August 30, 2009

Insource and Outsource

OUTSOURCING
Outsourcing literally means getting source from outside. The term is referring to sub-contracting of a set of functions or processes by one organization or company to another, or to a group of people. The said organization is often in another location, or another country.

Outsourcing is an arrangement in which one company provides services for another company that could also be or usually have been provided in-house. Outsourcing is a trend that is becoming more common in information technology and other industries for services that have usually been regarded as intrinsic to managing a business. In some cases, the entire information management of a company is outsourced, including planning and business analysis as well as the installation, management, and servicing of the network and workstations. Outsourcing can range from the large contract in which a company like IBM manages IT services for a company like Xerox to the practice of hiring contractors and temporary office workers on an individual basis.

Outsourcing is practiced as a very good business strategy. Especially in the current economic scenario, since it enables a single organization to focus on most potential areas, in which they’re competent at. It also set the firm free from resource and labor intensive functions, which are now performed by trained personnel in a much lower costs. The processes or activities that are being outsourced could range from customer service and telemarketing, to IT management, software development, market research and even financial portfolio management.

Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering cost or making better use of time and energy costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of land, labor, capital, (information) technology and resources[citation needed]. Outsourcing became part of the business lexicon during the 1980s. It is essentially a division of labour.Out sourcing in the information technology field has two meanings One is to commission the development of an application to another organization, usually a company that specializes in the development of this type of application. The other is to hire the services of another company to manage all or parts of the services that otherwise would be rendered by an IT unit of the organization. The latter concept might not include development of new applications.

Outsourcing refers to a company that contract with another company to provide services that might be performed by in-house employees. Many of the large companies today outsource jobs such as, the very popular in the Philippines, call center services, e-mail services, and payroll. These jobs are handled by separate companies that are specialized in the certain service, and are mostly located overseas.

Outsourcing involves the transfer of the management and/or day-to-day execution of an entire business function to an external service provider. The client organization and the supplier enter into a contractual agreement that defines the transferred services. Under the agreement the supplier acquires the means of production in the form of a transfer of people, assets and other resources from the client. The client agrees to procure the services from the supplier for the term of the contract. Business segments typically outsourced include information technology, human resources, facilities, real estate management, and accounting. Many companies also outsource customer support and call center functions like telemarketing, CAD drafting, customer service, market research, manufacturing, designing, web development, print-to-mail, content writing, ghostwriting and engineering. Offshoring is the type of outsourcing in which the buyer organization belongs to another country.

Outsourcing and offshoring are used interchangeably in public discourse despite important technical differences. Outsourcing involves contracting with a supplier, which may or may not involve some degree of offshoring. Offshoring is the transfer of an organizational function to another country, regardless of whether the work is outsourced or stays within the same corporation or company.

With increasing globalization of outsourcing companies, the distinction between outsourcing and offshoring will become less clear over time. This is evident in the increasing presence of Indian outsourcing companies in the United States and United Kingdom. The globalization of outsourcing operating models has resulted in new terms such as nearshoring, noshoring, and rightshoring that reflect the changing mix of locations. This is seen in the opening of offices and operations centers by Indian companies in the U.S. and UK. A major job that is being outsourced is accounting. They are able to complete tax returns across seas for people in America.

Multisourcing refers to large outsourcing agreements (predominantly IT). Multisourcing is a framework to enable different parts of the client business to be sourced from different suppliers. This requires a governance model that communicates strategy, clearly defines responsibility and has end-to-end integration.

Strategic outsourcing is the organizing arrangement that emerges when firms rely on intermediate markets to provide specialized capabilities that supplement existing capabilities deployed along a firm’s value chain (see Holcomb & Hitt, 2007). Such an arrangement produces value within firms’ supply chains beyond those benefits achieved through cost economies. Intermediate markets that provide specialized capabilities emerge as different industry conditions intensify the partitioning of production. As a result of greater information standardization and simplified coordination, clear administrative demarcations emerge along a value chain. Partitioning of intermediate markets occurs as the coordination of production across a value chain is simplified and as information becomes standardized, making it easier to transfer activities across boundaries.

Due to the complexity of work definition, codifying requirements, pricing, and legal terms and conditions, clients often utilize the advisory services of outsourcing consultants (see sourcing advisory) or outsourcing intermediaries to assist in scoping, decision making, and vendor evaluation.

The competitive pressures on firms to bring out new products at an ever rapid pace to meet market needs are increasing. As such, the pressures on the R&D department are increasing. In order to alleviate the pressure, firms have to either increase R&D budgets or find ways to utilize the resources in a more productive way. There are situations when a firm may consider outsourcing some of its R&D work to a contract research organizations or universities. Reasons why a firm could consider outsourcing are:

* new product design does not work
* project time and cost overruns
* loss of key staff
* competitive response
* problems of quality/yield.

The key drivers for R&D outsourcing are emerging mass markets and availability of expertise in the field. In this context, the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, provide huge pools from which to find talent. Both countries produce over 200,000 engineers and science graduates each year. Moreover both countries are low cost sourcing countries. Other strategic drivers for outsourcing R&D are access to expertise and intellectual property, filling gaps in the capabilities of the R&D function, managing risk better, reducing the time to market, and focusing on the core competence or activities of the firm.

ADVANTAGE
There are many reasons that companies outsource various jobs, but the most known reasons are:

The advantage seems to be the truth that it usually saves money. Some of the companies that provide outsourcing services are able to do the work for much less money, because they don't have to give benefits to their workers and have more numbers of over the head expenses to worry about.

Outsourcing also enables companies to focus on other business issues while having the details taken care of by outside experts. This means that a large amount of resources and attention, which might fall on the shoulders of management professionals, can be used for more important, broader issues within the company. The skilled company that handles the outsourced work is often simple, but often has world-class capabilities and has access to new technology that a certain company couldn't afford to buy for their own. Another thing, if a company is looking forward to expand; outsourcing is also cost-effective way to start building branches in other countries.

The following are the advantages of outsorucinga ccording to wikipedia:
  • Cost savings
The lowering of the overall cost of the service to the business. This will involve reducing the scope, defining quality levels, re-pricing, re-negotiation, cost re-structuring. Access to lower cost economies through offshoring called "labor arbitrage" generated by the wage gap between industrialized and developing nations.
  • Focus on Core Business
Resources (for example investment, people, infrastructure) are focused on developing the core business. For example often organizations outsource their IT support to specilaised IT services companies.
  • Cost restructuring
Operating leverage is a measure that compares fixed costs to variable costs. Outsourcing changes the balance of this ratio by offering a move from fixed to variable cost and also by making variable costs more predictable.
  • Improve quality
Achieve a step change in quality through contracting out the service with a new service level agreement.
  • Knowledge
Access to intellectual property and wider experience and knowledge.
  • Contract
Services will be provided to a legally binding contract with financial penalties and legal redress. This is not the case with internal services.
  • Operational expertise.
Access to operational best practice that would be too difficult or time consuming to develop in-house.
  • Access to talent
Access to a larger talent pool and a sustainable source of skills, in particular in science and engineering.
  • Capacity management
An improved method of capacity management of services and technology where the risk in providing the excess capacity is borne by the supplier.
  • Catalyst for change
An organization can use an outsourcing agreement as a catalyst for major step change that can not be achieved alone. The outsourcer becomes a change agent in the process.
  • Enhance capacity for innovation
Companies increasingly use external knowledge service providers to supplement limited in-house capacity for product innovation.
  • Reduce time to market
The acceleration of the development or production of a product through the additional capability brought by the supplier.
  • Commodification
The trend of standardizing business processes, IT Services and application services enabling businesses to intelligently buy at the right price. Allows a wide range of businesses access to services previously only available to large corporations.
  • Risk management
An approach to risk management for some types of risks is to partner with an outsourcer who is better able to provide the mitigation.
  • Venture Capital
Some countries match government funds venture capital with private venture capital for startups that start businesses in their country.
  • Tax Benefit
Countries offer tax incentives to move manufacturing operations to counter high corporate taxes within another country.

Most of the outsourcing firms are based in the USA, some in the United Kingdom or Australia and a small number in Europe, while most of the outsourced workforce is Asian.

There have been loud protests against outsourcing in the USA, and more recently in Australia, due to cases like dislocation of some professionals, which is usually caused by shifting of processes and when this happen jobs are of course shifted too. But, this kind of problem is mostly temporary and there are very few skilled professionals who lose their jobs because of outsourcing.

DISADVANTAGE
One of the disadvantages that outsourcing brings is, it often eliminates direct communication between a company or organization and its clients. This stops a certain company from building solid relationship with their customers, and it often leads to dissatisfaction on one or both sides.
Another disadvantage is the danger of not being able to control some of the aspects in the company itself, as outsourcing may lead to delay of communications and implementation of projects.

Thirdly, sensitive information is more vulnerable. This means that the company won’t be able to control the flow of information thus, leading to leakage of important information, which often is private.

The most critical is it may come that a company will become very dependent on its outsource service providers, which could lead to problems when the outsource provider backs out on the contract suddenly.

Though outsourcing may be proven highly beneficial for many companies, it also has its disadvantage. Thus, it is very important that each company should accurately provide solution to their needs to determine if outsourcing is a good option.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-outsourcing.htm
http://www.indianchild.com/outsourcing/what_is_outsourcing.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsourcing
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid182_gci212731,00.html


INSOURCING
Insourcing is a business practice in which work that would otherwise have been contracted out is performed in-house.

Insourcing often involves bringing in specialists to temporary fill temporary needs or training existing personnel to perform tasks that would have been outsourced. An example is the use of in-house engineers to write technical manuals for equipment they have designed, rather than sending the work to an outside technical writing firm. In this example, the engineers might have to take technical writing courses at a local college, university, or trade school before being able to complete the task successfully. Other challenges of insourcing include the possible purchase of additional hardware and/or software that is scalable and energy-efficient enough to deliver an adequate return on investment (ROI).

Insourcing is the opposite of outsourcing; that is insourcing (or contracting in) is often defined as the delegation of operations or jobs from production within a business to an internal (but 'stand-alone') entity that specializes in that operation. Insourcing is a business decision that is often made to maintain control of critical production or competencies. An alternate use of the term implies transferring jobs to within the country where the term is used, either by hiring local subcontractors or building a facility.

Insourcing is widely used in an area such as production to reduce costs of taxes, labor (e.g., American labor is often cheaper than European labor), transportation, etc.

Insourcing at United Parcel Service (UPS) was described in the bestselling book The World Is Flat, by Thomas Friedman.

According to PR Web, insourcing was becoming more common by 2006 as businesses had less than satisfactory experiences with outsourcing (including customer support). Many outsourcing proponents responded to a negative consumer opinion backlash resulting from outsourcing their communications management to vendors who rely on overseas operations.

To those who are concerned that nations may be losing a net amount of jobs due to outsourcing, some point out that insourcing also occurs. According to a study by Mary Amiti and Shang-Jin Wei, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other industrialized countries more jobs are insourced than outsourced. They found that out of all the countries in the world they studied, the U.S. and the U.K. actually have the largest net trade surpluses in business services. Countries with a net deficit in business services include Indonesia, Germany and Ireland.

Insourcing is loosely referred in call centers who are doing the work of the outsourcing companies. Companies that outsource include Dell, Hewlett Packard, Symantec, and Linksys. The callcenters and technicians that are contracted to handle the outsourced work are usually over-seas. Customers may refer to these countries as "India" technical support if they are hard to understand over telecommunications. These insourcing companies were a great way to save money for the outsourcing of work, but quality varies, and poor performance has sometimes harmed the reputations of companies who provide 24/7 customer or technical support.

The Organization for International Investment, a Washington D.C. trade association, uses the term to describe the creation of jobs through foreign direct investment within the United States.

There are two views of the meaning of insourcing:

First, is the the type of insourcing that represents almost an opposite form of outsourcing. May be the most common definition is when companies look at the potential of employees inside the organization or company to find those who may be tapped to do certain jobs or functions for the said company. They may offer these employees extra training or they may just find the employees that already possess the skills to take on specialized work.

This form of insourcing has become fairly common as a money saving practice. Some company uses this method to also save money, because hiring new employees takes lots of money, and being able to redirect a current employee to new work can be much easier. Even if there is financial outlay for special training, a business may still save money, and it doesn’t have the negative connotations associated with many forms of outsourcing. Some companies practice this regularly and may boast to employees that they always promote from within, which can be an attractive point when employees are looking for jobs that will allow them opportunities to advance in their careers.

The second form of insourcing doesn’t utilize current employees but instead temporarily hires specialists to work onsite at a company. Occasionally these specialists help train employees on specialized equipment or methods, and part of this may also involve the leasing of various types of equipment. Even though the temporary employee comes from outside of the company, the fact that he or she is “brought in” means he can be considered insourced.
Sometimes the definition of insourcing is a matter of perspective. When a large company sets up part of their business in a foreign country, that company is outsourcing. However, to the country where the business is established, the new work there may be considered as insourced. This is a less common use of the term, but one that may help demonstrate the differing ways in which outsourcing work is viewed.

To have a better understanding and as a summary insourcing can be viewed as outsourcing as seen from the opposite side. For example, a company based in Japan might open a plant in the United States for the purpose of employing American workers to manufacture Japanese products. From the Japanese perspective this is outsourcing, but from the American perspective it is insourcing. Nissan, a Japanese automobile manufacturer, has in fact done this.
Setting up shop in another country, especially one that doesn’t have lower pay standards, (for instance Japanese automakers creating plants in the US) can prove of benefit to the company. Because they have created jobs somewhere else, the company’s products may be known more favorably. This may make consumers more likely to purchase products or use the company’s services because they know that part of their payment benefits their fellow citizens.
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1185946,00.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-insourcing.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insourcing

If I have to take side, I would prefer insourcing. Yes, it is true that outsourcing may be a good step to extend company reach but, I find it critical due to some of the parts of the project team will not be supervised, which I think will lower the quality of a certain product or service, in which the company provides. Another thing that disappointed me with regards to outsourcing is the security of information, which I think would put the company at risk. I have concluded how important information is to be kept within the company. But, with outsourcing, I find it risky.

I am more favor in insourcing, because the fact that they always find potential and skilled employees within the company first, before hiring new ones. Another thing is I think it will increase good relationship within the employer and employees, because the employee will feel that they are taken cared of by the company, due to special training given to them when they have potential. And as a result, a strong bond and trust to both sides, employer and employee.

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