Outsourcing Business Communication Outsourcing: Pros and Cons

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 cheaper than if they were made at home" (Madigan 2003).

The argument for off-shoring as much as possible of IT is that the more American consumers have access to cheap technology, the greater their potential base of knowledge is to grow. However, the fear is that 'better' jobs are now also exported through off-shoring, as education levels in the developing world increase.

"With millions of low-cost engineers, financial analysts, consumer marketers, and architects now readily available via the Web, CEOs can see a quicker payoff...by off-shoring work, they can see savings of 30% to 40% in the first year" in salary costs (The future of outsourcing, 2006, Business Week). Workers in the developing world with higher education are desperate for work at pay that would not support an American worker above even the poverty line: "India has close to 2,000 good engineering colleges, all in small towns, and no jobs" (Denyer 2010).

As the level of technical education increases in the developing world, the more high-level jobs will be sent abroad. However, in the long run, there may be a boomerang effect. One Indian pharmaceutical company, Aegis, is "slowly hiring workers in North America, where their largest corporate customers are based. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home" (Glader 2010). As outsourcing.