Outsource, Insource, ....Othersource?
I've done a lot of talking and thinking in the past few months about the things companies do to cut their expenses. First, a relative by marriage is now selling outsourcing to banks and sent me interesting article about how to successfully outsource. Second, I work at a company, in fact in a group, that does a lot of outsourcing and follows the developing trends in other-sourcing. Three, I've talked to people at Widgets quite a bit about their new outsourcing scheme.
I've actually been involved with outsourcing for years. At Widgets I regularly sent web site testing work to a very nice bunch of Ukrainians (Hi Yuri!). There wasn't much method to my outsourcing, just minimal test plans that they somehow interpreted. They did a good enough job and they were cheap. We were lucky.
But there is a method to other-sourcing or at least a company needs to use a method to make success more likely. The work needs to precisely defined and surrounding standards need to defined and explained so they’re really understood. All necessary information needs to immediately accessible to the...uh, other-sourcees and any decisions they need to make should be of a yes/no nature. If there's any ambiguity, they are either going to stop work or give you something that’s probably not what you want.
There are new trends in outsourcing. You don't have to go to India to save money, just find a company in rural America or, in some cases, a blighted American city. You can also have onsite people from an other-sourcing company who help with coordination but can also get you 24 hour coverage.
Will outsourcing make Americans poorer by stealing our jobs? Probably, but there's no way to stop it from happening in this business culture where a bad quarterly profit can tank a company. I do think there are more or less ethical ways to handle it, however. If a company lays off people and replaces them with outsourced resources, they suck and will probably suffer in the end if that other-sourcing doesn’t completely live up to expectations. If a company tries to replace growth with other-sourcing, it's still stifling hiring and career development of American workers but at least no one is losing their jobs. The least harmful way seems to be other-sourcing as a way to handle periods of peak demand and to provide around the clock work for short fuse projects or major projects with minor budgets and short time line.
What do you think?
I've actually been involved with outsourcing for years. At Widgets I regularly sent web site testing work to a very nice bunch of Ukrainians (Hi Yuri!). There wasn't much method to my outsourcing, just minimal test plans that they somehow interpreted. They did a good enough job and they were cheap. We were lucky.
But there is a method to other-sourcing or at least a company needs to use a method to make success more likely. The work needs to precisely defined and surrounding standards need to defined and explained so they’re really understood. All necessary information needs to immediately accessible to the...uh, other-sourcees and any decisions they need to make should be of a yes/no nature. If there's any ambiguity, they are either going to stop work or give you something that’s probably not what you want.
There are new trends in outsourcing. You don't have to go to India to save money, just find a company in rural America or, in some cases, a blighted American city. You can also have onsite people from an other-sourcing company who help with coordination but can also get you 24 hour coverage.
Will outsourcing make Americans poorer by stealing our jobs? Probably, but there's no way to stop it from happening in this business culture where a bad quarterly profit can tank a company. I do think there are more or less ethical ways to handle it, however. If a company lays off people and replaces them with outsourced resources, they suck and will probably suffer in the end if that other-sourcing doesn’t completely live up to expectations. If a company tries to replace growth with other-sourcing, it's still stifling hiring and career development of American workers but at least no one is losing their jobs. The least harmful way seems to be other-sourcing as a way to handle periods of peak demand and to provide around the clock work for short fuse projects or major projects with minor budgets and short time line.
What do you think?
posted by changingagain at 9:03 PM
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