Introduction:
In today’s competitive advantage firms which excel have to go achieve cost reduction, quality and delivery improvement, cycle time reduction, improved customer service and competitions from the market. As the organizations are looking for new ways to achieve competitive advantage and development global strategies and approaches become an attractive option. Many of the world top companies are going for the global sourcing strategies in order to reduce cost and in order to improve the performance of their global supply chains.
Supplier involvement has been an important development in global sourcing and as a focus on core competence within the organizations. Outsourcing has been used for the products within the companies where purchasing had the major role of ordering
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Tariffs, quotas, documentations for cross-border process and various kinds of international bills makes global sourcing a difficult challenge. Governments charge tariffs and quotas to earn revenue and to make foreign goods expensive to protect national interest. Another example of governments efforts to protect national interests are imposing several restrictions and trade bills. Cross-border procedures like customs duty impose heavy restrictions on international trade. Foreign exchange rates and currency fluctuations also pose a different set of problems. The maor challenges also depends on the firm’s managerial and demographic characteristics. US firms which procure products from Germany will be less worried about cultural difference than from those who source from Japan ( Czinkota and Ronkainen ,1993). And also US firms procuring products from Europe and Canada will be less worries about logistics than those buying from East Asia due to physical distances ( Monczka and Giunipero
Office of Industries, U.S. International Trade Commission.(2009).Export controls: an overview of their use, economic effects, and treatment in the global trading system. Retrieved from United States International Trade Commission http://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/working_papers/ID-23.pdf
In many cases outsourcing has proven to be beneficial for businesses. It can help a business’s management by allowing executives to focus on the core structure of the firm rather than every specific element. Production, manufacturing, or additional servic...
Wild, J. J., Wild, K. L., & Han, J. C. (2008). (CH2)Cross-Cultural Business and (CH5)International Trade,. International business: the challenges of globalization (4th ed., pp. 48, 61-62, 132, 136, 147). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.
but in international market the policies may differ and some of the raw materials is not
Other researchers have identified several outsourcing issues, trends and strategies that companies take in establishing and effectively managing their outsourcing activities (Sinderman 1995; Carney 1997). The trend is for outsourcing relationships to function more as partnerships. Outsourcing providers are taking increasing responsibility in realms that have traditionally remained in-house, such as corporate strategy, information management, business investment, and internal quality initiatives (Sinderman 1995; Carne...
In the 1960s through the 1970s, companies realized strong engineering, design, and manufacturing functions were strong market strategy keys to create and capture customer loyalty. As the demand for new products rose in the 1980s, these market requirements were to increase their flexibility and responsiveness to adapt existing products and processes or to develop new ones in order to meet customer needs. As manufacturing improved in the 1990s, managers began noticing material and service inputs involving suppliers and their major impact on an organization’s ability to meet customer needs. As a result of these changes, organizations now find that it difficult to manage their own organizations. First, they must be involved in the management of their network of all upstream firms that provide directly or indirectly, as well as the network of downstream firms, which are responsible for delivery and market service of the product to the end customer.
Many business owners and entrepreneurs are doubtful about the global opportunities available to their business. In other words, business owners don’t give consideration to the world markets, instead they tend think locally in terms of gaining customers. This doubt however is unfounded. The international trade commission reported that 70% of the world’s purchasing power and 95% of the world’s consumers are located outside of the United States, which means that there is a massive market that is currently untapped by 99% of business in America. In addition to doubt, there is the uncertainty about exporting to other countries, this uncertainty may stem from lack of knowledge about foreign trade and the international laws. A business owner may be uncertain about how, when, where, and to whom it is legal to ship their products. Although, this uncertainty is understandable it is not required for businesses that are conducting business legally within the United States, business owners should remain mindful of this so that they can push their uncertainties aside. The last factor that deters businesses from international trade is Fear. Fear that there will be unforeseen and uncontrollable issues with transporting goods such as: theft, loss, damages, diversions, and/or regulatory penalties that may be imposed on the business. Although, there is a
Outsourcing has been around for many years. In this paper, I will discuss some of the history of outsourcing, the good things about outsourcing, and the bad things about outsourcing. Outsourcing is important because many companies rely on it in order to get many different products and services to their facility on time and in good shape. Outsourcing is a huge part of the business industry today. Any business can be affected by outsourcing.
The organization has had to ensure that it has retail stores in many countries globally and website options in more than 100 countries. The company further enhances access of online stores in more than 37 countries which is accessible all the time and people are able to access the services regardless of their location. Globalization further affects the organization in the sense of international market management which requires it to engage in strictly global decision making. The organization’s production networks have been geared to enhancing global competition (Lüsted, 2012) .The Company is further good when it comes to seizing the opportunities available in global market. For the organization to find efficient as well as cheap means of production, it has to bargain hard so as to allow its contractors to have low profits. This mostly is consequential to the suppliers cutting corners with the use of cheap
Rao, K., and Young, R. R. (1994) Global supply chains: Factors influencing outsourcing of logistics functions. International journal of physical distribution and logistics management. Vol. 24. No. 6.
It is suggested for any organization to review, reassess any existing supply chain management or any delivery techniques, before developing a new supply chain method so that any exposure to high risk of failure is reduced. Somerset as a company taken advantage of outsourcing and transferred it product manufacturing to China leveraging low cost labor and raw material. The labor cost and other cheap material reduce Somerset overhead cost, but there is always the risk of not delivering product on time due to the foreign country political climate, change in tax and tariff and local
Why would a company go international? There are many reasons why companies would go international, but generally a company goes international so they can seek opportunities in domestic markets, or they seek solutions to problems that cannot be solved through domestic operations. There are many profitable possibilities by going internationally and these include greater profit potential, offers new locations to sell products, it may provide better access to needed raw materials, it may access to financial resources from many nations, and lastly it may allow labour-intensive activities to locate in countries with lower labour costs. For a small business to become an international business they must use five guidelines the first is global sourcing, exporting and importing, licensing and franchising, joint ventures, and wholly owned subsidiaries. The first two are market entry strategies and the remaining are direct investment strategies.
As pointed by Parsons A.L (2002), there was increasing dependent on the relationship and customers is demanding to receive high standard of products and services for them to sustain the business in the intense manufacturing environment. Besides, Xu et al. (2008) has highlighted that supplier is developing a long-term relationship with their crucial suppliers to increase the competitiveness and to establish an effective and efficient supply chain. Trend (2005) also mentioned that work closely in partnership with suppliers is the only way to survive in today’s competitive business environment.
Besides that, also important to consider there is the difference in shipping costs from different ports, as it will change the “landed cost” of the item, and the retail price and profit margin. Then, Problems encountered in international business larger and more complex than the problems faced in the domestic business. In example, the manager of an international organization decides to reduce costs and maximize the value-added. They must decide whether it is ethical to comply with all labor and environmental standards are found to be lower in less developed countries. In addition, they must decide which one foreign market to enter and should be avoided. The domestic business manager was not affected by this factor directly, but they will be affected by the economic downturn of international trade.
Currently in the global environment, there is a strong sense of competition that must be achieved through better performance, almost all firms are competing in international markets due to the reduction in barriers for capital and tariffs. With the new changes in both communication and technology, the consequences faced are that production processes are no longer within national boundaries but spread across (Debrah & Smith, 2002).