Businesses once agonized over the risk of compromising quality and customer service by moving internal functions like software programming and call centers to outside contractors. Today such moves are commonplace, and the vendors more competent. Cost-cutting executives are combing their operations for new categories of work to farm out.
The trend is likely to accelerate in coming years, even as critics complain the practice is taking a toll on the American workforce.
"Companies are extending the logic of outsourcing," said Joseph B. Fuller , co founder and chief executive of Monitor Group, a global consulting firm in Cambridge. "Over time, if you assume they're going to be under permanent, unrelenting pressure to improve their financial performance, more and more of their time, effort, and discretionary investment will go into activities that are core to their strategy. They'll look for third-party vendors for other activities."
