Outsourcing - Outsourcing Examples, The Future Of Outsourcing

In the 1990s and into the beginning of the twenty-first century, technological advancements continued to develop at breakneck pace. This was especially true of the Internet technologies used during e-commerce. Keeping up with all these developments and making solid, informed decisions about them became difficult or impossible for many companies, who needed to focus most of their resources on core business competencies to be successful. For this reason, it was common for organizations to outsource, or have other vendors handle, different aspects of their e-commerce initiatives.

Even leading international companies with large departments devoted to information technology (IT) often find it more cost-effective to outsource certain aspects of e-commerce rather than develop the expertise themselves, which can require hiring scarce workers and investing large sums to train and retain them. Accordingly, it's not surprising that a survey from CommerceNet found nearly 75 percent of e-commerce firms outsourced parts of their work in early 2001, or had plans to do so. Eighty-seven percent of the companies surveyed viewed outsourcing as an effective way to scale their business offerings based on fluctuating revenue streams.