a short essay, answer the following questions: 1. Describe the company that is m
ID: 2362753 • Letter: A
Question
a short essay, answer the following questions: 1. Describe the company that is making the decision to outsource. What area of the business is the company looking to outsource or did it already outsoruce? 2. Why did the company decide to outsource? (Or why is the company considering it?) 3. List the revenues and costs that may be impacted by this decision. 4. If you were the manager/owner of a business, would you outsource? Why or why not? Please cite the article used in providing your answers to this assignment.Explanation / Answer
We've all heard how outsourcing and augmenting staff with experts is an avenue for meeting business needs where the technology, skills, knowledge, staff or time is not internally available. In theory outsourcing provides the ability to develop products and services that are not easily achieved through the organisation's existing structure, by providing operational and strategic benefit. Outsourcing has been hailed as a route for getting results, without the expense and commitment of hiring full-time staff, allowing the internal organisation to focus on core competencies. But, does it really work? On the surface the idea seems viable; however, depending on the type of solution and service being outsourced, these relationships may actually increase the demands on the organisation that is outsourcing its work. Considerations for Deciding to Outsource. The following are some of the key considerations when making outsourcing-related decisions: Do our in-house resources have the needed capabilities? First the organisation must identify whether or not its employees have the specialties and technical skills necessary to manage and build the desired product or service offering. (If you don't, of course outsourcing looks like the obvious choice. If you do have the right capabilities, some of the following questions will take on increased importance in deciding whether outsourcing is really the right call after all.) Should in-house capable people be used for this next effort? Assuming the desired skills do exist on staff, the organisation must determine if pulling them from their current duties is worth the risk to previously defined roles and committed projects. Where does the new project fall in the priority scheme, and how critical is it to the company's business goals? High enough to consider pulling people from other endeavours to keep the work close? Is this work something the company should even consider outsourcing? Generally, outsourcing should not be considered for projects that require significant domain knowledge, i.e. knowledge related to industry specific technology, business processes, or organisational culture that would be either difficult or inadvisable to transfer to another company. If the domain knowledge is specifically a key part of the company's or particular product's competitive advantage and differentiation, then the company may not want to transfer that unique knowledge to another organisation. The ability to sign intellectual property protection agreements does not necessarily mean it's a good idea to let an outside organisation do such sensitive work. In addition, the level of understanding necessary for adequate comprehension and outsourcing success may be too deep to make it worthwhile financially. If you outsource the work, what management oversight will it require, and by whom, and will you even come out ahead in terms of true additional resource hours? In my experience, the employees who have the know-how to properly manage an outsourced project are usually the ones already involved in other core activities. While it may initially look like an easy decision to outsource and thereby gain additional resources with no load on your busy internal experts, be sure to look at the strain the new effort will put on existing responsibilities. Will your critical experts have to spend so much time managing the outside resources, writing specs, reviewing their work, attending team meetings, that you haven't gained nearly as much resource for your extra Dollars as you thought? You could even lose two-fold in that not only are your internal resources losing hours to outsourcing oversight; they're also compromising their own project work due to increased task-switching and reduced concentration. The additional oversight demands often add unplanned costs to the project, while also taking the resource away from previously assigned duties and organisational objectives.
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