Verified Document

Outsourcing Business Communication Outsourcing: Pros And Cons Essay

Outsourcing Business communication

Outsourcing: Pros and cons

The Apple Corporation has long proved to be one of the more resistant of the tech giants to outsourcing its critical functions. An important selling point of the Apple brand has been its superior customer service and hands-on personal attention. This has caused Apple to eschew call centers. Its R&D is closely guarded under famously top-level security. Apple is able to charge a premium price for its products because of the high quality of its tech support, in contrast to its rivals. In 2006, Apple Computer Inc. decided not to build a technical support center in Bangalore, despite anticipated cost savings. "There was talk of the company hiring 3,000 workers by 2007 to handle support for Macintosh computers and other Apple gear... Apple never intended to outsource high-end software development to its Bangalore shop: Unlike most tech companies, Apple does almost all of its R&D and product development near its Cupertino (Calif.) headquarters" (India: Why Apple Walked Away, 2006, Business Week).

Apple closely controls all aspect of the company's output....

It was considered 'big news' when Apple began to outsource some of its hardware in 1998, when demand for iMacs became too great for it to sustain with its U.S. operations (Davis & Kanellos 1998). Apple continues to outsource the physical production of its computers to China and other nations in the developing world, but retains careful oversight over its technical support, marketing, and advertising, which means keeping these components based in the U.S. Even call centers not located in the U.S. (such as in Europe) tend to serve the nations where they are based.
The Apple Corporation is a good example of the judicious use of outsourcing. Outsourcing is not a black and white issue -- it is a continuum. Advocates of outsourcing see the policies pursued by the Apple Corporation as a kind of win-win scenario. The 'best' or higher-level jobs remain within the United States, while lower-level manufacturing jobs that pay salaries lower than American workers are currently willing to work at are exported overseas. "Workers in developing nations will get new and higher-paying jobs, and consumers in the U.S. will be able to buy products that are…

Sources used in this document:
References

Davis, Jim & Michael Kanellos. (1998). Apple may outsource iMacs. CNET. Retrieved

November 25, 2011 at http://news.cnet.com/Apple-may-outsource-iMacs/2100-1001_3-215529.html

Denyer, Paul. (2011). Outsourcing reaches rural India. The Washington Post.

Retrieved November 25, 2011 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/outsourcing-reaches-rural-india/2011/07/04/gIQA9ighFI_story.html
The future of outsourcing. (2006). Business Week. Retrieved November 25, 2011 at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_05/b3969401.htm
Home. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 25, 2011 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/as-indian-companies-grow-in-the-us-outsourcing-comes-home/2011/05/17/AFZbrp7G_story.html
2011 at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_25/b3989058.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_34/b3846027.htm
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Outsourcing Has Made Great Controversy Within a
Words: 1234 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

Outsourcing has made great controversy within a number of industries lately. Essentially, outsourcing is "the act of one company contracting with another company to provide services that might otherwise be performed by in-house employees" (Conjecture Corporation, 2012). Yet, this movement is not as easy or pain free as it sounds. Yes, outsourcing can help keep costs down and allow a company to remain globally competitive; however, outsourcing can also cost

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing It Services
Words: 1436 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

Outsourcing IT Services Some History The information technology outsourcing industry was established in 1962 by H. Ross Perot, who left IBM to launch Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in Dallas, Texas. EDS gets proper respect for developing most of the practices that are essential to the performance of the industry today: the management and integration of complex systems, client/server transaction processing, and private networks transmitting data, video and voice in digital format. The

Case Study on Outsourcing
Words: 629 Length: 2 Document Type: Essay

Outsourcing Alternatives There are three alternatives in this situation. There is a re-org that has been proposed for the IT department. There is the view of the CIO, which is that no re-org is necessary, so essentially the status quo option. The third option is to outsource the IT department. Compare Outsourcing with Internal Solutions There are advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing the IT department to a third party vendor. The biggest advantage is

Outsourcing Is an Appropriation of Particular Business
Words: 652 Length: 2 Document Type: Term Paper

Outsourcing is an appropriation of particular business operations to a professional foreign service provider. (Haugen, Musser, & Lovelace, 2009, p. 34) Most often then not, businesses and organizations have trouble handling all aspects of a business process privately or in this case, domestically, and need to seek professional assistance elsewhere. Additionally, some processes do not need permanent in-house professionals, allowing for outsourcing to be the cheaper alternative. Once a job

Outsourcing It a Management Strategy
Words: 3895 Length: 14 Document Type: Term Paper

Contracting officers today must have the skills or competencies required to become the business leaders of the future (Steele 2000)." An article found in the ABA Banking Journal asserts that Chief Information Officers are interested in it outsourcing because companies are able to acquire it skill sets that may not be present at the internal level. In this article Siemers (1995), explains that One of the reasons CIOs believe that

Outsourcing Shipping Management Outsourcing Is a Process
Words: 5600 Length: 19 Document Type: Essay

Outsourcing Shipping Management Outsourcing is a process by which an organization takes the services of an external party to perform some of its operations or functions. Outsourcing is also done by shipping firms all over the Globe (Outsource Freight, 2012). Ship owners generally outsource their operations and management functions to the external parties against for a particular period of time and against a specific sum of money (Lorange, 2009). Outsourcing of

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now