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A lot of noise, both affirmative and downbeat sentiments has been made over few years for outsourcing. One hears about jobs being lost to outsourcing vendors and big companies downsizing in major ways. But the important question is why are they outsourcing, and how it helps save resources and expenditure.
Putting it in simple terms, outsourcing helps you get the work done in better manner by paying a third party less than your own in-house resources. It can be better explained if you take the example of visiting a doctor. This cannot be termed as ‘outsourcing’ your work, because nobody can play doctor to oneself, not even if you happen to be a doctor. On the other hand, if you hire a company to handle say your housekeeping requirements, it is a form of outsourcing, since it is something that can be done by hiring internal staff. However, it makes more sense, if you can save costs and resources by outsourcing it to someone who specializes in it.
Hiring a full time housekeeping staff is not outsourcing, whereas hiring other company who provides services in say twice or thrice a week is outsourcing it. While it is not a new business practice, it has received a lot of press attention lately due to the momentous growth in this sector, which has surpassed previous performances. If you happen to call customer service lines for thousands of big American or British firms, you will probably be redirected to India and not Indiana.
The next generation transformation of the World Wide Web is Web 2.0. It is not a new technology nor a new process, but an evolving change in the way of thinking. Web 2.0 applications are set to bring about sea of changes in the world of web. The web is now viewed more as a participative medium with superior alliance among Internet user’s content providers and various involved enterprises. It’s too early to say whether this is good or bad, but it is certainly new and it is increasingly gaining acceptance.
It is vital to understand the difference between web 1.0 and 2.0 before understanding the key elements of web 2.0.
A major factor for 'outsourcing 1.0' was excellence in taking on arranged tasks, creating crucial contracts and delivering, expected results to customers. One of the main objectives of outsourcing 1.0 is to articulate or segregate an explicit business task behind an interface (i.e. hr requirements, accounting solutions, payroll processing, multimedia solutions, etc.) where each partner has a business model that is their own concern.
Where as, 'Outsourcing 2.0' is more mutual relationship. It often requires taking the initiative (at higher degree), delivering astonishing, and non-repeatable but often fickle results.
In Outsourcing 1.0, location did not matter much, most important was talents and people are (essentially) freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind. This is in fact not true in the upturned world of outsourcing 2.0. Because to achieve the objectives of 2.0 (business model), you need to take benefit of the potency, and accommodate the weak spots of unambiguous geographies, countries and marketplace.
Outsourcing 1.0 was all about negotiating intricate, multi-party agreements which were very time consuming. For outsourcing 2.0, it is truly important for both parties to have business models that are vitally aligned, i.e. working with a software design partner or software application manager.
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Home / Refer Resources / Industry Articles / Evolution of outsourcing 2.0: An outsourcing journey from 1.0 to 2.0.
