Week 1

in this week I start preparing  for my project by searching for resources and taking notes for what issues that my project it will handle and also, I made a setup for my blog in ( thinkspace ) . Actually at first i was little worry about it as i didn’t use blogs before so i don’t know How to make a set up for it but I Watched some videos in YouTube  and that helps a lot . second thing is normally for project is working as a team so it will be there different skills and more opinion to how we will carryout the project so for me to do full project its challenge.

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Week 2

In this week I  finished project title,abstract,statement of problem , scope of the project,Aim and objectives finally the tools and the technologies that I Will use for my project.

ABSTRACT:

Now days, in the context of globalization and increasing competition, outsourcing has proven to be an enterprise management strategy. Organizations must reduce their costs and create new prospects by maximizing the use of external and internal resources. Internalization causes the organizations to attach resources to a course of action that may reduce the flexibility and be challenging to retreat (Leiblein et al., 2002). In addition, internalization requires to make products more productive. Outsourcing is very beneficial for business improvement, competitive advantage and help organizations to attain its goals by improving central activities (Murphy ,2004). The choice for the outsourcing of business has many risks and threats. Frameworks and models of outsourcing are checked to figure out the key threats of outsourcing. The main objective of this paper is to analyses the impact of different factors that can affect the organizations to outsource their business.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM:

Now days, in the context of globalization and increasing competition, outsourcing has proven to be an enterprise management strategy. Organizations must reduce their costs and create new prospects by maximizing the use of external and internal resources. Outsourcing is very beneficial for business improvement, competitive advantage and help organizations to attain its goals by improving central activities (Murphy ,2004). The choice for the outsourcing of business has many risks and threats.

SCOPE OF PROJECT:

In this project as stated earlier we would examine the problems and difficulties encountered by the organizations created by the phase of outsourcing. When we will recognize the issues and difficulties or pressures related to outsourcing the organization may find the ways to rectify the problem. Then we can very clearly understand outsourcing and its difficulties.

AIM AND OBJECTIVES:

The major objectives of this project are to determine the main risks and challenges that may organization faces during the process of outsourcing business. There is some specific objective behind this project.

• To find out, outsourcing causes challenges or reduces the consistency of consumer care delivery.
• Find out the process of outsourcing cause or raise workplace tension, insecurity and interpersonal disputes.
• To find out about the main concerns of the in-house staff surrounding the relocation of companies abroad.
• Find out the difficulties that may appear due to cultural difference.
• Find out the controlling and security issues in outsourcing.
• Find out the cultural problem’s issues in outsourcing.
• Find out the operational risks which included increasing of cost, declining in quality and service.
• Find out the strategic risks which included intellectual property right issue.
• Find out the cultural differences.

By setting this specific objective “To consider how outsourcing causes or enhances uncertainty, distress and inter-personal conflicts in workers”. We wanted to analyze that does the process of the outsourcing of business in organization increase the stress within the employees of the organization. In order to fulfill this objective, we have created a questionnaire which included four major questions which are below:

• Does the outsourced and insource team communication difficulties increase stress on work.
• How often the outsourced team receives the wrong answer without really knowing what they have been asking for.
• How often do you participate in work-related conflicts with the Outsourcing Team?
• Do the respondents think their job becomes more difficult when collaborating with the Outsourcing Team compared to the leaders of their In-house team?

By setting this specific objective “Analyzing whether the cultural differences arising from globalization have culminated in disagreements and dissatisfaction within the organization’s working environment”, we have created a questionnaire which included few major questions which are below:

• Does the cultural difference between the outsource team and home team could conflict the organizations functions?
• Does the cultural difference between the outsource team and home team could conflict the team work?
• Does the outsource team can disturb the functions of the organizations or create unnecessary delays due to lack of understanding of culture of home organization.

By setting this specific goal, “Does the outsourcing of the business reduce the quality of service to end customer” we have created a questionnaire which included few major questions which are below:

• How many complaints received by the home organization from their customers regarding the outsource team service delivered.
• What type of complaints received by the home organization from their customers regarding the outsource team service delivered?
• What are the major problems identified while working with outsource team regarding to work of internal business dealing?

By setting this goal, “How the in-house staff evaluate or observe the outsource jobs and actions” we have created a questionnaire which included few major questions which are below:

• How much the outsourcing team is flexible and how quickly they can adapt the changes made by organization management.
• Did the in-house staff have believed on outsourcing team that they can not leak their official secrets?

Did the in-house employees find Business Process Outsourcing as a challenge to their job security?

TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES:

There are the tools which we use for our project.

Project Proposal:

Microsoft World.

Project Planning:

Microsoft Project Manager, Microsoft Visio.

Project Blog:

CSU Think space.

REFERENCES:

• Leiblein, M.J., Reuer, J.J. and Dalsace, F. (2002), “Do make or buy decisions matter? The influence of organizational governance on technological performance”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 23 No. 9, pp. 817-33.
• Murphy, R. (2004), “Outsourcing the program”, Supply Management Journal, Vol. 9 No. 6, pp. 32-3.

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Week 3:

in this week I started to write my proposal and plan so,  as the aim & the scope of the project already have been done last week so in this week I will do the project deliverable and the project time line ( Gantt chart ) using Microsoft project manager to illustrate how my project will run and View the overall timeline of the project and the expected completion date.

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week 4

in  week 4  I started to create  last think in my plan which is work breakdown structure for my project   using  Microsoft visio. All the work contained within the WBS is to be identified, estimated, scheduled, and budgeted.
The main purpose of using  a WBS is to reduce complicated activities to a collection of tasks.

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Week5:

in this week I did submit to my first assessment in EASTS And I Called Dr mohsin to make sure as I got confused about if  the assessment 2 project plan we only required to do the project scope , time line Gantt chart ,WBS and the deliverable.

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week 9 :

In this week i will be working in the last 3 articles and all the 12 they will be ready by the next week

article number 10 is Security assessment framework for IoT service by Keon Chul Park1 · Dong-Hee Shin1 article number 11 is A State-of-the-Art Survey on Formal Verification of the Internet of Things Applications  by  Alireza Souri, Monire Norouzi . and the last one number 12 is secure collaboration in global design and supply chain environment: problem analysis and literature review by yong zeng and lingyu wang.
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week 10:

all my work is ready to submit + I add Self-Evaluation Report

for the task 2  Journal Synopsis

Article Chosen: QAaaS in a Cloud IoT Ecosystem by Ghilic-Micu, Mircea, &Stoica, (2017)

I wrote what are  Aim,Method,Result,Discussion and Conclusion for this article.

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WEEK 11:

I started working in the final report now.

The written report entry can discuss the results, findings, conclusion and lessons learnt from your Project Research Aims and Outcomes but  WE didn’t do the project outcome yet to write a report  about it  and I feel like something missing for that reason   i will follow the steps from my project plan I will start with introduction  then Literature Review, Methodology, then what the report need the finding with analysis , results then the conclusion and what i have learned from my project.

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week 12:

I am

still working in the report as I will try to answer all the questions that I included in the plan with analyzing them with tables to give more details and more explained answers .

some of the questions focus in

1- Stress resulting from outsourced and in source team communication.                                                            2-How often the outsourced team receives the wrong answer without really knowing what they have been asking for?                                                                                                                                                                                    3 Participation in work-related conflicts with the outsourcing team.                                                                     4-Difficulty in the job when collaborating with the Outsourcing Team.                                                                5-Conflict in organization functions due to  cultural difference  .                                                                              6-Conflict in teamwork due to  cultural difference.                                                                                                           7-Disturbance or delay in organizational functions.                                                                                                        8-Major problems in working with an outsourced team   .                                                                                               9-Flexibility and quickness in adopting changes .                                                                                                            10-Trust regarding the protection of confidential data.                                                                                                11-Perceiving Business Process Outsourcing as a challenge.

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week 13:

in this week i have to finish all the report  and the presentation i think it was little bit no enough time to  do everything.

i have finished the report by THURSDAY  and I started my ppt also Thursday  and I will record it in the same day of submission ( Friday).

Table of content

1. Introduction. 3
2. Literature Review.. 3
3. Methodology. 4
4. Findings and analysis. 5
5. Results and findings. 21
6. Conclusion. 23
7. Lesson Learnt 23
8. References. 25

1. Introduction

In recent research conducted by Zhu, (2017) it has been identified that a number of organizations that were dependent on outsourcing deemed failures. It is evident that in many cases, the process of outsourcing has increased the stress among the employees. It increases the need for the identification of appropriate strategies that can help to mitigate the issues for increasing the quality and service provided to the customers.

The objectives of the research are explained below:

• To identify the controlling and security issues in outsourcing
• To recognise the issues relating to cultural differences in outsourcing
• To analyse the operational risks including elevating cost and decreasing quality and service
• To evaluate the strategic risks involving intellectual property right issues
• To identify the rays originating from cultural differences

2. Literature Review

Outsourcing is defined as the business practice in which organisations hire a party outside the organisation for performing particular services and developing goods that were initially carried out in-house for the organisations on employees and staff. In recent research conducted by Manikandasaran, Arockiam & Nagarajan, (2016), the importance of hybrid security services and cloud security has been explained in order to solve the outsourcing management issues. On the other hand, in a subsequent research, Davenport and Ronanki (2018), has stated that artificial intelligence technology can play a significant role in resolving the key challenges in outsourcing management. In a similar context, by Lokshina, Lanting & Durkin, (2018) has demonstrated that big data, IoT technology, and cloud computing can help organisations to overcome contemporary business-related issues such as poor outsourcing management.

3. Methodology

In the view of Singer & Couper (2017), research projects can be carried out following different types of strategies. In the present project work, it was important to ensure that the chosen research method is the potential of meeting the objectives of the research. On the different types of important research strategies identified in the project plan, the survey research strategy seemed to be more effective to achieve all the objectives and gaining answers to the questionnaires developed previously. According to Nico et al. (2018), survey research strategy is a quantitative method to collect information from a group of respondents by asking a number of survey questions. As stated by Coy (2019), a survey research strategy is generally used in deductive research methods. It has been also identified that a survey technique is more technical and analytical and therefore is valuable for any quantitative research. The survey research method is much common in business-related research projects as it is cost-effective and helpful in collecting a large amount of data within a short time.

In the present project, 100 employees were recruited in the online survey. Therefore, the project is primary in nature in relation to data collection. A quantitative data analysis technique with tables, graphs and statistical analysis tools such as mean, median and standard deviation has been used for analysing the numerical data collected from the respondents. In order to choose the sample, a simple random sampling technique has been used in this project.

4. Findings and analysis

Q.1 Does the outsourced and in-source team communication difficulties increase stress on work?

Table.1: Stress resulting from outsourced and in source team communication

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.1: Stress resulting from outsourced and in source team communication

(Source: Created by the learner)

It has been identified that 39% of the respondents have agreed to the statement that communication difficulties can increase the stress level, while an additional 31% respondents have strongly agreed to it. As the number of respondents disagreeing to the statement is very less, it can be interpreted that the majority of the companies utilizing outsourcing practice face difficulty from the increased level of stress among the employees.

Q.2 How often the outsourced team receives the wrong answer without really knowing what they have been asking for?

Table.2: Wrong answer received by the outsourced team

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.2: Wrong answer received by the outsourced team

(Source: Created by the learner)

The above graph and table depicts that the frequency of receiving wrong answers by the outsources team members is very high as 30% of the respondents have stated that they often receive wrong answers and 25% have responded that they receive wrong answers very often. Contrarily 10% of the respondents have explained that they never received wrong answers and never felt that they do not understand what they have been asked. However, the overall statistics indicates that there is a lower level of understanding among the outsource team.

Q.3 How often do you participate in work-related conflicts with the Outsourcing Team?

Table.3: Participation in work-related conflicts with the outsourcing team

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.3: Participation in work-related conflicts with the outsourcing team

(Source: Created by the learner)

It has been identified the majority of the employees (31%) have explained that they very often get involved in work related-conflict in the outsourcing team. 24% of the employees have stated that they often get involved in such situations while 13% of the respondents have mentioned that they have never got involved.

Q.4 Do the respondents think their job becomes more difficult when collaborating with the Outsourcing Team compared to the leaders of their In-house team?

Table.4: Difficulty in the job when collaborating with the Outsourcing Team

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.4: Difficulty in the job when collaborating with the Outsourcing Team

(Source: Created by the learner)

A total of 60% of the participants have shown that collaboration with outsourcing teams is difficult while only 35% of the participants have expressed collaboration is not much difficult.

Q.5 Does the cultural difference between the outsource team and home team could conflict with the organizations’ functions?

Table.5: Conflict in organization functions due to  cultural difference

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.5: Conflict in organization functions due to  cultural difference

(Source: Created by the learner)

Majority (36%) of the participants have strongly agreed that a cultural difference between the home team and outsourcing team can lead to greater levels of conflict in organizational functioning while 14% have strongly disagreed with it.

Q.6 Does the cultural difference between the outsource team and home team could conflict the teamwork?

Table.6: Conflict in teamwork due to  cultural difference

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.6: Conflict in teamwork due to cultural difference

(Source: Created by the learner)

31% of the participants have agreed that teamwork becomes more difficult when there is a cultural difference among the home team members and outsourcing team members. On the contrary 18% of the participants have disagreed regarding the negative influence of cultural difference on teamwork. The difference in opinion is significant among the respondents, owing to the variation in experiences of working in multicultural environments.

Q.7 Does the outsource team can disturb the functions of the organizations or create unnecessary delays due to lack of understanding of the culture of the home organization?

Table.7: Disturbance or delay in organizational functions

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.7: Disturbance or delay in organizational functions

(Source: Created by the learner)

The graph indicates that a total of 69% of the participants have expressed that it is important to understand the culture of the home organization otherwise it can create unnecessary delays or difficulties in functions, while only 28% has expressed there is no such relationship. The above statistics indicate that a lack of understanding regarding the home organizational culture among the outsourcing employees can lead to unnecessary delays and disturbances to the organizational functions.

Q.8 How many complaints received by the home organization from their customers regarding the outsource team service delivered?

Table.8: Number of complaints

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.8: Number of complaints

(Source: Created by the learner)

It has been identified that the majority of the organisations that depend on outsourcing for customer service and other aspects face greater number of complaints from the customers. It is more certain as 40% of the respondents have mentioned the receipt of 16-20 complaints and 32% of the participants have indicated a receipt of 11-15 complaints.

Q.9 What type of complaints received by the home organization from their customers regarding the outsource team service delivered?

Table.9: Types of complaints

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.9: Types of complaints

(Source: Created by the learner)

The majority (30%) of the participants have indicated that complaints regarding poor understanding of language among the outsource team members is more common while a significant portion (27%) of the respondents has identified the poor service quality to be another popular complaint received from the customer.

Q.10 What are the major problems identified while working with an outsource team regarding the work of internal business dealing?

Table.10: Major problems in working with an outsourced team

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.10: Major problems in working with an outsourced team

(Source: Created by the learner)

The major problems that are identified to be associated with outsourcing in relation to internal business dealings are decision making problems, communication difficulties, cultural differences, data security, and inability to meet expectations. However, the maximum portion (30%) of the participants has indicated communication difficulties as a serious issue while data security is the least supported problem (11%).

Q.11 How much the outsourcing team is flexible and how quickly they can adapt the changes made by organization management?

Table.11: Flexibility and quickness in adopting changes

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.11: Flexibility and quickness in adopting changes

(Source: Created by the learner)

In relation to the flexibility and quickness of adopting organisational changes, 32% of the participants have expressed that the outsourcing team is somewhat inflexible and slow to adopt the changes. An additional 27% of the participants have indicated that the outsourcing team members are very inflexible and very slow. However a contradictory view has been presented by a total of 38% of participants.

Q.12 Did the in-house staff have believed on the outsourcing team that they can not leak their official secrets?

Table.12: Trust regarding the protection of confidential data

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.12: Trust regarding the protection of confidential data

(Source: Created by the learner)

It has been identified that 32% of the participants believe that outsourcing teams are much trusted and cannot leak their official secrets. This statement is further supported by additional 29% of the participants. However a total of 37% of participants have expressed that they do not believe the outsourcing teams regarding the leakage of official secrets.

Q.13 Did the in-house employees find Business Process Outsourcing as a challenge to their job security?

Table.13: Perceiving Business Process Outsourcing as a challenge

(Source: Created by the learner)

Figure.13: Perceiving Business Process Outsourcing as a challenge

(Source: Created by the learner)

The result of the survey question indicates that 34% of the participants agreed that business process outsourcing is a challenging situation as it may unsecure their job in the future. However 21% of the respondents have disagreed with the particular statement.

Results and findings

Business outsourcing has become important in the international business context with the enhancement of competition and the emergence of globalisation. Business outsourcing is highly beneficial for organisations as it enables an organisation to reduce operational cost, Access new technologies and improve the growth rate as well as financial status (Zhu, 2017). The present project is based on the discussion and analysis of the challenges as well as issues that different organisations following outsourcing practices are facing in recent days during the process of outsourcing of their business. The employees belonging to the organizations involving outsourcing practices were invited to the online survey through e-mail and with the collection of informed consent, they were provided with the survey questions.

The commencement of this project was important in order to mitigate the outsourcing management issues from organisations as outsourcing practices are becoming more and more important for the businesses. Outsourcing activities mainly impact on a wide range of jobs such as manufacturing, customer support, recruitment, and back office. A poor mutual understanding of the contract can lead to the poor performance of the outsourcing services (Creon, Grover & Teng, 2017). After assigning the initial contract of outsourcing both the home team and outsourcing have multiple team members who try to manage the implementation of the activities and ongoing operations. On the other hand, a lack of skills among the client retained team can also be a weakness of the outsourcing practices. Hence it is important to provide effective solutions to corporate associates to resolve the contemporary issues in outsourcing management.

In research conducted by Lu, Bi, Huang & Duan (2017), it has been explained that production or manufacturing of the products takes place at offshore locations where the labour cost and operation cost is much less as compared to the home market. Therefore it is evident that organisations receive a huge financial benefit from implementing outsourcing services. However, with the emergence of outsourcing practices, there is likely to face increased difficulty regarding outsourcing management. It has been indicated by Jain Palvia and Palvia (2017), that with the emergence of globalisation and advancement in technologies customers are becoming more and more demanding. Apart from that due to globalisation the diversity among the consumers is also increased, which has made it difficult for the organisations to solve queries of the customers belonging to different cultural backgrounds with the help of outsourced customer relationship managers.

It is clear that communication difficulties not only lead to increased consumer dissatisfaction but also result in an increased level of employee dissatisfaction. The findings indicate a lack of understanding among the outsourcing team members regarding the queries generated by the consumers. Cultural differences are identified to be a major factor that impacts on teamwork as well as the organizational functioning in organizations having implemented the business process outsourcing practices. As the language barrier and cultural differences have emerged as a major problem in outsourcing services, for the in-house employees working collaboratively with the outsourcing team becomes more difficult (Wang, Sadler & Shee, 2017). It has been further evidence that the majority of the employees of the home organizations perceive that understanding of the home organizations’ culture is important for the employees in the outsourcing companies. Due to the poor understanding of the outsourcing organizations’ employees about the services and the queries generated by the customers has led to an increased number of consumer complaints in the majority of the organization as evidenced from the research findings. In the view of the employees, communication difficulties, problems in decision making and inability to meet the expectations of the customers and the home organization is a major problem in business outsourcing.

5. Conclusion

The project outcome indicates that businesses implementing business process outsourcing practices face a number of difficulties regarding management due to the increased cultural differences and language barriers among the employees in the home team and the outsourcing team. The language differences between the customers and the outsourcing team also increases the number of complaints received by the home organization. However, security issue are identified to play a little role in outsourcing management issues and the trust among the home team employees for the outsource team is identified to be higher.

Recommendations

To consider the challenges relating to outsourcing practices the organizations implementing business process outsourcing can implement different technological solutions to mitigate the contemporary challenges. IoT, Big data, AI, Cloud Computing and QAaaS are identified as major technological solutions in relation to solve the contemporary business issues such as outsourcing management issues.

6. Lesson Learnt

From the commencement of the above project, I have identified that outsourcing practices has become much common practice in business in the recent years due to the benefits like increased cost effectiveness, and financial growth. However, the project outcome indicates the presence of a number of management issues in business outsourcing that relate to the increased conflict among in-source and out-source team, language barrier, and cultural difference, decreased team performance, difficulties in organizational functioning, increased stress among the employees and a decreased customer satisfaction level. Therefore, it indicates that implementation effective outsourcing management strategies are crucial in order to ensure sustained benefits.

References

Coy, M. J. (2019). Research methodologies: Increasing understanding of the world. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 9, 71-77.

Davenport, T. H., &Ronanki, R. (2018). Artificial intelligence for the real world. Harvard business review, 96(1), 108-116.

Lokshina, I. V., Lanting, C. J., & Durkin, B. J. (2018). IoT-and Big Data-Driven Data Analysis Services for Third Parties, Strategic Implications and Business Opportunities. International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development (IJSESD), 9(3), 34-52.

Manikandasaran, S. S., Arockiam, L., & Nagarajan, L. (2016). EOCIPHER: A Hybrid Approach to Enhance Security of Outsourced Data in Public Cloud Storage. In Proceeding of the 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science,(AICS2016) (pp. 33-43).

Nico, M., de Almeida Alves, N., Ferrer-Fons, M., Serracant, P., & Soler-i-Martí, R. (2018). Methodological Challenges When Involving Children and Young People in Survey Research on Well-Being. In Measuring Youth Well-being (pp. 131-146). Springer, Cham.

Singer, E., & Couper, M. P. (2017). Some methodological uses of responses to open questions and other verbatim comments in quantitative surveys. Methods, data, analyses: a journal for quantitative methods and survey methodology (mda), 11(2), 115-134.

Zhu, X. (2017). Outsourcing management under various demand Information Sharing scenarios. Annals of Operations Research, 257(1-2), 449-467.

Creon, M. J., Grover, V., & Teng, J. T. (2017). Theoretical Perspectives on the Outsourcing of Information Systems. In Outsourcing and Offshoring Business Services (pp. 25-52). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Jain Palvia, S. C., & Palvia, P. (2017). Critical issues facing IT outsourcing vendors in India. In Global Sourcing Of Services: Strategies, Issues and Challenges (pp. 261-300).

Lu, F., Bi, H., Huang, M., & Duan, S. (2017). Simulated annealing genetic algorithm based schedule risk management of IT outsourcing project. Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2017.

Wang, J. J., Sadler, I., & Shee, H. (2017). Managing logistics outsourcing to China: Business problems and solutions for Australian firms. Journal of Business Diversity, 17(2), 10-29.