Understanding Outsourcing
Outsourcing is the delegation of tasks or jobs from internal production to an external entity. At present standards, it has become more related to hiring the services of staff overseas where salaries are markedly low as compared to the local existing standards. It is primarily done by companies to save money, improve quality or free company resources for more important activities.
Low-cost countries such as China, India and Venezuela continue to attract companies to move things offshore and outside their own boundaries. However, outsourcing should not only be seen as a cost-cutting maneuver but also as a way to produce important strategic benefits. One thing that is slowly being recognized is that there are savings to be gained in sourcing knowledge and talent as there are cost savings in sourcing things.
The sourcing of knowledge and technology provides access to better processes or efficiencies as well as more efficient management procedures. Outsourcing opens the way to make use of specific specializations of entities that would otherwise not be available. More and more companies are starting to realize that the probability for...