
- Access to world class facilities and experts.
- Initially controlling operational costs with the ultimate goal of reducing them to boost efficiency.
- Freeing internal resources for other critical work or specialization purposes.
- Ensuring time consuming functions get streamlined or have their efficiency increased by other means.
- Improving company emphasis on issues that it can gain a specialty in.
Outsourcing solutions is a retroactive way to look at outsourcing itself. It means a company that proactively offers its expertise (its ‘solutions’) to another company regarding the latter’s internal activities. Thus the company becomes one which outsources business solutions to companies. This becomes the specialty of the company and helps in aiding the other companies with their expertise. Furthermore, this aids in the gradual globalization of the world in general and of the world’s economy in particular. Now, everyone with a specialty can hawk it in the marketplace thereby improving the efficiency of the whole system while promoting optimization on a macro economical level. Besides, this is easily the best way to overcome xenophobia and encourage free trade sans borders.
Outsourcing solutions are further divided into two other categories:
Offshore solutions: As the name suggests, this means going completely out of your country’s zone to find someone with an outsourcing solution that you require. It could mean any country like the Philippines, India, Indonesia, etc. The advantages of this are much lower costs, increased expertise (the company really has to make a name for themselves and fight intense domestic competition to prove themselves), better performance, improved products and faster delivery. The only care that must be taken when employing offshore solutions is to thoroughly vet the company you are going for.
Onshore Solutions: Again, as suggested in the name itself, this is when you find a company to outsource your issue to, within your own country. The most major issue facing this kind of outsourcing is the increased service charge one has to deal with. Sometimes, there is no option as truly specialized issues require truly specialized outsourcing solution and they are usually found within the country itself (as the technology and expertise were developed there itself before being ‘outsourced’ to the world in general).
As the benefits far outweigh the costs, outsourcing solutions are fast becoming popular and emerging as the preferred way to deal with business issues and needs, as the costs involved are cheaper and the expertise is always better.
