Devoted to hardware, software, IT issues, and information technology management

 

 
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I am against Outsourcing in any shape, size, and form. Did I lose my job due to Outsourcing? No! But do I feel the pinch that Outsourcing has on the Economy? Hell Yeah!

Whatever that Wacko/Idiot/Terrorist/Dumbass/Redneck in the White House tells you, don't believe a word of it. Would you trust a guy who tells you that some American Ports should be managed by a company from the UAE (United Arab Emirates)?

Outsourcing is bad for the workforce everywhere. Developed Countries have a higher Cost of Doing Business because they have Laws and Unions to safeguard the interests of their workforce. Those laws are not put into place to stifle businesses, but rather to promote better working conditions, fair compensations, and comfortable standards of living.

 

In this Age of Ubiquity and Universal Connectivity, any advantage, be it Technological, Economical, or Natural, that a Business possess can be easily duplicated or acquired. The one cost advantage that cannot be so easily achieved is Personnel Costs (at least not in the Developed Countries).

Just as there is no free lunch in the world, if a business achieves a cost advantage by skimming on key personnel benefits (e.g. Medical Insurance, Paid-Time-Off, Social Security) or compensations, then said company has achieved an unfair [not to mention unethical] advantage AT THE EXPENSE of its employees. Such a practice should be made illegal and companies looking overseas to avoid paying those Personnel Costs should be penalized [in the form of taxation] so as to level the playing field.

And lately, Outsourcing does not appear to be the best way to cut costs. And true to the adage that "You get what you pay for," Outsourcing is actually costing businesses more these days, in terms of revenues lost due to poor quality work.

An InformationWeek survey found that two-thirds of companies that have outsourced their Customer Services suffered worsening customer satisfaction. A Gartner study (2005) showed that 60% of businesses that outsourced Customer Support Services have seen large numbers of their customers defect to the competition that didn't outsource. 80% of those companies failed to meet the cost savings objectives.

For that reason, that same article that featured the InformationWeek survey reported that several large Enterprises like Dell, Capitol One, and JPMorgan Chase are either rethinking or have abandoned their Outsourcing Strategies.

I have nothing against countries that benefited from outsourcing in the last couple of years (e.g. India, Pakistan, Malaysia), all I ask for is "Equal Compensation for Equal Services." If a Junior Engineer is making $3,000 a month in Portland, Oregon, then the poor sap of similar rank and experience in New Delhi doing the same work should get the same pay, not one-third of what his/her U.S. Counterpart is earning. You can find Salary Statistics of India and the U.S. at PayScale.com.

Finally, there is one reason in my mind why Outsourcing doesn't work, and that is: We are all different. It is true that we live in a Global Village now. Lucy is watching the same MTV programs that Ehud, Yoko, Lim, Pierre, Giselle, Muhammad, and Metambo are watching. But we all think differently; we pray to different God(s); we dress differently; we eat differently at different times; and we speak with different accents. And those things are enough to cause one 'heckuva' lot of confusions and frustrations.

	This article is by: YC (Guest Blogger) from the Technocrat Soapbox