Outsourcing

This book is fantastic. I have used rentacoder a LOT, and I picked up some extremely useful tips. If you're starting out, you'll find it a goldmine - I wish I'd had it. It'll cut months off your startup time.

Warning: the amazon DRM on this book is horrible. I was not able to download it, despite many customer support emails back and forth (what is YOUR time worth?). I suggest you complain to amazon about their ebook DRM if you have problems like I did.

Do you work for an outsourcing provider?
J Brian Heywood's book about outsourcing is a comprehensive look at the topic from the perspective of both the client considering outsourcing as a way to improve their competitiveness and the outsourcing service provider. Both types of organisations will gain an invaluable insight into the outsourcing world. The book gives sound advice and backs up the advice with loads of actual examples. The author explains how outsourcing, if handled correctly, has the potential to produce real tangible saving for all types of organisations, not just large ones. He also explains how outsourcing arrangements can fail and what clients and service providers should do to limit their risks of failure.
The book answers the questions:
·Why outsource?
·What are the benefits of outsourcing?
·Which functions should an organisation should consider outsourcing?
·What are the alternatives to full outsourcing?
·How does an organisation choose an outsourcing service provider?
The author argues the case for a 'Business Satellite' approach to outsourcing where the client and the service provider establish a separate organisation that is jointly owned so both can share in the future benefits generated from the outsourcing agreement.
I would say that this book is a must read for any organisation looking for ways to improve their competitiveness in today's market.

Outsourcing Training and Education guides practitioners through high-powered outsourcing initiatives. In my own work as a consultant I work on a very much smaller scale, but found the models proposed applicable to the outsourcing of foreign language training in companies. Second language training (at least here in Italy) is very much a reality outside the usual 'logic' of corporate training and my own experience has convinced me that one of the reasons this specific training very often does not get the job done is exactly this. When benchmarked against other training, foreign language training comes across as largely an ad hoc affair in which issues such a corporate culture, strategy, evaluation practices etc. are all deemed irrelevant. I shall be using Outsourcing training and Education as one of my main 'bibles' in any further consulting work in this area.

I have read several reports by this author/organization, and I have found them all to be very useful. Some of the information may look simple, but it cannot be found anywhere else to my knowledge and it is essential information for managers dealing with Taiwan's hi-tech companies.

This book prepares buyers of custom software for the pitfalls inherent in developing a system. It explains why there must be give and take between buyer and developer, and why "tough" contracts offer little protection. I suspect this will come as news to many first-time buyers.

I have never seen such pithy insights into why major development projects fail - and succeed. Rarely does anyone speak to management with such candor about their mistakes. And provide such clear and well founded examples of both success and failure. Anyone in a position to make decisions about new systems development should read this book.

As a consultant involved in strategy change and training, I have seen the fruitless internal conflict over who is to blame when new systems are late or clumsy to implement. Any company involved in or considering new systems development will find Ripin and Sayles an invaluable resource for negotiating with potential vendors and facilitating IS development projects. They stress what is so often forgotten: the critical role of line manager and user participation ... including more realistic trade-offs between costs (and failure risks) and ambitious client wish lists. Their vivid case studies illustrate how client managers obtain new skills by project participation that enable them to make more effective use of these costly new technologies and even to fine tune applications. Outsourcer professionals and client staff and line managers will find Ripin and Sayles an engaging, well documented, and widely useful book on developing and implementing new information systems. A must read!

I am always wary of books with obvious inaccuracies. This is especially true when non-experts, such as me, know more about a topic than the authors. The first warning sign, though not substantial comes in the form of an epigraph on the first page of the first chapter. It is purported to be by one "Alfred Toffler." In fact, the quote is from ALVIN Toffer's "The Adaptive Corporation." But this is nitpicking you say.

So let's flip over a few pages to find this observation. "It would be hard to find a senior management team in any large corporation that is not currently investigating or prototyping an offshore project..." However, a March 9 article in Information Week notes that among CEOs, "73 per cent say they have no intention of doing any offshore outsourcing." Another survey by Gartner Research quoted in the same articles says that 80 per cent of CIOs "don't see IT outsourcing or offshore outsourcing as a priority." My caution to managers is this: Before you leap into outsourcing out of fear of being in the "laggard" category described in this book, do a reality check. That reality check should include reading reports with more substantial research to back up the claim that offshoring has reached its "tipping point" and that executives should hop onto the bandwagon for fear of being left in the dust.

This is a balanced book that provides a solid overview of business process outsourcing. It provides both the good and the bad about offshore outsourcing. It also has many useful examples of companies that are outsourcing.

The book is well organized and provides in-depth information about HR, F&A, call centers, and back office outsourcing. There is also helpful details on calculating ROI. The authors provide a vast amount of useful information in about 300 pages.

If you are like me and trying to understand offshore outsourcing, this is a great book to read.

In the midst of election year demagoguery about offshore outsourcing we have in Robinson and Kalakota's book a lucid explanation of just what is involved in this practice. Business readers will appreciate both the historical and practical view of the subject. Others can debate the political dimensions; the economic dimensions are too clear and too positive to ignore. This book speaks to those readers who want to understand, and act on, what is more and more becoming the way of our world. Competitors disdainful of offshore outsourcing reject this book to their own detriment.

I was pleasantly surprised by STRATEGIC OUTCOURCING which deals not only with what to outsource but how to make the outsourcing decision using key two questions: Is this a core or strategic area? and What do I save and gain by outsourcing this activity? Peter Drucker believes that the reason to outsource is to free up critical management time to work on important things. If you happen to save some money in the process, that is an added benefit, but not the outsourcing driver. STRATEGIC OUTSOURCING also deals with the people and transitional issues, and how to manage the business and the employees once the activity is outsourced. If you have not outsourced anything except payroll and tax before, you must read this book. Another process that you must pursue primarily because of the time saved for management is described in THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION, by Mitchell, Coles and Metz. They describe a unique approach to achieve your goals in 1/20th the time by identifying and eliminating the stalls to progress and focusing on the best possible ways to reach your objective. Outsourcing may be one of them! I highly recommend both books.

I found that "Strategic Outsourcing: A Structured Approach to Outsourcing Decisions and Initiatives" was extremely helpful to us in our outsourcing initiatives. Of particular note was the usefulness of the sections on: the reasons to outsource, case studies of actual transactions, and project forms. He shows how cost reduction is only one of many good reasons to outsource.

Maurice Greaver brings real value in the discussions of outsourcing as it relates to the organization's vision, strategies, core competencies, and other transformaton tools. As the president, I now better understand how the outsourcing tool fits into the bigger picture.

Finally, the step by step guidance is especially helpful to the project team as they move through the initiative. He offers many tips that only a wealth of experience could have generated. You can significantly cut your outsourcing learning curve with this book.

I work in an outsourced accounting department. I learned today that my company is giving kickbacks to various client individuals, in order to glean higher ratings from those individuals -- such that the client company will pay us more this year. However, the client company always finds a reason NOT to pay that extra amount, they always come up with some deficiency in our performance to avoid paying us more money. It's unsavory and dishonorable, and those of us who do all the real work pretty much just get defecated upon. Outsourcing is, in a word, bad -- and all honest, productive people should do their best to avoid any connection therewith.

From this book I learned a lot about Outsourcing

Professor Simon Domberger, an international authority on contracting out (outsourcing) has written THE book on this subject. Domberger has advised many governments and private companies on outsourcing; his wealth of experience is reflected in this 200+ page volume. In it, he carefully analyzes the costs and benefits of contracting out, using a wealth of examples and case studies to drive home his points. Further, Domberger places contracting out in its broader context -- as one of the strategies businesses and public organizations can use to improve, respectively, their bottom line or their delivery of public services. He squarely faces such issues as resistance to contracting out within the outsourcing organizations and suggests practical ways of coping with such hurdles.

In short, this book should be found in the library of every firm and public organization that is already contracting out and wishes to improve its operations. Furthermore, it is a "Must Read" for decision-makers who are contemplating contracting out for the first time.

This book is absolutely dead-nuts on, explaining in plain English, so even Dilbert's pointy-eared boss can understand, the facts and fictions and cost pressures of the typical outsourcing arrangement. As I feel when reading many of Scott Adam's cartoons, I kept wondering when these authors had worked for my company--how did they know was going on so accurately? Their clear explanations of figuring if an outsourcing makes any sense (MIS people are dense at financial concepts, I know I am), but their simple charts and NPV explanations helped me through the tough parts. Chapman and Andrade know their history, and they explain why we're all going to relive it. Read it before you have to relive it too. I'm ordering an additional copy for my boss. (He doesn't have pointy ears--yet, anyway!)

ITS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS REGARDING IS/IT INSOURCING, HIGHLY RECOMMENTED!!!!!!!!!!

This book seems to have been thrown together in no time at all by taking a few things about outsourcing out of the authors' files. Some of the stuff is good, but it's all very uneven.

Invaluable resource if your company is interested in outsourcing. I particularly valued the forms which I found to be cutting edge. I am a customer of outsourcing and I would recommend this book to any IT professional thinking about outsourcing. This book would also help vendors by providing insight to issues that are critical to customers.

I was looking for a single and concise resource that would provide provide me with a solid foundation for working in the IT Outsourcing field - especially legal aspects. I found it in this book. No other resource was as helpful. As I've gained experience, the book continues to be extremely useful. It is written in easy to understand language and, importantly, in a practical manner. The disk and forms included provide the practitioner with a significant portion of what is needed to "do the deal"