Many business executives believe "offshoring" to be the destiny of any company that wants to remain competitive. Labor costs can be reduced by 25-30% or more, and companies across the country are doing it. How can responsible corporate officers not consider the offshoring option for their companies? But what are the real benefits and the pitfalls of offshoring? When does it make sense to pursue outsourcing, and how can you safely take advantage of lower cost resources in other countries without risk or loss of quality?
Background:
Moving jobs to cheaper work forces is nothing new. Even as recently as a few decades ago, significant segments of the manufacturing sector were transferred to locations such as Mexico, where labor was cheaper. Although
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Only 5 to 10 percent are using offshoring for complex projects and mission-critical operations. However, this is likely to change.
Sixty-four percent of finance executives polled recently responded that they planned to do more offshoring in the next two years. A great portion of recently offshored jobs paid $50,000 or more before being transferred overseas. Although much of the offshoring has been in the information technology area, call centers, finance functions, data entry, and human resource operations have also been outsourced.
Benefits:
There is no doubt that the primary benefit of offshoring is the cost savings. The ITAA estimates that outsourcing currently saves U.S. companies about $7 billion and that by 2008 the number will climb to $20 billion. The savings from offshoring varies. In the same survey cited above, over forty percent surveyed said they were saving as much as twenty percent or more. Nearly the same number are saving from ten to twenty percent.
Hazards:
The savings do not tell the whole story, however. Offshoring does have hazards which companies considering the option must
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Know what you want to accomplish and how much it should cost you.
· Offshore non-critical functions: Maintain the integrity of your core competencies by offshoring only non-critical functions. And start small. Just as you wouldn't jump in too deeply with a domestic company before gaining some history and confidence in the company, so should you be similarly cautious with offshoring partners.
· Know what to offshore: Software development, data entry, and transaction processing have been successful; customer service and voice interaction are more risky.
· Choose the right location: The type of work being outsourced will influence the location. India has gained a reputation for software development. Between 2003 and 2004 it has seen over a 30% growth in software and IT service exports, and by the year ending in March, 2004, Indian companies have earned $12.5 billion in technology exports. But India is not the only source of reliable but inexpensive labor. Countries such as China, the Philippines, Romania, Argentina, and even Ghana and Ireland are all centers for offshore operations of various
By 2004, more than 80 percent of U.S. executive boardrooms will have discussed offshore sourcing, and more than 40 percent of U.S. enterprises will have completed some type of pilot or will be sourcing IT (information technology) services. In fact, some of the biggest firms in the United States have been seriously discussing outsourcing recently. One of these companies being IBM, the world's biggest computer maker, discussed saving about $168 million beginning in 2006 by moving thousands of programming jobs overseas, according to internal information provided. U.S. businesses, battered by the recent three year bear market in stocks and an economy struggling to find its footing, have already developed a taste for super cheap labor in developing countries, where workers are increasingly better trained especially if they've spent significant time working in the United States on temporary visas. The impact of overseas outsourcing could be significant; many economists doubt the trend is big enough yet to disrupt the broader U.S. economy. Imports of business services account for less than 1/20 of 1 percent of gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economy. At the least, it's not doing much to end the longest U.S. labor-market slump since World War II. More than 9.3 million people are
to be completed by countries who pay their employees as little as 10% of the average earnings in America. Although this is happening in many professions, it is extremely noticeable in engineering with the managers of these large companies hoping to save a net cost of 70 percent (Ron Hira). This strategy, which is commonly known as offshoring, has been increasing in popularity exponentially and there have been many debates as to whether this method of production is a benefit, or a burden. It is uncertain what the overall effect of offshoring will have on the American economy but the workers, namely engineers, should begin adapting.
It ends up putting our country farther into its trillions of dollars in debt. “Eight of the biggest U.S. technology companies added a combined $69 billion to their stockpiled offshore profits over the past year, even as some corporations in other industries felt pressure to bring cash back home (U.S)”. Eight of the top technology companies,including Microsoft, Apple and Google, now account for more than a fifth of the $2.10 trillion in profits that U.S. companies are holding overseas. “The amount of unrepatriated foreign profits reached $2.4 trillion, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, allowing companies to avoid up to $695 billion in taxes
While outsourcing may be beneficial to some of the companies partaking in it, the general consensus is that it ultimately proves to be harmful to the American workforce. The act of outsourcing and shifting many company call centers and technical support teams, or “low skill service jobs,” to foreign countries reduces jobs for those that could truly benefit from them within our own country. The unemployment rate has dramatically increased, and continues to rise, compared to what it has been in years past; yet there are numerous companies which still insist on handing over these “low skill service jobs” to people in other countries such as India. The most obvious and logical reason for outsourcing is reducing costs; people are working for
The debate over outsourcing in the U.S. is controversial among citizens and economists alike. There are many economists who believe that outsourcing is the next, most logical step in a free market economy (Mankiw & Swage, 2006). These economists believe that the market shifts according to supply and demand. An inherent feature of a free market economy is the free competition of goods and services where the goods and/or services go where the demand is the greatest. According to this view, there is a high demand for labor at a reduced cost and there is an almost endless supply of cheap labor overseas. An example of this would be that a call center attendant would be paid anywhere between twenty and twenty-five thousand dollars a year in compensation whereas the same worker in China would be paid approximately five thousand dollars in compensation per year (Mankiw & Swage, 2006). As anyone can see, there is a large difference between U.S. compensation and overseas compensation. These
Ferreira, J., & Prokopets, L. (2009). Does offshoring still make sense? Supply Chain Management Review, 13(1), 20-n/a., pp 1-5, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/221135949?accountid=12085
Outsourcing is a method used by many corporations in which their products are manufactured in foreign countries often for cheaper labor.This method method of productions has it’s pros and cons.
In today’s society, outsourcing has become a very critical and controversial issue to companies and other countries. Outsourcing is known as offshoring as an organization’s use of an outside organization for a broad set of services. As technology continues to grow and advance more, outsourcing becomes more popular. Many American white collar jobs are being taken over by foreign countries around the world. Almost every occupation or career in the United States has some effect of the outsourcing. As a result, many Americans become unemployed and financially challenged; being that outsourcing can increase the United States unemployment rate. Employees who live in the US rather keep jobs in the country to create more opportunities. On the other hand, few stakeholders
Throughout my paper, my point is to portray the effect of the outsourcing of American occupations abroad. There are two strong arguments with outsourcing: one that accepts the handiness and profits of the outsourcing and the other that energetically restricts outsourcing and focus on its negatives. Government organizations accept that outsourcing may decrease the expense of the assembling of items and give administrations less expensive cost, and others feel that outsourcing has triggered huge layoffs and loss of jobs. America needs to cease outsourcing due to the negative effects it has on our country. Outsourcing takes occupations away from Americans, causes considerably more economic issues, and can lessen the quality of materials.
If we cannot count on American companies to provide Americans with jobs, just whom can we count on? The unemployment rate hit 10.2% in October 2009. This is only the second time since WWII that joblessness in America has topped 10%. Certainly the use of technology to increase productivity accounts for some of the unemployment rate; however, another major factor in the high unemployment rate is companies engaging in offshoring (“10% jobless is tougher than it used to be,” 2009, p. A7).
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.
China is one of our biggest labor competitors. The reason many US companies go to China for outsourcing is again, because of their workforce’s willingness to operate at low costs. Michael Zimmerman describes this as a disparity in worker “tolerance”. Where the low wages found in China are “far lower than U.S.
As the world becomes increasing dependent on information technology (IT) products and services, the global IT services outsourcing industry has increased exponentially. Efforts to reduce costs and focus more on their core competencies have corporations outsourcing and offshoring many of their IT services. Offshoring of IT services have been growing at 40 to 50 percent a year. Brazil, like India, has stepped up to the challenge and has begun a campaign to build a strong international competitive position in the IT offshoring
This strategic report of ANZ’s offshoring strategy examines the effectiveness and drivers of ANZ’s decision to move towards outsourcing internationally, analyses the impact of ANZ’s offshore programs on stakeholders, explores key risks and opportunities and evaluates the success of ANZ’s offshore system.
Offshoring is the practice of relocating business processes to lower cost locations outside the country of origin. This is not a new practice for companies in the United States. Moving business processes to another country to take advantages of lower operating costs and cheap labor seems like a great idea. However, the dilemma for a company is whether the benefits of offshoring outweigh the risks. This dissertation will begin by briefly reviewing the history of offshoring. Next, it will examine the various advantages and disadvantages associated with offshoring. Thirdly, it will explore the growing trends of backshoring and nearshoring in situations where