Outsourcing

8 Pages 2043 Words

Outsourcing Business Processes
Summary
This paper captures the most prominent services and issues associated with today's outsourcing environment. Outsourcing is the modern business term for having other companies accomplish basic business processes rather than doing them inhouse. While outsourcing has always been an important business option, modern technical capabilities are fast making outsourcing a critical requirement in competitive, cost conscious industries. However, our recent experience with terrorist challenges indicates that a second look is needed to ensure that outsourcing risks are still acceptable.
This paper (1) benchmarks classical (but modern) outsourcing methods to provide a starting point, (2) notes what information system services are being outsourced, (3) provides examples of how those services were being promoted and leveraged, with some comments on terrorist related risks, and (4) indicates how the experts suggest that outsourcing, if it is reliable and secure, should be addressed in contracts (incentives). An awareness of these basic aspects of outsourcing is important to the business analyst or consultant.
Benchmarking Modern Outsourcing
Charles L. Gay and James Essinger (2000) provide not only a generic (non-high-tech) framework within which to view modern, high-tech outsourcing, they also provide this framework from the British perspective, often using United States companies as examples. They list numerous benefits and hazards of outsourcing, only indirectly considering terrorist acts, and they explore the different business relationships that apply in the world of outsourcing. Based on their perspectives, we can conclude that outsourcing is a well developed but also complex topic, one that is often over simplified and, thus, is often improperly implemented.
Nevertheless, with the British framework in mind, one should view the numerous and quickly evolving high-tech extrapolations of outsourcing ...