Outsourcing seems to have recently become a buzz term in the business sphere. Actually, it is not only the word, which has become so popular, but also the process itself. The reality is that many respected businesses aim at outsourcing their business processes. The number of businesses in various industries shifting their work to outside parties is astonishing! If so, outsourcing process must bring quite huge financial benefits to the people introducing it into their businesses.

The very essence of outsourcing is in the wish of many companies to get rid of a significant part of their workload shifting it to third parties. This idea proved to become not that bad, and, therefore, more and more companies bring themselves to trusting outside companies with some part of their work. Furthermore, with the development of the Internet and growing availability of many online services, the work is handled over to outside countries, sometimes, even quite distant: Belarus, India, Pakistan etc. Why is it happening?

The truth is that many developed countries experience lack of qualified and talented professionals, people who are willing to do their job with enthusiasm and proper care. Besides, an employer must pay quite good money to qualified work force in developed countries, which is not always profitable for a company. Here outsourcing to developing countries might become a perfect solution. Imagine, if all work is outsourced to the countries that have immense qualified labour force able to complete your projects perfectly and at lower rates. For instance, if you usually pay a professional in your country about a hundred dollars for doing some qualified job, you will have to pay about twenty dollars to professionals who will do the same job for you through a third party.

Besides, offshore outsourcing industry offers another nice opportunity of organizing your business process in Offshore IT Outsourcing market - Offshore Dedicated Center. The major financial benefit of ODC establishment is that it will save you up to 70% of IT spending by reducing employment costs, contract and project execution. Therefore, if your company is focused on IT, maybe, you should establish an ODC to make your working process more effective, and cheap! It’s your virtual IT department that works produce the product of same or even improved quality but at 1/4 of the cost.

Of course, the fact that so many businesses undertake outsourcing does not mean that you also need it. Before taking up this important decision, you should evaluate if you will really benefit from outsourcing. To do that you will most likely need to consider a number of various factors of your business. First, think carefully if you are comfortable with handling major part of your work over to third parties. The problem is that together with your work requirements and specifications, you will be handing over all the financial details of your business, and so you must establish full trust with the third party firm that is going to perform the work for you.

Secondly, any outsourcing company you choose for working on your projects must have the best security features to protect your personal information and data. Here, references are extremely important. You will need to find out if other firms and companies have previously cooperated with that outsourcing company and if they are satisfied with the results of the outsourcing process. If you get positive feedback on the work of that company, and if you are satisfied with other queries that you have made, go ahead and start outsourcing!

Besides, it is very positive when an outsourcing company let you check the quality of the work performed by its employees before you sign your contract. You can give an outsourcing company a kind of a test (some piece of work) to find out if the quality of their work is good enough for you. If you are not satisfied with the work done by them, you can always say ‘no’, and go search for some other company that will better meet your working standards.

Overall, from the financial point of view, outsourcing is a profitable process to undertake in your business. It helps cut down costs keeping the quality of the work done on the same level as before, and sometimes, even higher. However, think twice before choosing the outsourcing company to work for you. Scan through their official website, examine their portfolio, make the necessary inquiries about the company and only then get in contact with the company’s sales rep.

Leading outsourcing providers have always been targeting huge companies, monsters, understand their needs and then arranging a system somewhere in India to meet their needs. With the market saturation and continuing growth of the industry new challenging companies started to appear targeting their activities towards work with the medium-sized and even small customers.

Time when start-up can use foreign talent and thus make the company competitive is a reality now. Imagine the company that has only $50.000 at start and can spend those $$ on two man-hours of development in the USA or 40 man-hours in Belarus or Russia – what will you choose?

Many small businesses still ignore the possibility of outsourcing because of the risks and time involved setting up a beneficial relationship with another firm. But the potential profits may make the risk worthwhile. The new generation of outsourcing-consulting companies should appear now! Those that will be able to organize effective interaction with the business owners: explaining them the benefits of outsourcing and setting up the relationship with the offshore outsourcing provider. According to InformationWeek Research’s most recent Priorities survey of 100 small and 100 midsize companies, 9% of small businesses and 6% of midsize businesses say implementing or increasing offshore outsourcing was on their radar for this year.

The growing number of consultants with offshoring experience is growing quickly, allowing companies who do not have the size or resources to devote full time employees for offshoring management the opportunity to get into the game.  As the number of offshoring consultants grow, competition increases and both the services they offer and costs they charge improve. 

Silicon.com Reports:

Small businesses are likely to get the same purported benefits from outsourcing as large ones, including low costs, competitive advantage and the ability to focus on core business.

With its modest population of 9.9 million, Belarus hosts the largest and most established European IT outsourcing providers to the east of Germany.

The country’s strength is rooted in its mature technical infrastructure and reputable educational system inherited from Soviet times when Belarus used to manufacture over 50 percent of the computers and computer components in the former USSR. A lot of programmers in Belarus have participated in scientific R&D projects for the military, energy and other industries of the former Soviet Union. Belarus is among the few countries in the world whose specialists have been involved in construction of space stations, global communication systems, and nuclear development projects.

According to the Human Development Report 2005 of the United Nations Development Program, Belarus remains the leader among CIS states in terms of education and takes the lead over a number of developed countries on such indicators as public expenditure on education (6 % of GDP), adult literacy (99.6 %) and youth literacy (99.8 %). There are 58 colleges in Belarus and over 46 thousand graduates annually. 48-50% of the graduates are students of IT and
technical universities, that is over 23 thousand new IT and technical specialists annually.

Geographical and cultural proximity to the EU is also important. Minsk is within a two and a half hour flight from Frankfurt, and one hour after landing you can already be at our office. Lennart Jakobsson, CEO and Owner of Swedish high tech company Litcon Invest AB, says Belarus exceeded his expectations when he came there for the first time: “I met many Belarusian businessmen and IT professionals and was amazed by how easy it was to communicate with them. They are really willing to cooperate and, most importantly, they get things done in a fast and proper manner,” he says. Now Jacobsson is considering setting up a software company of his own in Belarus.

Multinationals such as Bosch, Coca-Cola, 3M, Deloitte & Touche have established their offices in Belarus long ago while Alcatel, Ericsson, Karl Zeiss and MAN formed joint-ventures with local companies.

Maintaining high standards of personnel motivation and compensation is also important, as high wages in the West are seductive to Belarusian programmers. To keep the attrition rate low, the companies introduce measures ranging from providing social packages and stock options to organizing sports activities for their staffs.

The Belarusian government has recently announced an ambitious goal to boost the country’s IT services export to 4 percent of that of India by 2008.

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