Outsourcing Case

Outsourcing a call center offshore has been a strategic business move that has taken off over the last 30 years. However, before making the decision to move the call center to Asia the first step to take is making sure the company is aware of Asia's compliance laws and procedures such as dispute resolution. A few of the key legalities the company should take into consideration are the rules of governance, intellectual property, privacy and data protection laws, tax laws, dispute resolution and civil penalties (Herath, 2009). In regards to moving the call center to Asia, it would be less problematic to move the call center to India, since India already complies with the TRIPS agreement and has accepted the WTO agreement (CHANDA, 2008).

The company's decision to outsource most of its customer care call center offshore can have a positive or negative impact on the business. A defective implementation could lead to a disastrous strategic decision. However, if all goes smoothly, then outsourcing the call center to Asia could result in some key advantages to the company (Herath, 2009).

Outsourcing has become an innovative way for a company to cut costs, since operating costs and wages are lower overseas. While reducing costs is still a prime reason to outsource, the other aspects and advantages to outsourcing are flexibility, added connections to industry experts, the ability to implement 24 hour support and a larger workforce (Pouder, 2011). Furthermore, outsourcing the customer care call center could potentially elevate employee production as well as lessen the amount of time management spends on administrative duties, which then could be reallocated to other expedient undertakings (Pouder, 2011). Unfortunately, outsourcing the customer care call center overseas could also potentially result in lost control, communication issues and slow resolution time.

As you can see, there are numerous reasons to outsource overseas. Company's based in the United States who move operations offshore benefit from lower operational costs, cheaper locations, utilities and labor as well as tax incentives. Conversely, the loss of available jobs inside the U.S. can be damaging to the economy (Hoxter, 2004). In today's economic environment coupled with higher levels of unemployment the United States is beginning to feel the amount of jobs that have been lost permanently due to outsourcing (Hoxter, 2004).