Appropriate or Inappropriate Offshoring
 
Appropriate or Inappropriate Offshoring

When the idea of offshoring some or all internal functions is introduced in a company, the initial reasons for looking at this option are usually economic. By shifting a significant business function into the offshoring category, you reduce internal costs and head count which looks good on your annual report. And there are some valid business functions that do well in an offshoring situation.

But when considering which parts of your business are appropriate for offshoring and which are inappropriate, you must take into account many factors so you maintain the integrity of your core business and don't compromise your ability to function as a business and respond promptly to market pressures in your zeal to jump on the offshoring bandwagon.

The best functions that are good candidates for offshoring are software development projects. Many times the vendors you contract to build a software solution for you may already have a product that fits part of your software specification. So starting from that base, you can write the functional specifications to adapt their solution to your business needs and come up with a valid business solution with much less overhead than what would be needed to develop that product internally.

Many times software projects must be tackled by a business that are just too large for the internal staff to develop. These are projects for which the software development lifecycle will be of a limited duration, perhaps a year of less and the size of the development staff will be large during that time frame. But after the bulk of that work is done, you can return to a reasonable size development staff. So this is a perfect situation to offshore much of that work so you don't find yourself putting on staff only to lay them off when the work is done.

Areas of the business that should go under a greater scrutiny when they are reviewed for offshoring are core functions such as computer operations, network management or project management at the team level. There are a number of reasons why trying to make captive operations, or "owning" these functions as a business makes a lot of sense.

Operational functions such as running the network, producing payroll or processing orders touch on the core of the life of the business. We have to keep in mind that no matter how high a level of trust you reach with a vendor to whom you offshore a function, that vendor is still a separate business whole corporate goals and objectives are not the same as those of your business. So the intensity of commitment and the sense of urgency for maintaining a high level of integrity of operations may not be as high with contractors taking care of your core operational business functions as they would when being managed internally.

Management functions are also business models that are carried out more efficiently by internal employees rather than contractors. Now in a project management situation for a short duration, offshoring project management can work well if care is taken to integrate the contractors who are bringing their management expertise to the project with internal subject matter experts and build the lines of communications well. It's a good idea to have internal management also be on top of the project management being done by contractors to assure communications are going well and to help facilitate the project development process.

By using wisdom and approach the concept of software development and operations offshoring conservatively, you can find the appropriate functions to farm out to contractors without putting the core functions of your business at risk. And when you find that balance, you will realize the benefits of both approaches to business management in a way that is the best fit for your business.



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Articles
Appropriate or Inappropriate Offshoring

Backing Into the Project Plan

Cyber Programmers

Finding the Right Offshore Software Developer

Help Staying Cutting Edge

How to Make a Mess of Offshoring

It's All in the Offshoring Contract

Know Your Contractor Inside Out

Living up to the Contract

Make Your Contractors Work for You

Making Sure Your Outsourced Project is on Track

Managing a Diverse Team

Minding the Store

Offshoring Testing

Offshoring Out of the Country

On Sending Your IT Work to India

Protecting Yourself in an Offshoring Situation

Selling Management on Software Development Offshoring

Taking the Teeth Out of Offshoring

Taking Your Web Development Elsewhere

The Contractor's Attitude

When NOT to Outsource

When the Contractors Leave

Who Can- Give You Great SEO?

Why Not Let Writers do Your Technical Writing?

 

Disclaimer: The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of this website, notwithstanding the fact that he does not warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet.

This site is a common sense guide to Appropriate or Inappropriate Offshoring. In practical advice websites, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made. Readers are cautioned to reply on their own judgment about their individual circumstances to act accordingly.

This site is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance field.

Any perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional.

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