Pros And Cons Of Offshore Outsourcing Commerce Essay

Pros And Cons Of Offshore Outsourcing Commerce Essay In the new era offshore outsourcing has emerged as a very important and extensively adapted business strategy. Organisations across the globe consider outsourcing as a pathway to avail benefits of cost and effective resources of the country to which work is outsourced. Many organisation s in western markets offshore outsource their activities extensively to emerging market countries where there are location, cost and resource advantages to gain a competitive edge in the global market. The distinctive feature of offshore outsourcing is to provide uninterrupted service in order to meet the different time zones and gain customer satisfaction. Off shoring refers to the relocation of outsourced activities across countries. In the process of outsourcing, initially a particular activity is generalized across firms, then the shift of the location of the vendor can cause off shoring. Chandrasekhar Ghosh, 2006, p.92 The main reason for any organisation to offshore outsource their activities is to gain extended benefits and increase net profits. It is also adapted to achieve various cost, product, and differentiation advantages. It is a known fact that companies outsource various activities depending upon the country in which it is good at and this comes from the educational system and standards followed by that country. India, for example is most preferred destinations for the service and IT industries owing to the advantages like cheap labour, effective skills, language consistency and courtesy. Outsourcing is successful and effective cost saving strategy when applied in a legitimate way. For any buy decision, taken by the companies in west the most attractive solution would be to offshore outsource to destinations across the globe. WESTERN COMPANIES ADVANTAGES:- The major advantages for western companies by offshore outsourcing their activities would be tax benefits, cheap labour and increased productivity. It enables the firm to lower supply cost by relocating production to countries where inputs and labour costs are lower. Thomson, the French consumer electronics group, transferred the production of some of its video cassette models from Germany to Singapore to take the advantage of the latters lower cost base. Outsourcing services to India is continuously rising because of its various advantages like advanced technology, cheap talented labour, infrastructure and other facilities. Western companies will improve their brand name by customer satisfaction and substantial profits by offshore outsourcing. Microsoft, software giant in USA offshore outsource their customer service and technical support activities to destinations such as India which has no language barriers, good quality infrastructure, stable government policies, supporting labour laws and other favourable factors. The market for home country products is extended; for example: IT firms in India working for US companies will buy US computers and related equipment. 40% of the fortune 500 companies are strongly interested in the software outsourcing model because the average cost savings by adopting this is in the range of 40% to 70%. The companies can escape from various laws and restrictions imposed by the home country and hence reduce production costs by outsourcing production channels. It is adapted by majority of the car manufacturing companies. Ford Motors, USA based car manufacturing company has shifted 70% of their production units to Mexico owing to stringent environmental and emission laws imposed by USA. Free trade across European Union has also favoured many motor companies to shift their production units to Eastern European countries to exploit cheap labour and resources. DISADVANTAGES:- The direct relationship between employees and companies are lost due to distance and communication gap. Risk in transferring technology and know-how, this can be copied by its market competitors in the host country. The company faces a potential threat from the employees and competitors as their technical information can be leaked anywhere and spreads like a rapid fire. This has a direct impact on the companys brand name and sales. Dell for example, is basically a US based company but its activities such as manufacturing, customer and technical support are outsourced on a global scale. Many competitors took advantage of unmotivated employees, gained access to technical information and manufactured similar kind of products with same features and services. The same is the case with Chinese firms. It is a common sight to find any duplicate of consumer goods of western brands appearing to be exactly same for 80% cheaper price in the Shanghai local black market. Offshore outsourcing carries the risk of lower quality products and lower standards because of lack of training and effective controls by home company. EMERGING MARKET COMPANIES ADVANTAGES:- People always look forward for something new every day! Emerging market companies can grow and create new brand name by satisfying this similar need of flock across different markets in the world. For example, Hyundai motor company is in the process of growing into brand appreciation by its customer as it is determined to achieve the goal of making better quality product. It also builds its image as a top global automobile company by handling every task transparency from the perspective of business ethics. Foreign direct investment plays an important role by focusing on emerging economies than developed economies. By increase in inflow of FDI by the global company into emerging market the revenue and sales increases thus increase in standard of living. By establishment of Microsoft, IBM and Oracle in metropolitan cities of India, it has enormously resulted in increase in income and spending capacity of people. Technology and skills are transferred from western companies to the emerging market. This creates waves and builds up competitive spirit in emerging companies thus improved productivity by the emerging market companies is achieved. DISADVANTAGES:- Small and medium companies in emerging markets suffer from low revenues and profit margins by presence of highly competitive brands. By establishment of several clothing western brands in India, several yarn farmers to the cloth sellers in the supply chain have shut their doors for business. It is observed that some companies which emerged has not succeeded due to lack of co-ordination and good relationship with their service provider. WORKFORCE OF WESTERN COUNTRIES ADVANTAGES:- Workforce in western countries builds group and individual learning techniques to promote self awareness and professional development. Employees are trained with World class design and delivery designs and finally from their experience they are improved in learning intervention. Employees are motivated by providing benefits and incentives for a better performance of the company. McDonalds, for example provides potential benefits to its employees and thus retains its employees to work better for more benefits. Highly talented and multi skilled employees are given more benefits like increase in salary and bonus facility. The first preference is given to employees who work inside the home other than outside the country. The companies who initially invested in fringe countries of south-east Asia such as Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia are now investing in China due to their highly technical and knowledge skilled labour. DISADVANTAGES:- Decline in operation and manufacturing process in home country, which leads to loss of jobs and thus create unemployment in ones own country. Inefficiency shown in the progress of work and lack of knowledge for which employees expect training for each and every task, thus increases the expenses. Dell computers returned its business help desk from India to North America because of an increase in complaints from its customers about Indian employees as they were lacking in solving complex computer problems. The workforce of western companies faces a tough competition on a global scale. They are less motivated because of job insecurity and pay cuts. WORKFORCE OF EMERGING MARKET COMPANIES ADVANTAGES:- Employees desire to work in such emerging companies as their payrolls will be high when compared to local companies. These are large companies in which employees professional life grow faster with attractive salary package. If one wants to visit the world and have the capabilities to communicate with different kind of people they have an opportunity to work in such field and thus changes their lifestyle. TESCO, for example a U.K. based company which outsources all its payroll, service and supply chain control operations to India. Employees who work offshore for this company are given an opportunity to switch their jobs if promoted to a higher level and get a chance to work in U.K. This is regarded as a dream come true for any typical middle class Indian employee. It creates motivation and lifts the spirits of workforce, hence job satisfaction is achieved. DISADVANTAGES:- Expatriate assignments can be very expensive, maintenance cost of expatriates in a host country range from three to ten times the cost of domestic employees with similar responsibilities. Sometimes employees are not motivated properly which results in failure to achieve the assignment goals and thus reported at disturbing levels. Employees are made to work overtime and not paid properly. The employees of the western market dependant companies are seriously affected if there is any financial crisis or economy imbalance in that country. For example, Indian software employees are directly hit by the recession in the USA or UK. If there is no business for the firm the dependant workforces in the outsourced countries suffer from losing out their jobs.

Huanted House :: essays research papers

I could not sleep that night, for I was not given the chance to. For numerous times I had been yelling at my cousin to lower down the volume of the Compact Disc player. He insisted on testing out every single disc of my brother’s heavy-metal music collection at a certain volume that made my heart jump too fast or choke my mind with angry thoughts. My tired eyes shifted to the alarm clock, which stood, on my computer. Eleven, another hour to a brand new day. The next day, I will be bringing my cousin to have a view of the things we have in stall for him in the small neighborhood of mine, but before that can be possible, I will require my beauty sleep! â€Å"Hey, you moron! Are you finished with those trashy sounds?† I yelled, throwing the blanket over my head. I then grabbed my soft-toy dog, and threw it at him, aiming for his head. He responded, launching the toy back at me, hard at the bum. â€Å"Self-defence,† he reasoned out, reaching for the power switch of the player, finally. I heaved a sigh of relief, dropping dead on the pillow. As soon as I was about to enter the dream world, someone tapping at my shoulder awakened me. â€Å"I cannot sleep,† my cousin explained. I felt like strangling him. Thinking of what the family might say for destroying or killing a potential family name-bearer, I guessed it was not a very healthy idea after all. I sat on my bed, rubbing my eyes as I looked at my cousin through blurred eyes. â€Å" I remembered the last time you stayed overnight when you were around eight, you slept like a pig,† I muttered, reaching out for my spectacles. It hurts to be shortsighted. â€Å"I am thirteen now,† he reminded his ‘meet-once-a-year-during-Chinese-New-Year’ cousin. â€Å"So? Can’t thirteen-year-old don’t act like nocturnal animals?† I gave up, and soon the both of us were in the living room, with freshly brewed cups of coffee in our hands. It reminded me of how I drowned myself in caffine in order to stay awake for last minute examination preparations. My cousin strolled his way over to the television. â€Å"Don’t switch on that. The rest of the them are sleeping, mind you,† I warned him, recalling the time when my father threw down my radio on the ground, for blasting it during his sleep.

The requirements for the perfectly competitive market

The modern business environment is characterized by an intense level of competitiveness. While this may not be good for the suppliers of products and services in the short-term, it is certainly good for the consumers because a high level of competition reduces the level of prices so that consumers can enhance their standards of living with the same purchasing power that they had before.The requirements for the perfectly competitive market are related to the number of suppliers in the market, barriers to entry in that market, economies of scale, mobility of resources and homogeneous products. The market is recognized as perfectly competitive when the conditions related to these five aspects have been fulfilled.Therefore a perfectly competitive market is characterized by a large number of suppliers, elimination of barriers to entry in that market, no significant economies of scale, mobility of resources and the homogeneousness of competing products and services. The Anti-trust law ensu res that in every industry these conditions are maintained so that competitiveness is not compromised.As mentioned before, competition is not good for the suppliers of products and services. This is because competition forces them to constantly reengineer their operations in order to reduce the cost of production or the cost of providing services.As a result, they have to constantly innovate on their product lines whether it is in terms of differentiation or cost leadership. In respect of both differentiation and cost-leadership, efficiency in resource allocation is created. In the perfectly competitive market, the suppliers have to ensure that they can get the maximum from investing the minimum.However competition also forces them to maintain the level of quality in their products and services. Since a large number of suppliers operate in a perfectly competitive market, consumers will immediately boycott the supplier who is offering low quality and they will migrate to other suppli ers.In this manner, competition creates the framework for maximum efficiency in what to produce, how to produce and for whom to produce. That is why the anti-trust law has been formulated to correct departures from the perfectly competitive market.When competitiveness has been compromised, it means that there is one firm which has more power than its competitors. In this case, there is the possibility of inefficiency in the form of the monopolistic firm offering lower quality products at higher prices because consumers do not have choices in this matter. The anti-trust law ensures that such inefficiencies do not occur.ReferencesMcConnell, Campbell R., and Stanley L Brue. Macroeconomics. South western college pub. 2007.  

Pop and Consumerism in the Art of Richard Hamilton

Pop and Consumerism in the Art of Richard Hamilton Pop was the invention of the era of wealth and consumerism experience by western industrial society in the 1950s and 1960s. Both pop’s impact and expression were most distinct in the UK. Pop was so bizarre in its open-minded values and flashy appearance compare to the commonly dull conservatism of English culture and its expression because of the extant of the response to the prevalent British social and cultural situation. The term Pop Art is an abbreviation of Popular Art. Artists of this movement used ordinary everyday items to depict essentials of popular culture, mostly images in advertising and television. The term â€Å"Pop Art† was created in 1958 by an English critic Lawrence†¦show more content†¦With their examination of these products, the Independent Group set out to reform culture. They had found that the vertical pyramid of bourgeois culture, with high culture on the top and low on the bottom, was becoming horizontalized, flattened out by mass c ommodification. In horizontal culture as in general culture, no one form of cultural production was intrinsically more valuable than other. Each product would have to be judged on its own merits, each as potentially valuable as the next in terms of interest or as a point of critical reflection. For the â€Å"This Is Tomorrow† exhibition catalog, Hamilton created the collage â€Å"Just What Is It that Makes Todays Homes So Different, So Appealing?†. Before constructing the collage, he had written down all the areas of popular culture that would contain it: â€Å"man, woman, humanity, history, food, newspapers, cinema, TV, telephone, comics (picture information), world (textual information), tape recording (aural information), cars, domestic appliances, space.† He gave this list to his wife and family friend, who spent days cutting out magazine images that matched these categories. Then Hamilton made a selection from these clippings and used them to create the final collage. Beneath his list he added: â€Å"the image should, therefore, be thought of as tabular as well as pictorial.† As much as collage hangs together as a picture, it is also a tabulation of horizontal culture. In linking â€Å"Just What Is ItShow MoreRelatedConsumerism And Consumerism1315 Words   |  6 PagesRichard Hamilton, the pioneer of pop art, could recognize the powerful influence of the popular culture, consumption trend and the media. His artworks successfully captured such recognition and led the innovation of the visual image. After the devastating effect of World War II, American pop art introduced to Europe nations and it became their part of European postwar culture. After the fall of the Feudalism, the capitalist mode of production was introduced in many European countries. The countriesRead MoreRichard Hamilton : The Hardworking Daddy Pop3055 Words   |  13 PagesRichard Hamilton: The Hardworking Daddy Pop Richard Hamilton is a giant figure in the art world because of his innovative works in Pop Art. The uniqueness of Hamilton’s creations eventually turned into a movement that influenced artists all over the world. Nevertheless, during his lifetime, Hamilton had constantly challenged himself to different ideas, reinventing his artist-self countless of times. Up until the day he died at age 89, Hamilton was currently still working on a new exhibit. 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