M2 Advantages and Disadvantages of outsourcing technical support

Advantages and disadvantages when outsourcing

Outsourcing: This is when companies that are handling a large amount of work can offload some onto other companies, like a company working with wood but it doesn’t fit, they can outsource a specialist trained to do the job, this is the same with larger companies who seek other companies to handle things like e-mail or calls from customers or clients (Call Centres).

What are the Advantages?

When we look at large companies we all know that a part of them will end up within another country, reasons why are that they fall under things differently than a European country is a large benefit to the financial sector, as they will pay much less than the average wage of a normal worker, plus the hours working are much long giving benefit to a 24 hour service. There are packages that come with working in the UK such as Health care and insurance, in the western countries these do not apply meaning less money coming out of the pocket of the company.

This might sound all bad but it does give jobs to people within the country and helps develop their skills.

Outsourcing just doesn’t go outside of the country it is still used within the same country depending on the job, when the company isn’t specialised in something it is cheaper to get a professional job than one which will cost more in getting materials and people with the skills in the company to do a job which will take twice as long as a professional.

Disadvantages:

Going outside of the country can cause problems it’s not always good for the company, cheaper yes but there will always be problems as most call centres are based in India making language communication between the customer and the person answering their questions hard, as even in India their computer systems are set up different than that of a European one such as keyboards and starting systems. This becomes an annoyance and difficult for the customers.

The biggest problem revolves around outsourced companies that this is much cheaper for the company financial but because of this they are losing their own people on their own home ground, this is job cuts reason being they can get someone from another country for half of what a normal wage earner gets to do the same job, unfair in its own way but companies will fight amongst themselves for the best profit and if it means cutting people from the company they will do it.

Outsourcing to different countries can be difficult paperwork wise and time scale wise, jobs sent to China or USA, there are an average of 6 hours to twelve for reply’s on messages sent from the country of the UK this means that it is harder to communicate and get an update on what is happening at the stages of a products development or an overall status on how that side is handling things.

Companies outsourcing have to factor in how high they are prioritised as the company taking on the work isn’t just going to do theirs there are other companies to, these time delays have a knock on effect with the company and its clients with trust and can make a company go into ruin losing their clients that can provide a good profit and production amount e.g. factorise even paperwork law firm.