Customer Reviews

Offshore Outsourcing: Business Models, ROI and Best Practices

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This isn't a bad book, but it nowhere near justifies the cover price. There just isn't the information within to justify the cost of the book.

After making the mistake of buying this book I went back and looked at some of the reviews. It is interesting to note the number of duplicates. Further, many of the reviewers have reviewed only this book. But wait; one of the reviewers has chosen to write a (negative) review of antother outsourcing text. Must be the suspicious auditor in me.

Leaving aside the accuracy or intent of any reviews, my primary complaint with this text is the absence of any real coverage of risk (regional, IT, infrastructure........). And no real coverage of due dilligence. Mmm.

Save your money: Gartner gives away more than this book provides.

I decided to pick up this book with the hope that it could shed some light on the heated offshore outsourcing discussion for me. It did, but not in the "for or against" way I expected. More than anything else, the authors are focused on boiling down the concepts of offshore outsourcing so that readers can apply them to their own situations.

The business model chapter is particularly good and does an excellent job of broadening the definition of offshore outsourcing. Like a lot of other folks, I thought offshore outsourcing typically involved a U.S. company sending customer service or IT to an Indian company. The authors make it clear that that's not the case by going into detail about hybrid delivery models, captive centers, shared services, build, operate, and transfer models, and other business and delivery models.

The authors divide the book into three sections: the first part is an overview of offshore outsourcing, the second part talks about the different areas companies have outsourced (had no idea about human resources), and the third discusses how companies can select a vendor and a country and begin a project of their own if they find that offshore outsourcing is a viable option for them.

Overall, I thought this book was very informative, but don't expect the authors to come out guns a blazing on one side or another of the offshore debate. This is a "comprehensive guide," not a manifesto.

Everyone is talking about offshore outsourcing but most of the discussion is rather superficial. I picked up this book to better understand what is happening.
I found this book to be extremely helpful in understanding the landscape and critical sucess factors in moving current in-house operations offshore. This book looks beyond the hype of everyday headlines and focuses on identifying the framework to really understand offshore outsourcing.
The best part of this book is the numerouus case studies. For a business manager,this book is a great reference guide for how to approach the controversial topic of outsourcing. The in-depth analysis of different processes(IT,customer care,HR,F&A,and transaction processing)highlights the true ROI that can be achieved across different areas of a company.
The authors have taken their consulting and real-life implementation experience to deliver a superior offshore outsourcing reference guide! Highly recommend it.

If you are not familiar with offshore outsourcing at all, then Offshore Outsourcing by Marcia Robinson and Ravi Kalakota provides a very detailed view of both business models that can be used for working offshore and reviewing what could possibly offshored, including many areas not normally described (for example: telemarketing for initial sales leads.).

Starting off in Chapter 2, various business models are defined. While none of the models is new, it is a good compilation. It also shows that you can take pieces from the various models and form your own. A staff augmentation onsite model is not listed, but it could be considered similar to the BOT (Build Operate and Transfer) model defined in the book. A staff augmentation model means that you do not necessarily have to transfer operations to the client from the outsourcing firm. It may never make sense for the client to take over the operations themselves. Chapter 2 also reviews different revenue models at the end of the chapter. It would have been good to see how the business models cross with the revenue models; which revenue models work best with what business model, etc.

The bulk of the discussion in this book defines the various types of activities that can be undertaken offshore. At a high-level, five areas are defined

1. IT

2. Customer Care

3. Finance and accounting

4. human resources

5. transaction processing

A chapter is dedicated to each of the five areas. I think for some people, some of the types of activities that are discussed will be surprising. For example all of the activities listed under marketing: direct mail marketing, campaigns, telemarketing, telesales, lead qualification, lead tracking and customer surveys. Many marketing consulting firms will tell you many of these areas can't be done offshore, but clearly they are.

Good for review is that no matter what you outsource, each item needs to be evaluated. When evaluating whether or not to offshore any of these processes, need to answer these questions:

1. Can you offshore without losing your competitive advantage?

2. If you offshore it, can you receive incremental savings from it?

3. Can you offshore it without losing control of it?

One item is given as an example for back-office transaction processing starting on page 70. They give an example of Dispute resolution which is done at the FCE (Financial Center East) of American Express established in India in 1994. Now dispute resolution is very labor intensive, which is true, and it requires customer interaction. They refer to it as an area where FCE shines because of low-cost, high quality staff. They state that the FCE has reduced the turn around time in the dispute resolution process, but they do not say why? Are they doing things such as: Part of the work is done during the day in the US or Europe, then other items are done overnight in India, or have they thought up new ways on their own (were they given that autonomy) to change the dispute resolution process? Since 58% (stated on pg 69) of what they do process is for Japan and Asia Pacific, is there something specific about the laws for dispute resolution in those areas that they can be resolved faster. It would be good to see the average times for dispute resolution within the US center, the UK center and the FCE. But then we would also need to know, is the process exactly the same, can it be the same because of the laws, and therefore are we comparing apples to apples or apples to oranges. I would have liked them to delve in to one or two of these scenarios much more closely. Right now we only get a top view of everything that has taken place, what people have offshored, how it has worked, but little details on why it failed, or why it worked, which would be necessary to determine best practices and to not get a false sense that everything will be okay going offshore. This would be necessary data for AmEx to determine are they really getting an advantage with the FCE, or are there outside factors which influence the results.

During the discussion on IT Outsourcing, there was one thing I always have to laugh about. Companies always talk about how they undertook a large vendor selection process, and then chose Wipro, Infosys, Tata, Satym, etc., and usually more than one. I have to wonder why they bother with the selection process, why they waste the money? They chose the top Indian outsourcing firms; they could have saved time and money and put those companies on their initial short list. Do they really get any benefit by going through the entire selection process that make up for the time and money that it takes?

The third section of the book is dedicated to helping a company define their offshore strategy. Initially the book implies that you have to start out knowing exactly what you want to offshore, but then they do go deeper in to it. Step 1 includes: Analyze your goals and set your strategy looks at how to determine what to offshore and what to keep in-house. The author's do make a blanket statement that if you are in the pharmaceutical business you shouldn't offshore your R&D, however, there are successful cases of pharma companies offshoring just this type of work and making specific deals to do this.

The vendor selection and location selection chapters are fairly standard. The vendor selection process is one that is used for selecting any type of outsourcing firm. It does include a section on the best Indian outsourcing firms. The location selection chapter reviews common criteria for evaluating different countries and parts of the world.

Offshoring Outsourcing is a great book for those not familiar with all of the different types of work that can be offshored. The best part of the book is Part II which is called Offshore Outsourcing Best Practices, but really describes in detail, based on the five high-level outsourcing categories, what can be offshored. For many of the items, examples of actual projects and situations are included. If someone is not familiar with the different areas that can be done offshored, this is the book for them. The sections on setting your offshore strategy and how do you actually get started are lighter. They will be a help to a company which has not started, but other reference sources will still be needed.

My boss asked me to be part of a task-force on global sourcing. Not having a lot of background, I bought this book to get a primer on offshore outsourcing. This book seemed to be an "Offshore Outsourcing 101" written for the business person rather than a techie.

This book does a decent job of explaining the basics. It doesn't rely on prior knowledge of software development or IT outsourcing. The value of the book is the broad coverage of the different business processes rather than just IT.

The book is by no mean perfect. There are areas where the authors could have dug a lot deeper. But, in all fairness, this is probably not necessary for an introductory guide.

Recommend the book if you are looking for an overview of the offshore outsourcing area. If you are looking deep technical insights this book is probably not right for you.

After reading some of the caustic comments posted regarding this book, I thought it might be useful for people to hear a different viewpoint.

I read this book after borrowing it from a co-worker to get an overview of offshore outsourcing. After attending a lot of internal meetings where managers throw out various buzzwords like BPO, ITO, near-shoring, offshoring etc. I needed a primer that had a lot of examples and case studies.

I found the book useful in terms of providing a basic foundation in terms of what was going on. Was the book perfect, no. Was the book upto date in 2005, no. Did it provide a basic education and overview, yes. Did it provide some guidelines if you were to implement outsourcing, yes.

I found this book to be much more packed with information than I had anticipated. I think the title is misleading in the sense that it is not just about offshore outsourcing but really more about business process outsourcing (such as finance and accounting, human resources and call centers).

There is a strategy chapter that lays out the decision-making process and project management steps involved in outsourcing. There is also a chapter on vendor sourcing and selection that is very in-depth. The book also devotes a whole chapter on country options such as China, Mexico, the Philippines, India, Canada, Russia, Ireland and South Africa.

The business model chapter explains options for outsourcing such as BOT (build, operate, transfer) or joint ventures. It explains the delivery options such as onsite, nearshore and offshore that companies can explore.

Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a better understanding of business process outsourcing or offshore outsourcing.

This book is probably going to have people who either like it or absolutely hate it. It depends on whether you are doing offshore outsourcing as part of a overall corporate strategy or having it done to you.

As a manager, I found that "Offshore Outsourcing: Business Models, ROI and Best Practices" was extremely helpful for my team in our offshore outsourcing initiatives. It is easy to read but there is a great deal of information contained in each chapter. Of particular note were chapters on: different business models (how to offshore), the nuances of the types of business processes (what to offshore), the pros and cons of different countries (where to locate operations) and the case studies of actual transactions.

The step by step guidance in the final section of this book is especially helpful to the project team as they move through the initiative. The authors offers many tips from their interviews that only a wealth of experience in the real-world could have generated. You can significantly cut your learning curve with this book.

For the busy executive this book brings real value in the discussions of offshore outsourcing as it relates to the company's vision, strategies, core competencies, and other cost management tools.

Highly recommend this book for managers and executives. Even business school students will find the global sourcing perspective valuable as they will now better understand how the offshore outsourcing tool fits into the bigger picture of continuous strategy.

This is a really well-written, easy to follow book that puts globalization and outsourcing topics into perspective. Case studies make the concepts concrete. Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in understanding the current globalization trends.

This book provides a very thorough overview of the latest issues and trends in offshore outsourcing. I bought this book to get a deeper perspective of what is being discussed in every major newspaper or magazine. Also wanted to see which large cap stocks like GE might benefit from this trend.

The best part of this book were the numerous case studies. The different case studies -- GE, British Airways, AMEX, Lehman, Dell, MetLife, Delta Airlines, Bellsouth and many others -- were very interesting and educational as they presented a real-world perspective of how large corporations are taking advantage of offshore outsourcing.

Highly recommend this book if you are interested in this topic and really want to understand what is going on behind the scenes.