Outsourcing and insourcing and their roles within a telecommunications context

Outsourcing is the process in which an organization transfers ownership of a business process to another company. In other words, it is the process in which a company contracts the services of another company in performing a specific task which would otherwise have been undertaken by in-house employees. Many large companies distribute some of their processes like payroll processing and call center services to separate companies which specialize in them.Insourcing is the opposite of outsourcing and it involves the transfer of specific processes within an organization’s operational framework to an internal but totally stand-alone unit which specializes only in that particular process. Insourcing is practiced by organizations who wish to have more control of critical processes and is intended to give the organizations a higher probability of instilling required levels of competence in employees or units serving in specific areas of operation. Within the telecommunications framewo rk, outsourcing and insourcing find wide applications.Many companies prefer to contract the services of separate companies which specialize in call center operations to offer customer support. Outsourcing I also used in telecommunications in installation. If a telecommunications company is in the process of installing infrastructure, it will most likely contract a company which deals with installation to offer this service. Outsourcing is the preferred mode of executing processes which do not occur continuously. Insourcing is used to execute telecommunications processes that occur continuously and need to be monitored in real time by the company.These could include network management, billing and sales. I prefer outsourcing since it delegates the responsibility of specialized processes to people who are sufficiently competent in that particular process as they only specialize in it. Outsourcing minimizes the expenditure incurred in training a specialized unit to perform specific tas ks which could only happen occasionally, and it also leaves the traditional workforce in an organization with ample time to deal with other priorities. The firm does not need to cater for employee benefits of the people assigned these tasks.