As outsourcing has become a staple of the global economy, two companion ideas have become conventional wisdom. The first is that it saves money to take routine business processes outside the U.S.; the second is that strategic operations belong at home.
There's good reason for these beliefs. Companies in many different industries have successfully outsourced things like call centers, basic information-technology operations, records management, and back-office finance and accounting. Such moves are often successful because these processes are typically not core and differentiated within a business. That is, an outsourcer can offer a compelling service and leverage the scale of multiple clients' workloads along with offshore cost advantages.
