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Outsourcing – Good or Bad?


Curly87
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Ok so currently I am undertaking an internship in India for my university course, the company works within software development with its main clients from UK, Germany and the US.

 

We are currently harassing UK companies to try and gain new outsourcing leads and partnerships, most of this involves cold calling. As you can imagine I get quite a frosty reception to say the least! Especially when I say im calling from India…… ( and no its not a call centre i work in!)

 

So wanted to gain some opinions from some real(ish) English men on whether you think outsourcing to another country is bad idea or not?

 

I think currently with all the credit crunch and things going on in the UK it is the perfect time/opportunity to outsource work

 

Answers on a post card please!

 

cheers,

Tim

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Some industries have no choice but to outsource, it saves cost but very rarely offers the same level of service as in-county support.

It is a vary short term solution and you may have already missed the boat, as competition in Indian grows, salary demands go up and some early adopters are now looking to move from India to Mexico and similar locations as India is becoming too expensive :whistling: From a purely personal point of view, given the choice, even if it cost me a little more, I would rather deal with companies with on-shore support, even if it is in Scotland and I can't understand a word they are saying :innocent:

 

I should add that in my experience the frostiest reception you will get will be from US companies, companies are forced to sign contracts (US Postal for instance) that say they will cannot allow offshoring of any of their services.

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I look at it very simply.....

 

Outsource work overseas = less work for UK = greater unemployment = worsening credit crunch?

 

 

Got to agree with you on this one, BUT when companies are moving part of their operation overseas, they are not thinking about the above, they are only looking at Cost Savings for their Company, which puts Higher Profits into their pockets.

 

We deal with HD in India and belive me it is a complete pain....but when measuring pain against £££££££, you can guess which one wins.

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Yep this is the problem, its all cost driven with little thought for anything else, which is why it has such a bad stigma.

 

I think the attitudes are changing a bit now in relation to off-shoring to India, as the quality has vastly improved. But as you say with this the cost goes up, so they all go else where.

 

Anyone here works with Microsoft Dynamics CRM……… if so you might be getting a call today………… :whistling:

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I bet you haven't heard "I am in a meeting with the bloke from the gunshop" though :whistling:

 

 

 

 

Large companies make a calculation of loss of customer satisfaction versus cost saving and try to balance that.

The world is getting used to it now, so no one who hasn't been living down a cave for the last 10 years is surprised to hear that familiar distant voice when they ring for service/support.

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I'm up in the air a bit about this, the main bug bear is if you get someone with poor English skills. However I have had some really positive calls with Indians being able to change my car insurance at 8pm on a Saturday was a real plus point, only possible as my Insurer who didn't used to be open then had just passed the late calls to an Indian call centre.

From a business and consumer point of view obviously it is cheaper, you can get an in theory better skilled more intelligent workforce so if the savings were passed onto the consumer then it is a plus point. The thing to remember is our government has made employing people in this country damned expensive with people wanting to work fewer and fewer hours and having rights for this and rights for that and backed up by unions. The funny thing is working in call centres in India is seen as a good job whereas here its a stop gap with people who aren't really interested.

As for selling it via cold calling it must be a difficult one as the people you need to really speak to are at Board level.

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Your question whether or not it is a good Idea depends on which side of the fence you stand. I work for a big UK company in IT and we have been outsourced 2 years ago. I was one of the lucky ones (debatable) who hasn't lost my job as I now work for the Indian company based here in the UK, but I'm sure if you spoke to anyone who was made redundant you can probably guess their answer.

 

Personally I think it's disgusting. The company I used to work for are suffering because the sales figures are down due to the credit crunch, yet they think nothing of giving jobs away overseas. If people don't have a job how are they supposed to have money to spend? Hypocritical? I'd say so.

 

The government are the ones to blame. If we as consumers want to buy something from abroad we get taxed to the hilt bringing it into the country, why, because they want us to spend our money over here; But again, they see nothing wrong with British corporate companies allowing labour to be passed abroad.

 

Any business will want to cut running costs, that's business, but the government do nothing to help the people. Why don't the government add a tax levy on overseas workers to stop jobs going abroad?

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well, im coming to the end of my working day and i think it is safe to say no jobs will be lost in the UK thanks to me today! :innocent:

 

cold calling is evil :whistling: and most of the time i dont blame them when they tell me to **** off, however most of the companies we call are small like our company and in this aspect I think it can be beneficial as we can offer them different skill sets and visa versa

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