Even at a time when outsourcing was not officially known as a business strategy, most establishments were not totally self-contained; functions for which they had no competency internally were outsourced. For instance, publishers would buy composition, printing, and fulfillment services. Employing suppliers for these important but secondary tasks could be viewed as the early beginnings of outsourcing. The next step was to outsource support services.

Prior to the IT revolution, there were a number of organisations in the US which outsourced manufacturing jobs to countries like Canada, Mexico and South America in order to cut costs. At present, outsourcing involves a strategic relationship between the company and the service provider. Till some time back, it was clear that companies would not outsource competencies that were core to them, as they set them apart and gave them an edge. This generally included any customer-facing functions. Now companies realise that outsourcing some of their core functions is a sound tactic and not inadvisable. As you know, a number of companies currently have their customer service handled by their service provider, emphasising the importance of the function.

In the current scenario, the goal is to obtain the maximum possible efficiency by correct utilization of the available options and partnerships. Thus, a company's choice to outsource a function would be taken based less on whether it is core to their business and more on who can provide the service with better efficiency.

Next Generation Models

IT Resourcing: The supplier provides specialist skills available from their talent pool to backfill the client's teams, relieving the pressure of staff shortages, IT projects or major roll-outs across a number of countries. In addition to the main onsite teams, a flexible resource solution can be effectively utilised for the provision of services to smaller regional or European offices to assist with their ad-hoc tasks, on either a proactive or reactive basis via skilled, multilingual resources.

IT Co-sourcing: IT co-sourcing is a hybrid model integrating both in-house and outsourcing services. With this model, organisations eliminate overhead, optimise internal resources, and can quickly move products or services from development to production.

Ethical IT Outsourcing Services: Many organisations fail to realise is that without proper planning and consideration wholesale IT outsourcing can have far reaching implications. For many companies considering an outsourcing solution may have difficult or negative connotations, as the loss of valued staff can be disruptive and emotionally distressing for the business. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way, there are a number of solutions that not only prepare and prevent loss of business knowledge, but can assist in retaining staff either on or off site. This approach is called ETHICAL OUTSOURCING.

It's ethical because you can maintain the resources you have in the countries you operate. You can now genuinely maintain services at a lower cost, if you release your workforce in to a more flexible and focused environment. It's a win/win scenario. You save costs, with no loss of business knowledge. Allied's Ethical IT outsourcing services cover the full IT spectrum and can be tailored to the specific needs of your organisation.

IT Offshoring Services: Where organisations are in pursuit of the most efficient cost models, then the "high cost to low cost" model makes real sense. As the purest evolution of IT outsourcing, offshoring takes advantage of the low cost business model, whereby the more simple functions and queries can be resolved remotely by an offshore facility.