Outsourcing Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Outsourcing - Term Paper Example For instance, a company may outsource non-strategic functions to companies that specialize in such fields of work. Additionally, outsourcing also includes the transferring of assets and employees to another firm. The term outsourcing extends over both domestic and foreign outsourcing, and it sometimes also involves the relocation of a firm elsewhere; this is known as off-shoring. The company that provides outsourcing services is commonly called as service provider Organizations enter into a business agreement with third-party service providers that involves an interchange of payments and services. Outsourcing helps firms perform efficiently in their core functions and minimize costs incurred and shortage of skill in disciplines where they deem outsourcing appropriate. Since the early 21st century, businesses have exceedingly outsourced to firms in foreign countries; this is commonly known as off-shore outsourcing. In consequence of the widespread practice of outsourcing, several appe llations have been designated to refer to various parts of the relationship between the discipline of outsourcing and firms, such as strategic outsourcing, multi-sourcing and near-shoring. Outsourcing offers more room or elasticity in controlling unnecessary expenses and spending where it is indispensable. Outsourcing gives organizations the advantage to spend on only the services that are absolutely needed and also the precise periods or times in which they need them. This reduces the expenses incurred on hiring and training of employees (Haugen, Musser and Lovelace, 2009). The biggest transition in outsourcing has come from the rapid increase in the number of firms or small groups of professionals using computer technologies to utilize outsourcing as a source or path for building pragmatic service providing businesses or systems that can be operated from any part of the globe where internet access is available. Such service providers are preferred by large firms for ephemeral empl oyment of experts in specialized disciplines so as to have their projects or services worked on and delivered completely virtually or online. This suggests that there is a rapidly growing increase in the number of such businesses that function completely online that outsource to offshore firms to work and complete the work contracted out to them before the final service or project is sent to the end user. This is commonly practiced in website designing. Albeit outsourcing has been practiced by corporations so long work specialization has remained an important part of industry, it is rather recently that there has been a surge in outsourcing by organizations for the execution of non-strategic or non-core processes such as data entry, or billing. This is owing to the fact that such processes could be more efficiently executed by companies that specialize in the aforementioned fields respectively; this makes it more time and cost effective for organizations. Some companies outsource se rvices for the execution of particular business functions, while others outsource services for the execution of entire processes. Outsourcing may take many forms but the two most common forms of outsourcing are: Business Process Outsourcing, BPO, and Information Technology Outsourcing, ITO. Furthermore, Business Process Outsourcing incorporates human resource outsourcing, HRO, call center outsourcing and accounting and finance outsourcing. Such processes for