Benefits And Drawbacks Of Outsourcing For Businesses: A Study On IBM

The Concept of Outsourcing

The process of outsourcing these days considered as most common operation where contacting out business activities and procedure to third party companies. Th advantages of outsourcing can be major and it covers elements like cost saving and effectiveness of gains to major competitive gains. On the contrary, there is loss of control over many outsourced activities is usually a potential or major business challenge. One must focus closely on the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing before determining to contact out any operation or business activity (Alwasel et al., 2017).

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The main focus is on the whole discussion where one can analyse where the objectives is to aim on the gain and drawbacks of outsourcing associated to company like IBM. The function of outsourcing of the operations takes place, one has to see that there are main benefits and drawbacks associated with it (Clark and Urwin, 2017). As a part of literature review, the report will aim on concept of outsourcing and its role in organization.

The concept of outsourcing is based on allocating a particular business function to a specialist external service organization. There are times, when a company cannot deal with all features of business procedure internally. In addition, some procedure is temporary as well as the company never intend to recruit in-house professionals to work in tasks (Falkenbach et al., 2016). When any function is outsourced to other companies, one must take accountability of carrying out the functions and also maintaining the assets of the company. But, before outsourcing any elements of the business to a third-party vendor, it is important to gain clarity on benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing. At the same time, the process of outsourcing shows a range of advantages of the company, it can also pose challenges if not rightly outsourced to the right kind of service providers.

Advantages

There are number of factors associated why any organization may opt for outsourcing a specific task, job or a procedure. For instance, some of identified advantages of outsourcing consist of many benefits discussed below:

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  1. Improved level of attention on core business functions: the concept of outsourcing can free up of the organization to pay attention on its current strengths, permitting the workforce to focus on the main tasks as well as on the upcoming strategy (Modibbo et al., 2018).
  2. Increased level of effectiveness: the process of outsourcing can free up the business that is specialize in the procedure or service that want them to carry out for organizations can assist companies to accomplish a highly productive, effective service, usually of higher quality.
  3. Highly controlled costs: cost saving can be accomplished by outsourcing function that can assist people in releasing capital for purposes of investment in other activities of the business.
  4. Increase in overall reach: the function of outsourcing can provide high access to capacities and facilities otherwise not affordable as well as accessible.
  5. Great competitive gain: the process of outsourcing can assist people leverage skills or knowledge along with finished supply chain.
  6. The process of outsourcing can also assist to make the business highly flexible as well as agile to adapt to transforming marketing issues and conditions, while giving cost savings and service phase improvements (Palm, 2016).

Disadvantages

The function outsourcing consists of dealing with direct level control on business activities or procedure to a third party. Following are some of problems while implementing outsourcing:

  1. Service delivery: the process can fall behind time or sometime far below expectations.
  2. Security and confidentiality of the company can also be at risk and can be a biggest challenge for the company.
  3. Flexibility issues: outsourcing contract can sometimes prove to be very rigid in order to help or accommodate transformation (Palm, 2016).
  4. Management challenges: transformations at the outsourcing organization can lead to some kind of friction.
  5. Instable condition: the process of outsourcing taken up by organization can go out of organizations.

The process of outsourcing when conducted offshore, at the same time higher cost effective, can show additional issues like hidden costs of provider select or handover, many and cost-based layoffs of domestic workforce who will not be completely relocated globally. Sometimes, simple management of the offshore association can prove so many issues because of time zones, so many languages or preferences of culture. A company like IBM over the years have accomplished a competitive gain when comparison is made along with competition (Schniederjans et al., 2015). The competitive gain can be attained by the organization when operations are outsourced to the third party. The impact can also be seen on the whole consumer service and also all the resources in association with decision that are determined. Such organizations mainly aim on right kind of analysis by many scientists over fifty-six competitors and also many customers of the company. The scientist further state that there must be right association when the outsourcing of so many services is finished as it focuses on bringing improvisation in the operations.

  1. What is the impact of outsourcing?
  2. What are the various functions that can be outsourced for the company?
  3. Are their any variations in terms of quality while adopting outsourcing activities?
  4. What are different ways in which outsourcing can be used for the company?

Advantages of Outsourcing

This kind of research will thus be used with the help of detailed questionnaire that will have many open ended and closed ended queries. This is why, the concurrent triangulation-based research principle will be utilised like that the qualitative and quantitative data collected will be evaluated differently however interpreted collectively (Vaxevanou and Konstantopoulos, 2015).

For the quantitative research along well, structured interviews will be performed to the similar number of candidates on phone and face to face. This will make sure that every interview will have the similar kind of questions. In addition, comparison between many kinds of respondents will be comfortably made related on the aggregated of the obtained solutions (Vaxevanou and Konstantopoulos, 2015).

After recognizing the population, it is crucial for the authors to clearly draw a sample from the current population. The current sample shows population being evaluated and therefore, the findings of the current sample population can be rightly interpreted on to show the study population.

The study will cover random yet simple sampling methods that will be utilised to interview many candidates, answer the research queries and evaluate the current hypothesis. The current study will be based on the main concept to decide the efficiency of the data collection techniques before the main survey (Wachira et al., 2016).

The elements in the current research will be categorized as dependent as well as independent. The dependent elements will consist of age, gender and many other elements of the respondents. The independent elements will consist of the nature of business, at the same time they also utilise the standard processes of outsourcing and level of efficiency.

The candidates here will be asked to submit the filled questionnaires back to author after in few times. The answers receiving from the survey and interviews will be entered in Microsoft Excel and coded as correct. The data will then be exported with data analysis software, analysing as well as data is presented usage descriptive statistics like means and many other techniques (Wachira et al., 2016).

The answers achieved from the survey will be recorded electronically. The data will then be transferred in Microsoft Excel as well as code in right manner. The information will then be exported into various version of SPSS with data analysis software and presented data with a usage in descriptive based statistics like means and other tools (Wallo and Kock, 2018). In addition, multilinear model of regression will be utilised to find the efficiency of outsourcing in companies.

Disadvantages of Outsourcing

Conclusion

The procedure of outsourcing contains international and regional contract and also consist of shifting the business procedure. The process of outsourcing is focussed on different practices that assist in management of the control of the public sector along with private companies. it is a business activity where all the parties are recruited externally of the organization so that all the services and functions can be finished in right manner (Wallo and Kock, 2018). This is a methodology that assist the organization to accomplish growth in the current competitive market. It must be analysed that the process of outsourcing is finished on the regional and one of the global platforms so that business functions can be properly managed.

The usage of mixed methodologies in research is related with threats to reliability and validity of the outcome accomplished. For the primary information an evaluation for validity and reliability will be performed to find out to understand whether similar outcome can be reproducible (Wallo and Kock, 2018). But, in case of secondary data, there is no requirement to carry the evaluation since the data will have already published as well as signed as passed in the process of outsourcing.

The research however will need more resources to collect ample data to provide answer the set-out research queries. At the same time, many sources of data will be utilised to be confident with varied research findings, which most likely cover many sources of data which will be used or portrayed as it might not be highly collaborative by nature and therefore one could be an option of discrepancy of outcomes (Wallo and Kock, 2018). There are number of respondents who will base their outcome as there are those who have important business organizations. Because some of the candidates will be out of reach will be sent to many candidates where people might be possibility of bias as per the ability to read or write or in some cases use internet-based service.

Reference

Alwasel, A., Clegg, B. and Schroeder, A., 2017. Outsourcing to Cloud-based Computing Services in Higher Education in Saudi Arabia. In Design Solutions for User-Centric Information Systems (pp. 124-136). IGI Global.

Clark, G. and Urwin, R., 2017. The Outsourced Chief Investment Officer Model of Management and the Principal–Agent Problem.

Falkenbach, H., Jylha, T., Levy, D., McAllister, P. and Remoy, H., 2016. Outsourcing Property Management? A Comparative Study (No. eres2016_149). European Real Estate Society (ERES).

Modibbo, U.M., Danladi, Y., Abubakar, F., Mohammed, I.M., Dauda, Y.M., Sani, F. and Adamu, J.J., 2018.

Outsourcing Library Services For Effective Library Management. Global Journal Of Applied, Management And Social Sciences, 15.

Palm, P., 2016. Information for decision-making in in-house and outsourced real estate management organisations. Facilities, 34(13/14), pp.891-905.

Schniederjans, M.J., Schniederjans, A.M. and Schniederjans, D.G., 2015. Outsourcing and insourcing in an international context. Routledge.

Vaxevanou, A. and Konstantopoulos, N., 2015. Basic principles the philosophy of outsourcing. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 175, pp.567-571.

Vaxevanou, A. and Konstantopoulos, N., 2015. Models referring to outsourcing theory. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 175, pp.572-578.

Wachira, W., Brookes, M. and Haines, R., 2016. Viewing the impact of outsourcing from a Kenyan perspective. Asian Journal of Management Science and Economics Vol, 3(1).

Wallo, A. and Kock, H., 2018. HR outsourcing in small and medium-sized enterprises: Exploring the role of human resource intermediaries. Personnel Review.