This section features some of the emerging trends, research and thought leadership in the area of Offshore Outsourcing, offshoring and sourcing. The list is by no means exhaustive. Do send us a note on articles of interest that we may update here.

Research // Case Studies // Official Positions // Major Players in Outsourcing // Articles on Offshoring

Recent Case Studies

• Outsourcing Case Study JPMorgan's multi-location strategy: "The ETC has also led to the development of what JPMorgan calls a multi-location strategy, which looks beyond near-shore to offshore options. Now, projects are planned based on what kind of work needs to be done at primary, secondary and tertiary locations, corresponding to risk, cost and technology profile evaluations." - Wall Street & Technology
• Outsourcing Solutions and Industry Expertise Power De Novo Bank For Exponential Growth : "Success In Motion" - Fidelity IFS
  
• Case Study: Was Outsourcing to India the Right Move? - Inc.com
• Why offshoring fails, by Tana George - IT Manager's Journal
• How BofA Banks on Offshoring; Having grown via acquisition, it's used to having far-flung operations. Now with centers in Asia, it's able to keep projects moving 24 hours a day - "We ask ourselves, 'Is there a core competency where we wouldn't want our Infosys team to learn what we're doing?' We're very careful what we send to third parties," she says. "We're not going to give people access to something that is proprietary or differentiating." Business Week
• Strategic opportunities at the intersection of globalization, technology and lifestyles. In this article, we discuss four “hot” strategic opportunities for the next three-five year time frame arising from globalization and technology trends and present frameworks that can help business executives leverage these opportunities. - Handbook of Business Strategy 2006
  
• Beyond Offshoring: Assess Your Company's Global Potential D Farrell - Harvard Business Review, 2004
• Move Over, India: The Shifting Geography of Offshore Outsourcing Creates New Challengers India took an early lead in establishing itself as a center for offshore outsourcing. Now, however, according to experts at Wharton and elsewhere, as many as 40 locations - including cities in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America - are vying to attract BPO work. The next big phenomenon will be the emergence of a hub-and-spokes model in the globalization of services, says one Wharton professor. Knowledge@Wharton explores the topic
• Cutter Consortium: TWO POSITIONS: THE OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING DEBATE: There are two positions held by the supporters and the opponents in the offshoring debate. Generally, supporters of offshoring cite a persuasive list of global business-related advantages that result from offshore outsourcing. Most of the opponents concentrate mainly on the loss of jobs and the loss of technological advantage in the outsourcing country. We will discuss some of the main arguments from each side of the debate.
• Near-Term Growth Of Offshoring Accelerating Forrester has increased its estimate of how many US services jobs will go offshore in the near term. Long term, we believe that our previous projection of 3.3 million by 2015 is still accurate. The near-term increase is driven by a combination of the following four factors: 1) Visibility has encouraged more conservative companies to experiment with going offshore to protect themselves competitively; 2) a broadening of the IT services offered by offshore vendors like Wipro and Infosys; 3) the establishment of captive offshore centers by user companies for business process outsourcing (BPO); and 4) onshore IT technology and services vendors setting up shop in locations like India, China, and Belarus to develop/maintain products or provide lower-cost services.

• CIO.com Sourcing - Outsourcing Resources - Managing information technology:: Research and articles from CIO.com
• Emerging Business Models in Offshore Outsourcing (By Ravi Kalakota and Marcia Robinson): In the early 1990s, former General Electric (GE) chief executive Jack Welch declared that 70-70-70 would be his company's rule for sending technology work offsite: 70% would be done by outside suppliers, 70% of that overseas, and 70% of that in India. Welch's vision was to recreate the company using Indian resources. Today, GE is considered by many to be the most advanced practitioner of the offshore outsourcing business model.
• Managing and Implementing Outsourced Projects: Using an offshoring management framework. Mohan Babu explains how to use a project management body of knowledge to develop an offshoring management framework
• McKinsey & Company Global Institute: MGI's latest research gets at the facts of the business trend that is redefining the global economy
• MIT Profit: Research on PROFESSIONAL OUTSOURCING at MIT Sloan School of Management
• Networkworld: IT Offshoring: The latest offshoring news and analysis from NetworkWorld. Read The Open Enterprise: Mandate for Success and ensure your IT future.
• Offshore Outsourcing Best Practices: The mention of outsourcing at any industry forum or in the media automatically conjures visions of Indians or Chinese working for international clients on their computers 8,000 or 10,000 miles away
• The Outsourcing Institute: The Outsourcing Institute is a neutral outsourcing resource dedicated to providing outsourcing information, outsourcing research, outsourcing networking
• The Offshoring Research Network: Duke CIBER at the Fuqua School of Business, and Archstone Consulting are conducting joint-research on the subject of offshoring Business Processes, Information Technology, and other knowledge-based functions.
• Wikipedia Offshoring: Offshoring can be defined as relocation of business processes (including production/manufacturing) to a lower cost location, usually overseas. Offshoring can be seen in the context of either production offshoring or services offshoring. After its accession to the WTO, China emerged as a prominent destination for production offshoring. After technical progress in telecommunications improved the possibilities of trade in services, India is a country leading in this domain.
• Knowledge@Wharton: Offshore Outsourcing: What's Working, What's Not The globalization of services, as represented by the sustained growth of business process outsourcing (BPO), continues to thrive. In this special report prepared in collaboration with consulting firm A.T. Kearney, Knowledge@Wharton explores several emerging trends in the BPO landscape. Among them: new competitive models that BPO providers are using to drive growth; the shifting geography of BPO locations; and the challenges and risks that constitute life after BPO.

• Offshore Outsourcing; IEEE's Position Paper on Offshoring The offshoring of high wage jobs from the United States to lower cost overseas locations is currently contributing to unprecedented levels of unemployment among American electrical, electronics and computer engineers. Offshoring also poses a very serious, long term challenge to the nation's leadership in technology and innovation, its economic prosperity, and its military and homeland security.
• BCS' position on offshore outsourcing 'We are witnessing a major shift in the global IT services industry' Offshore outsourcing can offer significant benefits: IT services can be provided at substantially reduced prices. Offshore outsourcing companies in, say, India can afford to pay what are relatively high salary levels for well-qualified staff and still undercut companies carrying out work in the UK. IT jobs in parts of India attract some of the best graduates because they are well paid and provide an excellent working environment in custom-built business parks. dddddd offshoring of high wage jobs from the United States to lower cost overseas locations is currently contributing to unprecedented levels of unemployment among American electrical, electronics and computer engineers. Offshoring also poses a very serious, long term challenge to the nation's leadership in technology and innovation, its economic prosperity, and its military and homeland security.