Monday, July 14, 2008

Adopt the Global Outsourcing Model to stay competitive

Is your organization falling back due to increased competition? Is your organization coming down on the ladder of success? Are you suffering from reduced productivity and increased expenses? Are you worried about competing in the flat world? If your answer is yes to the following questions, global outsourcing could be the answer that can solve all your problems. In today’s world an organization cannot survive by only adopting offshoring, outsourcing or insourcing. Adopting only one entity cannot help your organization to gain a competitive edge in the global playing field.
So what must organizations do to remain productive and competitive? The answer to this question is “global outsourcing” Global outsourcing can be defined as a blend of onsite, offshore and nearshore outsourcing solutions in order to achieve strategic business solutions. So how can your organization adopt the global organization model? Organize a meeting with your employees and discuss which business processes can be done offshore, which can be done through nearshoring and which processes need not be outsourced. After deciding on this, your organization can adopt the global outsourcing model.
These following guidelines can help your organization in adopting the global outsourcing model:
1. Perform core business processes onsite
Perform core business processes in-house. Study your organization’s business processes and find out which processes are being performed the best. Do not outsource these processes. Performing your core business functions in-house can enable your organization to exercise greater control.
2. Offshore non-core business processes
Analyze all the processes conducted within your organization and identify the processes that can be outsourced. Accounting services, editing services, customer support services are all integral to your business, but are not part of your core business functions. These services are best outsourced, as when you outsource these services, you can save on time and effort and also benefit from reduced operating costs and increased productivity, Offshoring can also give you access to specialized services in areas which are not part of your domain.
3. Choose nearshore outsourcing for processes that are best done within your country
Although outsourcing has a lot of benefits, there are some processes that can be best done within your country. When certain business processes are done by partners who reside in your country, you can get access to services at a faster turnaround time and it can save you the trouble of shifting your processes to another country, training people and constantly keeping in touch to ensure that your work is being carried out according to your specifications. By choosing nearshoring, you can easily communicate with your partner and there would be no cultural differences to handle.

1 comment:

Arjun said...

Organizations that outsource are seeking to realize benefits or address the following issues:

* Cost savings. The lowering of the overall cost of the service to the business. This will involve reducing the scope, defining quality levels, re-pricing, re-negotiation, cost re-structuring. Access to lower cost economies through offshoring called "labor arbitrage" generated by the wage gap between industrialized and developing nations.
* Cost restructuring. Operating leverage is a measure that compares fixed costs to variable costs. Outsourcing changes the balance of this ratio by offering a move from variable to fixed cost and also by making variable costs more predictable.
* Improve quality. Achieve a step change in quality through contracting out the service with a new service level agreement.
* Knowledge. Access to intellectual property and wider experience and knowledge.
* Contract. Services will be provided to a legally binding contract with financial penalties and legal redress. This is not the case with internal services.
* Operational expertise. Access to operational best practice that would be too difficult or time consuming to develop in-house.
* Staffing issues. Access to a larger talent pool and a sustainable source of skills.
* Capacity management. An improved method of capacity management of services and technology where the risk in providing the excess capacity is borne by the supplier.
* Catalyst for change. An organization can use an outsourcing agreement as a catalyst for major step change that can not be achieved alone. The outsourcer becomes a Change agent in the process.
* Reduce time to market. The acceleration of the development or production of a product through the additional capability brought by the supplier.
* Commodification. The trend of standardizing business processes, IT Services and application services enabling businesses to intelligently buy at the right price. Allows a wide range of businesses access to services previously only available to large corporations.
* Risk management. An approach to risk management for some types of risks is to partner with an outsourcer who is better able to provide the mitigation.
Outsourcing