The Practice of Outsourcing

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“The practice of outsourcing has developed rapidly in recent years and has moved on from involving relatively peripheral activities such as catering and security as more and more companies have come to appreciate the role it can play in strategy” (Philip Sadler & James C. Craig, 2003). At the moment, outsourcing encompasses manufacturing, design, distribution, human resource management and information systems. Outsourcing takes place when a company makes a decision to consent to an outside company to take responsibilities for certain divisions of their operation. A company may possibly chose to make use of an outsourcing company to modernize their working performances, to boost the efficiency and the effectiveness of a division of their business operation or it may perhaps be to boost the resources in that division of the business which would lead to increased production and output. Nevertheless, the essential reason and condition, is to make available extra management support to the company to improve the cost effectiveness through the competently of their general operation. “The term “outsourcing” was first used in the 1980’s and described the contracting out of information systems (Espino-Rodríguez & Padrón-Robaina, 2006). Today the concept of outsourcing is no longer limited to information systems, but is known in combination with all possible business functions that are feasible for contracting them out to an external provider” (Espino-Rodríguez & Padrón-Robaina, 2006). Espino-Rodríguez & Padrón-Robaina, (2006) furthermore defined outsourcing as “a strategic decision that entails the external contracting of determined non-strategic activities or business processes necessary for the manufacture of goods or the provision of se...

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...e outsourced their customer technical support function to specialists. While this builds good sense from a cost and differentiation point of view, this may also mean a critical point of contract with the customer, and a source of essential feedback, is lost. Another example is at Dell, where a great deal of attention is paid to ensure that the specialist is responsible for providing technical support and onsite maintenance collecting and communicating all important data regarding product failures and other problems to Dell, so that Dell can design and enhance their products.

In conclusion, outsourcing has changed the ways in which companies interact. The lack for not understanding the range of outsourcing options and evaluating their implications in a specific enterprise-computing scenario, outsourcing missions run a towering risk of not being successful.

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