Services Outsourced Overseas Proving Costly
Companies large and small from around the United States jumped on the outsourcing bandwagon in an effort to save money and increase profitability. Though cheaper labor costs proved attractive the decision to outsource to overseas providers is proving costly to many companies.
As business leaders are quickly relearning the value of communication, many overseas providers are unwittingly proving to these leaders there is no substitute for being able to pick up the phone and get immediate answers to pressing questions.
The IT field has seen an ebb and flow of the outsourcing phenomenon. Many IT professionals lost their jobs to outsourcing, only to find themselves in demand again after overseas providers proved unable to provide the level of communication clients expect.
The web development and marketing industry has seen the biggest backlash to overseas outsourcing with many companies realizing the old adage “penny wise and pound foolish” holds true. After failed attempts to use designers, developers and SEO experts from overseas, companies are returning to U.S. based vendors in order to achieve the level of service they need and demand.
Though some overseas providers have adjusted office hours to attempt to accommodate their US-based clients, communication still suffers as a result of language and cultural barriers that prove more costly than many companies anticipated.
While many business leaders are quick to acknowledge that time is money, the amount of time wasted on trying to overcome language and culture barriers in business transactions is often overlooked. Savvy business owners, however, are beginning to put a numeric value on better and easier communication in order to determine the true cost of doing business with a provider.
In addition to verbal communication issues, many companies are learning the hard way that overseas providers can disappear without any legal recourse resulting in significant pecuniary loss and intangible losses.
Though some businesses determine that these risks are worth taking, many small and mid-sized business have quickly learned that the cost of doing business overseas far exceeds any potential savings in reduced wages and services.
The overseas outsourcing bubble bursting did not come too soon for the U.S.-based vendors who weathered the outsourcing storm and did not come soon enough for the countless firms and individuals that could not stay afloat.
Outsourcing to overseas vendors has proved costly to both the companies that hired the overseas vendors as well as to the American professionals who suffered from lost profits, lost jobs and lost opportunities. In the end, overseas outsourcing proved more costly than anyone expected.
