The Outsourcing: Prospect, Paradigm and Pedagogy (original) (raw)

The Evolution of Offshore Outsourcing in India

Global Business Review, 2010

Outsourcing is an age-old practice whereas offshore outsourcing is relatively new. Issues related to offshore outsourcing came into centre stage along with the process of globalization. Offshore outsourcing of services is the result of economic and technological developments across countries. This became popular in India after the economic liberalization process. The present article makes an attempt to lay an integrative ground work for understanding outsourcing, including its evolution, theoretical developments and future trends. The article presents a comprehensive framework of critical dimensions of outsourcing as well as offshore outsourcing in India along with the comparative advantages and disadvantages of offshore outsourcing in today's time.

BPO: The Strategic Alternative for India

South Asia Economic Journal, 2005

In an era of change, restructuring and growing, business is becoming more competitive and demanding day by day. Utmost importance is given to profitability at every level and by all processes. If any business process or function is nonproductive or non-profitable, that is, non-core but necessary business processes, then the better strategic alternative is to outsource that process to a firm that specializes in that function, ensuring better economical performance. India, with its cost and time differential advantages, backed by an educated workforce, could commit quality of service. India is fast emerging as a preferred destination for outsourcing. Business process outsourcing (BPO)/information technology enabled service (ITES) is emerging as the next big opportunity for India after collapse of the dot com bubble and the economic slowdown. The present study is an attempt to elucidate the evolutionary cycle of outsourcing. A SWOT analysis has been carried out to evaluate India's competitiveness to meet global standards and thereby emerge as a preferred destination for outsourcing.

Development of a business process outsourcing industry in Kenya: critical success factors; policy brief

2009

Kenya is preparing itself to enter into the global and vibrant Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT Enabled Services (ITES) market. It however lacks empirical evidence and tailored research to guide its policy decisions and investment options. There is demand and specific requests from the government and key stakeholders in the sector for this type of information. This policy brief is a synthesis of a study whose aim was to provide evidence and a deeper understanding of the imperatives for success in this industry to better inform Kenya's policy decisions and investment choices. It was carried out through a case study method to establish the critical success factors in four vendor countries (India, South Africa, Mauritius and Kenya) with relation to the policy, legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks; human resource issues; youth and gender issues; and various forms of incentives. The study also researched on the outsourcing issues in two client countries (UK and USA).

Building Competencies Through Maintenance Outsourcing in Manufacturing Firms: A Case Study of an Indian Glass Company

Organisations have put in significant effort to improve quality, service and flexibility and reduce cost to achieve world-class performance. These firms are striving for new competitive advantages to build upon their manufacturing capabilities. For many firms, part of this effort has included an examination of the activities of the maintenance function. Since maintenance is an integral part of manufacturing, it can significantly influence a firm’s competitiveness. The desire to reduce costs and improve service levels has led many companies to review the way they do their maintenance work and to come up with new solutions and strategies to develop and increase their competitiveness. Outsourcing is one of these strategies that can lead to greater competitiveness and hence many organisations are now outsourcing maintenance besides several in-house activities. Outsourcing focuses on two strategic ways of developing competitive advantage: first, concentrating the organisation’s resources and investments on what it does best i.e. the firm’s core competence and second, outsourcing all other activities for which the company has neither a strategic need nor a special capability. This paper, through an extensive literature review, examines the issues of outsourcing maintenance in manufacturing firms. The existing maintenance outsourcing frameworks in literature are critically examined. A five step framework that would allow efficient and effective implementation of outsourcing maintenance has been developed. Firms should first map maintenance activities in a logical area and then evaluate each of these activities critically on effectiveness required and risk involved in outsourcing. Once the activity to be outsourced is established, the next step is to document a proper maintenance outsourcing plan. It is also important to evaluate the outsourcer based on the skills and knowledge required for that activity. Having identified the outsourcer, a suitable maintenance outsourcing contract is to be agreed upon and then efforts are to be made for smooth handover of the contract. This framework is applied to a glass manufacturing firm which is contemplating outsourcing maintenance activities

Outsourcing the Business Services

2010

The nowadays international market of outsourcing services is relatively mature and with age comes wisdom ... Thus, on a grown market, choosing to outsource services can not only be justified by the strive to reduce costs but it aims to meeting more advanced objectives as accurate alignment with business strategies of the enterprise. As a result, outsourcing has reached new forms of expression that can help the enterprises to gain competitive advantage. In the context of a grown market, a new concept appears, namely the multisourcing which it refers to the outsourcing model of the future [1] that businesses must prepare to accept and use. This concept or model of the future refers to working with several suppliers, which are competitors in a spirit of trust and teamwork, in a collaborative process to maximize the benefits associated with outsourcing process.