Introduction
The word ‘outsourcing’ gained popularity in the information era though the activity was undertaken by many traders and entrepreneurs from time immemorial. Though the word is used to connote different meanings generally, outsourcing literally means sub-contracting an assignment to a third party. Mainly it is between organizations that assign the work of their clients to another organization in order to maximize the benefits and reduce the time consumption. It is a planned strategy that provides jobs to millions of personnel across the globe and helps organizations to reap benefits from it. Today’s technology and developments have literally crushed the time zones and this has helped almost all organizations, institutions, business houses, and media to outsource talent from across the globe.
Discussion
Whichever be the firm or entrepreneurship that advocates outsourcing, they do it by realizing the scope of this emerging business. Advantages are many and each organization benefits from it in different ways. Some of the major reasons that motivate firms to outsource are cost regulation, to get the jobs done through experts who specialize in a particular field, employee management, the ease of maintaining a virtual office when compared to a traditional one, technology-driven planning, availability of multi-talented personnel, improved quality, access to the vast pool of knowledge and perspectives that improves variety, and much more. The fact that outsourcing firms are mushrooming across the length and breadth of developing countries like India and China are fine examples of this phenomenon. Apart from all these material benefits, the actuality is that almost any kind of job can be outsourced to the right candidate in this new age era. From R&D activities to man-managing, from basic to high-risk category jobs, outsourcing is emerging to be the new-found work culture that allows the management and its employees to work under relaxed yet beneficial mode with transparent details. It creates more of an open world and unites the whole world as one as distances melt and borders merge.
Low-cost sourcing destinations have always been of much amusement for the world’s developed countries. India and China come first as both the countries together produce more than 2 lac engineers and software professionals every year. The less adequate work atmosphere in these two countries and the much ambitious minds of these young talents have seen them flying to conquer new heights with their immigration to the US and UK. A less noticed phenomenon is that much more equally talented such young workforce have stayed back to work from home. This explains the soaring number of professionals who sit back in their home office and earn a handsome remuneration but in a much more relaxed and enjoyable way when compared to their slogging counterparts out in developed countries. The absence of discrimination which one needs to face in the developed countries, the outsourced jobs which fetch them handsome money back up, to work from their homeland are all some of the major reasons why most of today’s professionals are getting into outsourcing.
Exclusive outsourcing firms are now taking up the roles of consultants who used to be the middlemen for organizations. Today, these firms are backed up with extraordinary talents, a technology system and a well-coordinated team that stay alert to all the workflow round the clock. Though quality risk, service-related problems, efficiency, time-bound delivery are all stated as the problems of outsourcing, most of them are rectified at regular intervals due to the active participation of supervision at all levels of outsourcing. Specialization is one aspect that these outsourcing firms use to market themselves. Armed with specialized task forces for specialized work or a specialized field of operation, these organizations gain popularity and thrive amongst their overseas clients with their quality of work and time-bound presentations.
Outsourcing generally deals with four major sections; to plan the outsourcing activities and their possibility in a particular organization and strategically analyze it, to select an outsourcing organization that would suit the nature of the parent organization, to agree upon a contract by which the firms are legally bond with the parent company and thereby the rules and regulations of outsourcing are mutually agreed upon, to execute work orders to the evaluated outsourcing firm and to establish a formal working partnership between the two. Once the formal selection and planning procedures and the pricing and financial matters are discussed, the finer aspects come up that need fine-tuning between the parent organization and the outsourced one. This includes effective channeling of work, establishing proper coordination and proper coordination between the two firms, tracking the service providers at all times and monitoring their activities in order to maximize the output and to make the organization’s client avail the best from these specialists firms. Coordinating, such an army of the workforce and manpower at two levels calls for specialized skills that include negotiation, planning, ideating, assigning jobs, monitoring deadlines, evaluating quality, and mutual understanding of the terms and conditions. Offshored outsourcing or when work is assigned to the talents outside a particular country, which mainly is the case, the challenges are more pronounced as they need to cross the barriers caused by culture, mainly language, perspectives, proximity and relativity to certain factors and above all the time zone differences. But all said and done, outsourcing only has more of a positive side than a bleaker one as it is proving on a daily basis.
Conclusion
According to studies more than.7 million people work in the outsourcing industry every year across the globe with active participation from India and China. More developing as well as developed countries are moving towards adopting the same in their organization for the various advantages, outsourcing has created in a short span of time. Thanks to the advancing of technology, the developments in infrastructure, and above all the improving mindset and perspectives among people across the world, outsourcing is one phenomenon that is going to reap rewards by day and is here to stay. It is an answer to many problems that the new world has created like unemployment and underdeveloped sections of the world population.