Critically analyse Globshop’s management of outsourcing and the future challenges. Will they be successful? Why or why not?
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Digital Transformation of Business and Society
Case 3: Global Software Outsourcing
Brian Nicholson
30 April, 2015
1. Introduction
Globshop, a global travel-retail company chose to offshore a large portion of its ICT work to India, initially as an effort to centralize and standardise ICT infrastructure and business processes across separate countries but eventually as a strategy of cost reduction because they were faced with environmental shocks that impacted their business. It was a successful arrangement owing to the effort made in managing the relationship between the company and the partner handling major parts of their ICT infrastructure. In the long run Globshop must balance the cost/benefits gained by offshoring elements of its informatics provision against the long term need to control those provisions especially when considering the future of ICT developments.
1.0 Globshop’s Management of Outsourcing
2.1 Top Management Support
2.2 Outsourcing Successes
2.3 Outsourcing Challenges
2.4 Outsourcing Problems
2.5 Key Management Issues
2.0 The Future of Outsourcing for Globshop
4. Why Globshop may not be Successful
4.1 The Side Effects that may Negate the Future Benefits of Outsourcing to Globshop
Outsourcing Globshop’s IT functions because the economy had hit them hard and it appeared to make good sense but it had certain
After analyzing all these risks and criteria Id like to present some points to demonstrate why we should go for outsourcing:
Despite that an excessively excellent image of outsourcing was provided to individuals one or two of years back, the truth check they were confronted with shattered the dream badly. Recent statistics reveal that over four-hundredth corporations are concerned either in experimenting or are already engaged in shifting their services overseas in search of low-cost labor and services that are being provided by countries like China and Bharat. Such efforts have left native market labor at extreme disadvantage wherever they're finding it vastly tedious to create each ends meet, leave behind the back-breaking burden of taxes they're being obligatory to. With over four-hundredth major company executives registering their opinion by discouraging the method of outsourcing the controversy that was antecedently being won by the
The dawn of the outsourcing era. Many large U.S. corporations cultivates outsourcing faster than we can imagine. The trend that began in the late 1970 and picked up speed in the 1900s with the opening trade with China, India, and Eastern Europe (“Outsourcing: What’s the true Impact”). In its broadest sense, outsourcing is simply contracting out functions that had been done in-house—a longtime U.S. practice (“Globalization: Threat or Opportunity”). Subsequently, outsourcing is an essential part of globalization; and it is the combination of markets through the cooperation of internalization, federal, and state governments with corporate companies to produce products on a reduce production cost, and offer services on lower labor cost. When a U.S. manufacture product, and buys material from an intermediate supplier from out of the country rather than producing them in-house, that is what is called outsourcing. Also, when U.S. corporation hires outside contractor out-of-the-country to do U.S. call center services for less labor cost that is outsourcing. When a company deals out its operational task, such as payroll, accounting, and software operations that is outsourcing. Obviously, all of these examples seem to benefit and in favor of the corporations. To get the clear understanding of outsourcing for major corporation perspective, I have interviewed IKEA’s U.S. Deputy Retail Country Manager Rob Olson about outsourcing—Swedish
The IT Service industry has expanded rapidly. Many companies worldwide have made the decision to outsource this industry to offshore companies. Worldwide demand has increased growth to 40 to 50 percent on an annual compounded rate basis. Many developing nations like Latin America and Asia have made an attempt to obtain some of the IT offshoring business from countries like the United States because it is seen as not only a source for
The only means for the IT companies to maintain business and to have minimal losses was to transfer their services overseas to India. Nonetheless, many of the people who had lost their IT jobs saw this as a disadvantage since they were the ones who had to either find another job that matched their skills or had to obtain new skills. Along with this, they, along with the majority of the workforce, saw outsourcing as something harmful to the American economy and that it caused increase in cost (Easterls, 166). These outlooks are not necessarily true, however.
In 2004, Global Information Systems, Inc. began to put into motion the consideration of offshoring 3,000 jobs from here in the U.S to company locations in China, India and Brazil. These were highly compensated job positions. About half of GIS is separated into a division known as Global Services Divisions. A considerable portion of GSD’s business came from customers outsourcing their business process needs. GSD began to seek ways to cut costs and improve performance by “offshoring” certain activities in order to present the most attractive value proposition to potential customers.
According to Corbett, trace back to the early 1990s, outsourcing came into practice for the first time. It was a time when severe depression covered around the U.S. and even those most competitive of its businesses suffered significantly. “Companies used outsourcing then to help streamline their operations and to regain their competitive strength. The result was an unprecedented period of economic growth during the latter half of the 1990s. as we enter the mid-2000s, today’s challenges may be even more pressing than those of a decade ago.” (Corbett, 15) It is the general result rather than a snapshot combined by a few specific evidences. This short revision objectively indicates that offshore outsourcing is not that threatening as proponent claimed. Organizations has benefited from this practice. And that is the reason offshore outsourcing continued and developed. History is a giant that people can stand on its shoulder. In the background of Globalization, information technology plays an important role. In the past, offshore outsourcing has contributed to the growth and development in the manufacture industry, as a sub category of offshore outsourcing, IT projects offshore outsourcing can also contribute a lot to the growth and development in the IT
Office Supply Incorporated (OSI) is a company in crisis, with challenges in its cost structure and poor IT performance. Outsourcing to Technology Infrastructure Solutions (TIS) is an opportunity to both reduce costs and complexity for the firm, but first must consider whether outsourcing is a good strategic fit for OSI. Outsourcing is known as the practice of turning over responsibility of some or all of organizations information systems to a foreign firm in order to stay competitive. Outsourcing is not new to the business world, as it dominated the manufacturing sector the past couple of decades. There are various advantages and disadvantages. Advantages include lower costs, better quality, and downsizing to focus on the
The origins of many outsourcing endeavors begin as part of a strategic planning session during a period of lean years for a company or anticipation of a prolonged impending down-cycle. This is a time-period when the organization does not have a viable competitive product to offer in the market or the
The decision to outsource the critical infrastructure platform of an enterprise, which often includes support for enterprise applications essential for the business ot function, is one with long-range, strategic implications. The role of the CIO is quickly changing to be a strategist first and technologist second, concentrating on how IT infrastructure can be successfully used for aligning IT resources to strategic plans and programs. This decision to outsource a critical component of the overall architecture needs to balance the cost reductions possible on the one hand and the potential to augment internal expertise on the other. This is a complex decision that needs to take into account the business case, cultural factors, IT-based technology factors, and managerial implications as well. The intent of this analysis is to provide guidance to CIOs who need to make this decision and emerge with a stronger IT infrastructure capable of getting their enterprises to their goals and objectives.
A globalizing economy along with cheap telecommunications technology is making it effortless for countless occupations that were formerly invulnerable to offshoring to be sent overseas. As globalization advances, the off shoring movement is likely to escalate as well. Nonetheless, numerous manufacturing companies such as Caterpillar, Bosh, and Phillips have disclosed that they will return part of their off-shored production to their home countries.(When Manufacturing moves back 1) Throughout this paper I will discuss the politics of offshoring and re-shoring production as well as reflect on globalized production and how these concepts will play out politically.
Page 2 of 4 customers that rely on the consistent availability of OSI’s products. Therefore, the successful outsourcing of OSI’s IT infrastructure would not pose a threat to the fundamental business strategy and could even help reduce risks in their highly competitive market. In analyzing the factors that could make outsourcing IT infrastructure to TIS valuable to OSI, it’s useful to consider Carr’s three main “Rules for IT Management.” The first of these rules says to “spend less,” as more is not necessarily better when it comes to a commodity input such as IT. In outsourcing, TIS will provide cost savings to OSI in a few main ways. First, there would be a lower capital investment in hardware for OSI, as these costs could be diverted into operating expenses paid on a monthly basis to TIS. Moreover, these operating expenses could be based around a “per-transaction” model so that their costs could more closely follow fluctuations in the market. This means that if one month OSI saw a reduction in online sales and thus a corresponding reduction in server usage, OSI’s costs could scale with
In relation to operations and innovation, Ghemawat calls for companies to, “be more ruthless about terminating loss makers”. A key focus area here is in the operations and the supply chain. Organizations who realized the practice of offshoring were more than just sending products overseas to be created, they were able to build relationships and foster true lines of leadership. They created opportunities for meaningful measurement and the capability to further innovate and streamline across their supply chain.
The pioneering success of GE’s experiment in outsourcing brought other companies in emulating it as a recognition of the fact that outsourcing added value by way of cost reduction and better labour (Anandkumar & Subhasish Biswas 2008).
Those organizations that have already moved toward outsourcing suggest that there are still many ways in which to ensure that the organization retains control over these critical areas. It is true that some still believe that there are no outsource vendors that are truly global in terms of their inventory management and logistics capabilities - that