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Sex up your business growth
A top executive called up me late in the night. He was still awake at 3 o’clock. He told me that he has not been sleeping for last 3 nights. Problem at his working place is working it effect on his marital life with wife. Although problem in...
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Finding Your Next Big Idea
The business enterprise has two, and only two, basic
functions: marketing and innovation. It is not necessary for a
business to grow bigger; but it is necessary that it constantly
grow better.
- Peter F. Drucker
The...
Innovation Management – the harsh facts of life for all innovators
Your opinion doesn’t matter. The end user’s does
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.
There are other useful...
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First Contact: The Source of Customer Loyalty
With customers being smarter, more cost conscious, more product knowledgeable and more demanding, improving customer service has become a major focus within many businesses. In Customer Satisfaction is Worthless; Customer Loyalty is Priceless,...
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Offshore Outsourcing -- Future
Offshore Outsourcing
provides the ability to hold skilled overseas staff at a small
part of the labor cost which is exhilarating to several
entrepreneurs. The vistas in which Offshoring can be utilized
especially in: accounting, advertising, animation, Human
Resource Management and Development, health care-related jobs,
IT projects, financial investment and consultancy, legal
services, and network security. The concept of Offshore
Outsourcing is couple of centuries old when the colonial powers
started taking raw materials from their respective colonies and
then selling them after processing them into manufactured
commodities. In 19th century the Britishers (and other
imperialist/colonial powers), because of industrial revolution,
rampaged the small-scale and cottage scale industries in India
(and other respective colonies) by selling processed goods to
the natives having a better quality. Now in 21st century the
tables seem to have turned on the colonizers (or
neo-colonizers). Taking advantage of the cheap labour in
developing countries, many MNCs have set up subsidiaries in
India and in other places (like China, Canada, South America,
Africa, Israel, Ireland, Russia). In the past decade, US
companies alone have invested $7 billion in their subsidiaries
in India, picking a net saving of more than $26 billion.
Telstra, an Australian telecom company, for instance, saved more
than $75 million a year by outsourcing many jobs to Indian
enterprises. Latest modifications in the way U.S. companies are
using Offshore Outsourcing Industry have generated heated
controversy, which is comprehensible considering that jobs are
at hazard in an already tense economy. But whereas it may be
human temperament to adhere to the status quo, the software
industry will be better off in acclimatizing to these changes
and allowing innovation to thrive. Detractors have fated
offshore development as everything from shortsighted to
un-American--but it may well conclude salvaging the U.S.
software industry. For staying competitive in the global market,
U.S. software companies must persist in driving innovation.
Nevertheless, innovation today is
being choked through deficient
R&D budgets on the company side and an overspending menace on
the customer side. Offshore development can help on both sides.
In fact, as pointed out in a recent report by the US Chamber of
Commerce, the main cause of increased unemployment in the US,
Britain and other developed countries is the enhancement in
productivity due to continuing advancements leading to massive
unemployment; and, two, that it has not contributed to
unemployment, as is sought to be made out.
Here are the reasons: For a mature software company, expending
on proper product innovation is much less than what you might
think. It by and large accounts for less than 30 percent of the
R&D budget. This small piece of the pie is being further
clutched from two directions. First, overall R&D spending by
public U.S. software companies is lessening. In fact, in 2002 it
fell by 2 percent, after having consistently grown at 15 percent
annually since 1998. Most of these cuts are captivating a bite
out of new product development. Second, R&D budgets are being
consumed by ever-increasing maintenance-related activities, such
as bug-fixing, upgrades and minor enrichments. Maintenance
agreements with a huge customer base mount up over the years
mandate this support. With such restricted resources accessible,
software companies can't successfully produce real advance.
Instead, many of finest and brightest are jammed down in what
amounts to software maintenance tasks. The irony is that many of
these developers would be happier with--and better suited
for--truly pioneering work. But companies have painted
themselves into a corner. This is where offshore development can
facilitate. In most cases, a well-executed offshore development
program can help release an added 20 percent of the R&D budget
for new innovation while continuing to meet the maintenance
obligations of mature companies.
About the author:
For further information on offshore outsourcing and
offshore software
development, please visit http://www.a1technology.com .
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