Article of Disadvantages

 

Damodar Golhar and Satish Despande quoted in their study about outsourcing for financial success that, "Strategic outsourcing can allow firms to achieve gains in competitive advantage, spend more time on core activities, and focus on addressing external threats and opportunities." the purpose of outsourcing is for firms to provide products or services to their customers at a much quicker and less expensive rate (Deshpande and Golhar). In a survey, which was conducted by CAPS Research and A.T.Kearney Inc., of executives responsible for purchasing found that over 80 percent of the respondents felt that reduction of cost and the need to focus on central business activities were the key drivers for outsourcing (Deshpande and Golhar). It is estimated that over three million American jobs, approximately $136 billion in wages, will be outsourced to foreign countries within five years ( Deshpande and Golhar). A disadvantage of outsourcing is the difference in languauge from the country outsourcing to the foreign country.

The language of one country to the other country is a disadvantage of outsourcing to a foreign country. This problem shows up more often when outsourcing inbound and outbound telemarketing jobs. APT Services, an outsourcing firm in India quoted:

When a function that needs handling of calls is outsourced to a foreign location and the first language of that nation is different from the nation which outsources the function, it may lead to low quality call handling. (APT Services)

This low quality call handling is seen a lot when calling certain customer service representatives such as a credit card company. Usage of words and phrases and accents varies from country, therefore making it more difficult to understand the person (APT Services). Overall, it is risky for a firm to outsource jobs to a foreign country that does not have a great deal of knowledge of the main language used in the country that is outsourcing the job.