Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is not new. It's been with us for quite some time. Centuries ago, when the farmer took his horse to the farrier to get new shoes, he was outsourcing. The farrier outsourced, too, using the local blacksmith to forge his supply of horseshoes. It's true, the farmer could forge his own iron, form his own shoes and deftly nail them to his own horses hooves, but it's not very likely that he did that.

As resourceful and independent as farmers are, as early as they rise in the morning and as late as they retire in the evening, they just don't have enough time in the day to learn how to do all the things that need to be done, to craft all the tools that are needed, and still find time to actually do them.

Common sense tells him it can't be done and even if it could be done, it wouldn't be a very good idea. The fact is that the farrier is always going to be better at shoeing horses and the blacksmith is always going to be better at blacksmithing and the farmer is always going to be better at farming. If a farmer had a furnace, bellows and anvil, it would just sit idle most of the time.

If outsourcing is really as simple as that, you may be asking, then why write about it? And the answer is that these articles are not about outsourcing in the general sense, it's about a special kind of outsourcing that is now available to businesses large and small alike. The Internet has made the world a smaller place and now you can outsource work to a business down the street, in the neighboring state, on the opposite coast and even in some distant location, oceans away.

Offshore outsourcing is the practice of outsourcing business activities and processes to countries whose wages are relatively low (these countries are often referres to as LCCs, or low-cost countries). Because of the nature of offshore outsourcing, it relies heavily on technology – both the Internet and global telecommunications networks – so it is sometimes called IT-enabled outsourcing. It is taking the business world by storm as businesses adopt the practice, improve their financial position and grow their business. And, of course, as with any change, outsourcing has its critics.

As you might imagine, there would be quite a buzz of gossip going around the village if one day the farmer decided that the farrier in the village across the river could do a better job than the one from his own village. The blacksmith, too, might feel a little disgruntled until the farrier from across the river started placing orders for more horseshoes with him because of the unexpected boom the farrier-across-the-river is suddenly experiencing for his services. It wouldn't be long before the other farmers get their interest piqued and the would be wanting to know the inside story about all that was going on.

Read more: offshore-backlash-excerpt.pdf