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Outsourcing Development Work to India I. Introduction Globalization has had a major impact on the way business is conducted. Companies are increasingly turning to offshore software development outlets for design management. Anywhere from one-half to two-thirds of all Fortune 500 companies are already outsourcing to India and the amount of work done there for U.S. companies is expected to more than double this year according to Forrester Research. This paper will take a look at some of the arguments for and against outsourcing IT development to India. Most importantly this paper will take a look at ethical standpoints taken on outsourcing. But first, we'll take a look at the history of outsourcing to India. II. History In the late 1980's the rise of India outsourcing had its start. During this phase, India provided skilled contract workers for the US. Efforts to outsource projects to India arose in the late 1990's. This was driven by a combination of rapidly changing technologies and shrinking IT budgets Little by little the small offshore development projects started to multiply. In the beginning it was trial and error because there wasn't much focus on a repeatable and process driven model. During this time offshore outsourcing led to several failures. The big outsourcing force during the late 1990's came with Y2K. Work needed to get done quick and outsourcing to Indian companies was a solution to this. Indian companies had the ability to scale rapidly. Y2K conversion wasn't too high in the value-chain job, however it gave Indian companies a view of what was possible. Then came process maturity and standardization through processes. Indian companies have spent much time honing rigorous developmen... ... middle of paper ... ... http://news.com.com/2100-1011-5175699.html [4] Gupta, Sachin. For a global software company, outsourcing began at inception . World Paper. April 19. 2004 http://www.worldpaper.com/2004/april/april4.html [5] India greets H-1B cutback with a shrug -- But cap could sting if U.S. market rebounds. Electronic Engineering Times: 1, October 13, 2003. [6] Kripalani, Majeet & Egnardio, Pete. The Rise Of India. Business Week Online. December 8, 2003. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_49/b3861001_mz001.htm [7] Outsourcing created more jobs in US. MSN Business. IANS. http://autofeed.msn.co.in/pandoraV2/output/33601A5C-9FA2-491F-8E3B-EBC7CC04EDAF.asp [8] Pink, Daniel. Wired Magazine. The New Face of the Silicon Age. How India became the capital of the computing revolution. February 4, 2004. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/india.html
The market for IT industry was huge and expanding at a fast pace. However the market leaders were Accenture and IBM which had a negligent market share and rest was captured by small enterprises. Indian companies also ventured in the industry and due to their competition, IT multinational giants had to increase their base in India. Due to high opportunities, attrition rate was also high in this industry. As a result Indian companies like Wipro, Infosys increased their base level salaries. During this phase, Indian economy was transforming towards an era of information and knowledge. This can be seen from the fact that contribution of services towards the economy’s GDP was higher than 18% in 2001 as against in 1980. No other industry had done better standing against global competition. The annual exports had always been over 50% over a decade. U.S.A. share represents highest with 61% and about a third of Fortune 500 companies outsource their software work to India. To foster development, Indian government has taken a number of steps like liberalization of policies and providing necessary capital and infrastructure to foster growth. Thus Indian environment has been conducive for growth. (Ref: Indian Embassy.org) Competitor analysis- The market for IT industry was fairly competitive with IBM and Accenture as global leaders and rest of the market was pretty diffused. IBM and Accenture had strong brand and a global presence with a large customer base. They also offered panoply of services viz. technology implementation, business consulting, offshore services, customer relationship management etc. Both offered breadth and depth of services. IT market in India offered technical and business consulting with Tata Consultancy Services which was the market leader in IT exports and Wipro Technologies and Infosys being other major market players. TCS offered consultancy services, IT services, asset based solution etc. Wipro was third largest IT provider with service offerings in IT consulting, software solutions, BPO etc. Both had a strong global presence. Intensity of Rivalry: Rivalry amongst competitors was pretty intense as can be seen the Indian competition caused IBM to increase their presence in India. However leaders like IBM and Accenture had a wide range of service offerings so competition was only amongst few sectors. Rivalry was to hire the top talent as human capital is the most important thing in the IT sector. This is the reason that attrition rate lead to a rise in pay packages.
Outsourcing is a technique for companies to reassign specific responsibilities to external entities. There are several motivations for outsourcing including organizational, improvement, cost, and revenue advantages (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 2008).
Slaughter said it’s a common perception that hiring overseas means fewer jobs in the United States. Not so, he said. While job losses are certainly true for some companies, statistics have shown that, generally, increased hires abroad also have complementary increases here.” (Kibbe, 2004)
The Harvard Business School case study Silvio Napoli at Schindler India summarizes the various problems and issues facing Schindler India regarding its entrance into the new foreign market, India. Schindler Holdings Ltd. is a Swiss-based manufacturer of escalators and elevators which is looking for potentially entering into the Indian elevator market. Main executive committee members predicted that the Indian industry showed great promise in terms of future growth potential. The company’s objective was to manufacture standardized elevators at a cost lower than current customized elevator market. Silvio Napoli, who is vice president of Schindler in Asia, was chosen to lead the new entry into India. To successfully enter and penetrate the Indian market, Silvio and company needed to consider a variety of factors like but not limited to: mode of entry and type of strategy to implement, organizational structure, outsourcing and logistics approaches, marketing, and domestic and global hiring procedures.
Outsourcing raises an ethical issue, as so many blue collar workers, as well as well-educated white collar workers in the US have lost their jobs due to outsourcing. Especially, many who work in the field of technologically advanced services and software were exchanged for the workers in poorer countries for cheaper labor costs. Many of the multinational companies moved their manufacturing sectors to Mexico, China, or India. According to the article, "The Battle Over Outsourcing" (2004) by Bob Davis, et al. illustrates that many of the software programming work has been relocated to India over the years. Offshore outsourcing started with low-income jobs such as call center operators, and spread to high-paid computer ...
There are many reasons why company decide to do and there are many places where companies could go to take advantage of cheaper labor cost. For examples, China, India, Poland, or Romania. Offshore outsourcing is desired by numerous companies considering the premier facts like quality, access to resources and tools, time, cost etc.
India is a nation that is on the move towards becoming one of the leaders in the global economy. While the country still has a long way to go, it is making significant strides towards competition with nations such as the United States and England. Indian leaders have been moving towards "a five-point agenda that includes improving the investment climate; developing a comprehensive WTO strategy; reforming agriculture, food processing, and small-scale industry; eliminating red tape; and instituting better corporate governance" (Cateora & Graham p. 56, 2007). These steps are geared to begin India's transformation from a third world nation into a global economic leader. The current marketing environment in India is in transition, with both similarities and differences in comparison to the marketing environment in the US.
Outsourcing has been around for many years. In this paper, I will discuss some of the history of outsourcing, the good things about outsourcing, and the bad things about outsourcing. Outsourcing is important because many companies rely on it in order to get many different products and services to their facility on time and in good shape. Outsourcing is a huge part of the business industry today. Any business can be affected by outsourcing.
Nowadays, many large companies are using outsourcing through IS/IT sector in order to gain benefits to their company especially reducing expenses. it also to ensure that the company can focus on their core business and give other operation to outsourcing company that is expertise on the field.
Subramanian, Arvind. India’s Economy is stumbling? The New York Times. August 31, 2013: A19. Print.
Today, white collar workers are feeling the pressure of outsourcing in America and starting to discuss the matter seriously. According to researchers at UC Berkeley, 1 in 10 current job positions in the US can be outsourced, while 1 in 6 Silicon Valley jobs are vulnerable to outsourcing. 4 Since software facilitates the white collar job outsourcing and software development is one field most prone to outsourcing, I will focus on the outsourcing issues related to software. I have chosen three specific computer companies ¨C Peoplesoft, Oracle, HP ¨C to discuss their outsourcing trends and make inferences about the global effects. In the end, I hope to arrive at a decision about outsourcing from the ethical analysis of the outsourcing issue. But first, let¡¯s have a look at why outsourcing is being applied to white collar job positions today.
Machiraju, H. R. , 2002. International Financial Markets And India. 1st ed. New Delhi: New Age International.
Sarah Tagliapietra, Peter Platan, Ng Seow Li, Ralph Schneider, May 1991, Gaining competitive advantage through outsourcing, http://www.peterplatan.com/other/files/outsourcing.pdf
“India was a latecomer to economic reforms, embarking on the process in earnest only in 1991, in the wake of an exceptionally severe balance of payments crisis”(Ahluwalia 2002).The idea being simple ,there was a need to ...