Outsourcing.Inc

This article, written by Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, discusses how offshoring, when used correctly, can assist the UK public sector in becoming more efficient and effective.

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/706

After three months of research on this topic, the following is a list of information from various sources that, in our opinion, seems the most pertinent.

I. WEBSITES

1. OffshoreXperts: the largest database of the UK market on outsourcing service providers and projects on the internet. http://www.offshorexperts.com/ (****)

2. Silicon.com :this website gave us invaluable information through articles written with a special take on the India UK connection. www.silicon.com (****)

3. Global Outsourcing : a comprehensive website with detailed articles on hot topics in the outsourcing industry today. www.globaloutsourcing.org (****)

4. BPO Watch India : this website is a special feature of MSN India. It provides constant updates on the BPO industry in India. www.bpowatchindia.com (***)

5. Outsourcing Professional : this is the official website of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals, with all the latest news in the outsourcing industry. www.outsourcingprofessional.org (***)

6. Outsource2India.com : A useful site which describes the whys and hows of outsourcing to India. www.outsource2india.com (***)

7. Outsourcing center.com : The foremost internet portal on everything to do with outsourcing. It is published by the Everest Research Group. http://www.outsourcing-center.com/  (***)

8. Go-to-outsourcing.com : an outsourcing portal that provides links and contacts to outsourcing services and publishes articles. http://www.go-to-outsourcing.info/outsourcinginc/ (**)

II. PUBLISHED ARTICLES AND REPORTS

1. Offshoring of Business Services and its Impact on the UK Economy
http://www.aimresearch.org/release/081104Offshoringrpt.pdf (*****)

2. Outsourcing to India : Crouching Tiger Waiting to Pounce
http://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/DBR_INTERNET_ENPROD/PROD0000000000192125.pdf (****)

3. Extending your contact center to India (****)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.cw.com%2Fdocs%2Fsolutions%2Fwhite_papers%2Foffsh-wp.pdf

4. Report on How Outsourcing is being used to Change the structure of Financial Services in the UK (***)
http://www.eds.com/services/innovation/downloads/shaping_future.pdf

For a comprehensive list of all other internet articles used on this blog, refer to our Archives at http://outsourcinginc.canalblog.com/archives/index.html

III. BLOGS

1. Offshore Outsourcing World Blog: Despite numerous blogs on the internet on similar themes, the aforementioned blog on outsourcing provides exhaustive and comprehensive information information on the outsourcing industry in many countries of the world. http://www.offshoreoutsourcingworld.com/blog (***)

2. Outsourcing Times : This frequently updated blog features articles on outsourcing, its effect on employment, and the impact it has on the economy, human resources, corporate policy etc.  http://www.blogsource.org/ (****)

This was a result of a search on www.blogarama.com

IV. ONLINE NEWSPAPERS

1. www.news.bbc.co.uk :This site has regular updates on the Offshore Outsourcing and Business Process Outsourcing phenomena that are dominating the British and Indian economic scenes. (****)

2. www.economictimes.indiatimes.com/ : A leading Indian financial daily, the Economic Times periodically has articles and reviews on the relation between India and the United Kingdom in the field of Offshore Outsourcing, among other pertinent articles. (**)

3. www.financialexpress.com :The Financial Express, is a special feature of another Indian daily, that provides interesting articles on the outsourcing industry. (**)

V. BOOKS

This is a list of books on the theme of offshore outsourcing after research on the following sites: www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.fr

1. Outsourcing to India : The Offshore Advantage
Mark Kobayashi-Hilary (****)

In this book author Mark Kobayashi-Hillary introduces India and the major players in the Indian service industry. He offers a balanced view on the trend to outsource to India, describing the reasons why a business should utilize India as an offshore outsourcing destination and the steps needed to find and work with a local partner. Not only does the book make a compelling economic case for outsourcing to this region, it also discusses how to manage the entire transition process, including the potential impact on local resources.
Mark Kobayashi-Hillary is a British writer and independent outsourcing consultant based in London. 

2. The Outsourcing Revolution : Why it Makes Sense to do it Right
Michael F. Corbett (****)

The BPO Revolution is written for executives and managers in organizations of any size who want to learn how BPO can improve their company's performance. More than a "how-to" book, it provides a comprehensive framework for decision making and action based on the real-life experiences of executives heading up successful initiatives for their companies today.
Michael F. Corbett is recognized around the world as a leading authority on outsourcing as a powerful management discipline. 

After having decided a topic that was in the news and also lent itself to discussion, we proceded to define the parameters of the blog. We chose to research the economic and social impact that the outsourcing phenomenon has on India and the United Kingom.

This blog brings together articles over a three-month research period, although it was put online in the month of December, the first article being dated 03 December.

Key words used for the search

‘outsourcing’, ‘offshore’, ‘india’, ‘united kingdom’, ‘IT’, ‘services’, ‘insurance’, ‘banking’, ‘jobs’, ‘unemployment’

Geographic locations

The United Kingdom (England, most specefically) and India

Internet research techniques used

Mega Search Engines
Copernic Agent Basic www.copernic.com

Search Engines
Google www.google.com

Yahoo www.yahoo.co.uk

Altavista www.altavista.com
The above mentioned search engines were useful in that they served as an excellent way to start the research process or begin research on a new theme. Systematic research on google and yahoo yeilded key words that we used to conduct a more refined research.

Intelligent Research tools
Googlealert : www.googlealert.com This is a very useful research tool because it conducts its research independantly and allows you to change your key words depending on the results you get. However, after a free trial period, it becomes a paid service.

Blog search
Blogarama  www.blogarama.com : This research tool helps to conduct a more streamlined research on other blogs. This was useful because not only did it give us addresses of other blogs, but also gave us links to important information.

Problems encountered

While conducting our research for this blog, we realised that there was a lot of information on the given topic already available on the web. Most of this information was repetitive and was, in reality, many ways of  communicating the same information. Our challenge was therefore to go beyond the obvious results that google provided and then be selective in the articles and links that we chose to put on the blog. We realise, in retrospect, that we should have chosen a topic that was more precisely defined, making the subsequent research easier to carry out.

We had first put up a blog on the same subject on blogspirit but we realised quickly that there were better blog-hosts at our disposal that gave us the possibility to be innovative in terms of display and also presented a range of choices ro manage the content that we chose to put online. Thus, having to relaunch the blog on canalblog took up a lot time that could have otherwise been put to better use.

Graduates from UK universities are being employed by UK firms to work in offshore Indian call centres on Indian salaries in an attempt to bridge the culture gap between agents and customers. A report on this twist in the tale of the outsourcing debate.

This article was written by Andy McCue on silicon.com         
http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/offshoring/0,3800003026,39129934,00.htm

This article published by the forum Yale Global Online, describes the work conditions and work pressures in the life of call center employees in India.

They are generally fresh graduates looking to earn easy money through the BPO industry. Work conditions, late hours and constant monitoring however, do not always make it a bed of roses. Yale global reports....

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fyaleglobal.yale.edu%2Fdisplay.article%3Fid%3D6433

This 'white paper' is a report on the feasibility of outsourcing contact centers to India. It talks of the pros and cons of such an operation from the viewpoint of a UK based company. It has been published by Cable and Wireless, London.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.cw.com%2Fdocs%2Fsolutions%2Fwhite_papers%2Foffsh-wp.pdf

We have used various methods and tools to help us throughout the course of our research project. The topic we have chosen covers a vast field with an equally large scope of research. We have thus tried to narrow our work to certain areas that we thought to be the most pertinent in this field. Therefore, we decided to talk about the two countries which play important roles in the field today - India and the United Kingdom. We then chose the IT, banking and insurance sectors in these two countries and tried to work out the equation that brought all the socio-economic variables of this phenomenon together.

We have drawn conclusions from varying sources, literary and otherwise, which point towards the fact that outsourcing is an industry that has taken firm root in the new world economy. It may prove to be the factor that contributes to the shift in power towards the east. India is a country that seems ideal with its vast pool of qualified English speaking workforce and extremely competitive labour costs. It will not always be a bed of roses and there are social and economic repercussions. Furthermore, India cannot afford complacency at its current top position because countries like the Phillippines and China are fast catching up with better infrastructure and a hardier long term potential.

The United Kingdom is not new to the offshoring game and has always been caracterised by conflicting debates about the ethics of outsourcing and its influence on the national job scene. However, more and more professionals now seem to be convinced that the monster that offshore outsourcing was being touted as a few years ago, may actually be creating jobs within the UK.

There are newer and tougher challenges ahead for both countries with the arrival of new players on the scene. Eastern European countries are fast becoming preferred outsourcing destinations because they have an added advantage of proximity along with cost effectiveness and labour efficiency.

We have thus tried to provide a snapshot of the current scenario and its prospective evolution in both countries on the basis of the sources mentioned and the methodology described above.

This webpage exposes the reality on the speed, scale and unstoppable momentum of business process outsourcing and offshoring. It explores how company executives and union leaders could respond to emerging markets and details the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing- both from the point of view of rich as well as emerging economies. 

This article is written by Patrick Dixon, recently ranked as one of the 20 most influential business thinkers today.

http://www.globalchange.com/outsourcing.htm

This article describes how the imposing of legal restrictions on the export of Chinese and Indian services, among others, to their American and European clients it is not a viable economic decision in the long run.

http://www.newratings.com/analyst_news/article_517465.html

Here is a list of definitions of the frequently-used terms in the field of offshore outsourcing like Nearshoring, Backsourcing, Multisourcing and more.

http://surviveoutsourcing.com/jla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=26