Outsourcing really is a global business and not an Asian one. It is all about where the BEST SOURCE of the project really is and if you asked any company where they would prefer to take their outsourcing, they would not necessarily say the cheapest, they would say the one that can perform the task with the most efficiency, professionalism and return on investment, that stays true to the company’s values and mission.

That is what it’s all about and that is what outsourcing companies have to get accross to prospective clients.

Then outsourcing truly is a global business that offers tremendous resource to any company.

-Crowe Mea, VP
MicroFish
319 Nickerson #204
Seattle, WA 98109

It is interesting to note that everyone has a right to express their opinion how they see fit.

Anyone that expresses that opinion is protecting what they value most. What would that be? Freedom, money or a community they just don’t want to lose.

The truth is the american stock exchange has never been as high as it is this year, it has set new records and the rest of the world has benefitted from that. Booming economies create more business or more money to generate more business. More business creates more jobs locally and internationally. More profit allows businesses to deliver better products that people will buy. Better products create more sales as people refer their feelings to everyone they know. This creates more demand. More demand creates bigger operations and more diversity, as products spin off other products.

If we truly put ourselves in a position of abundance, there has never been a time ever in the world where there have been so many opportunities and so many possibilities. The information age has totally revolutionised the way we communicate, and this in turn is making us reach where we have never before.

How does everyone benefit? Everyone has more opportunity to create what they want from their life, because simply there are more ways to do it and there are more ways to find out how to do it.

“Best sourcing” doesn’t just work one way. Best sourcing includes outsourcing to the US from Asia aswell!

You can NEVER replace an american or an american culture in every single angle of business. I will give you one example. It has been proven consistently that Amercicans have been the most successful marketers the world has ever seen. Noone can deny that and everyone respects that.

Amercans have created some of the best ways to communicate in sales and marketing. A lot of outsourcing countries cannot match that cultural skill whatever they do, without a significant american and western influence on their teams.

Having successfully managed many call centre campaigns to the US, UK and Australia, I would never have succeeded if I did not place people with the same accent and leadership skills I would have if I was based in the US. I had to acquire talent to do that. I had to pay them more than they were paid in the US to attract them to Malaysia. I didn’t regret that as they gave my campaigns an added dimension I could never have replicated with local staff.

This in turn has created an expatriate community in Asian countries of huge numbers and it is on the increase.

There is more demand for skilled workers and the people that are prepared to learn more skills are the people that will benefit the most. The unlearned will perish in obsolete mindsets that creates unnecessary outsourcing as if they don’t want to learn they’ll be somebody else that will. I would say that would be bad sourcing at first but best sourcing for the right reasons.

Our duty as business people is to educate the workforce that change is inevitable and the attitude towards that change is everything.

The consequences of that change impact ultimately delivers more profit and more opportunity….

The idea that companies jump onto the outsourcing bandwagon due to the hype surrounding the huge savings they will enjoy is a little misinformed. It is my experience that the vast majority of companies who are outsourcing, or considering outsourcing, fully appreciate the reasons why they are compelled to do so.

There are 3 levels of outsourcing, Tactical, Strategic and Transformational, and a companies understanding of which level they require more often than not determines the service or product they outsource, as well as the outsource destination. I’m sure that anyone interested in outsourcing will have seen the emergence and frequent use of the term ‘best source’. Best sourcing is a best practise outsourcing strategy of matching your companies requirements to the best location and best vendor, be it offshore or near shore.

Companies based in higher cost countries undoubtedly benefit from a ‘blend’ of offshore and near shore outsourcing, and the doom mongers who have constantly tried to allude that outsourcing is killing US industry, worker by outsourced worker, a collective death by a thousand job cuts have patently not bothered to read the empirical evidence to the opposite.

For example, lets look at the field that I am most involved, and has attracted the most critical attention, Manufacturing. US manufacturing is up 700% since 1940, a rate of 3.7% growth per year which exceeds the rest of the non-farm economy. Productivity is way up as well, American Manufacturing today now uses fewer than 200 workers to produce what it would have taken 1000 to produce in the years following WW2. The overall manufacturing sector is actually larger, not smaller, as the doom mongers incite, consistently outpacing the growth of the overall GDP over the past 50 years, and what is even more impressive of this consistent growth is that it has been continuous, despite the intense competition from Asia, Latin America and Europe over the last 5- 10 years. Not bad for a sector that certain people would like you to think that it’s on its last legs.

Outsourcing, as some of the comments have pointed out, is not without its pains and unfortunately for some in the manufacturing sector have lost their jobs as the requirement for factory brawn is replaced by the demand for factory brains (knowledge workers) I could quote many examples of companies that have had to increase their workforce in order to cope with the increased demand for their products or services due to their more lean operation.