Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another. The term outsourcing, which came from the phrase outside resourcing, originated no later than 1981. The concept, which The Economist says has "made its presence felt since the time of the Second World War", often involves the contracting out of a business process, operational, and/or non-core functions, such as manufacturing, facility management, call center/call center support.
Offshoring is the relocation of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Usually this refers to a company business, although state governments may also employ offshoring. More recently, technical and administrative services have been offshored.
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business process to a third-party service provider. Originally, this was associated with manufacturing firms, such as Coca-Cola that outsourced large segments of its supply chain.
Kenneth Yigael Goldberg is an American artist, writer, inventor, and researcher in the field of robotics and automation. He is professor and chair of the industrial engineering and operations research department at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds the William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering at Berkeley, with joint appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), Art Practice, and the School of Information. Goldberg also holds an appointment in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) describes the outsourcing of core information-related business activities which are competitively important or form an integral part of a company's value chain. KPO requires advanced analytical and technical skills as well as a high degree of specialist expertise.
Thomas B. Sheridan is American professor of mechanical engineering and Applied Psychology Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a pioneer of robotics and remote control technology.
Amar Gupta is an Indian computer scientist based in the United States. Gupta has worked in academics, private companies, and international organizations in positions that involved analysis and leveraging of opportunities at the intersection of technology and business, as well as the design, development, and implementation of prototype systems that led to widespread adoption of new techniques and technologies. He has surmounted several strategic, business, technical, economic, legal, and public policy barriers related to several innovative products and services.
Softtek is a Mexico-based information technology company, operating in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. Headquartered in Monterrey, Mexico, the company has 15,000 associates in Mexico and abroad and is the largest private IT vendor in Latin America. The company offers application software development, testing, security and support; business process outsourcing (BPO); and IT infrastructure management, security and support to more than 400 corporations in more than 20 countries. It also acts as a value added reseller (VAR) for SAP, Microsoft, Blue Yonder, AWS and other software products. The company has trademarked the term "nearshoring" to describe the provision of outsourced services to customers in other countries that are in proximity.
The Sam M. Walton College of Business is the business school at the University of Arkansas, a public research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Created in 1926, the college is the second-largest college at the University of Arkansas, with over 5,000 undergraduate students as of Fall 2016. Walton College offers undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs and is known nationally for its strong programs in retail, finance, information systems, and supply chain management. U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks Walton College among the top business schools in the country. The college has a close relationship with Walmart Stores, Inc., based in nearby Bentonville, Arkansas, and related vendor community.
Samsung SDS Co., Ltd., established in 1985 as a subsidiary of Samsung Group, is a provider of Information Technology (IT) services, including consulting, technical, and outsourcing services. SDS is also active in research and development of emerging IT technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and outsourcing in engineering. In 2019, Samsung SDS reported a net profit of 750.4 billion won, an increase of 17.5% year-on-year. The company is estimated to have the 11th most valuable brand among global IT service companies, at US$3.7 billion as of January 2020. Samsung SDS has headquarters in South Korea and eight other overseas subsidiaries, one in America, Asia-Pacific, China, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, India, and Vietnam.
Ruzena Bajcsy is an American engineer and computer scientist who specializes in robotics. She is professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is also director emerita of CITRIS.
Exigen Services recently merged and renamed to Emergn. Insurance Software production under Exigen Insurance Solutions has separated and was renamed to EIS.
Endava PLC is a British public-listed software development company, founded in 2000 in London, United Kingdom. It provides digital transformation consulting, agile software development services and various automation solutions.
Intetics is an American technology company providing custom software application development, distributed professional teams creation, software product quality assessment, and “all-things-digital” solutions built with SMAC, RPA, AI/ML, IoT, blockchain, and GIS/UAV/LBS technologies. Headquartered in Naples, Florida, Intetics operates from multiple offices in the USA, Europe, and Latin America.
Varun Grover is an American Information systems researcher, who is the George & Boyce Billingsley Endowed Chair and distinguished professor at the Walton School of Business, University of Arkansas. From 2002-17, he was the William S. Lee Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at Clemson University, where he taught doctoral seminars on methods and information systems. He is consistently in the top 3 IS researchers in the world. He has an h-index of 100, among the top 5 in his field Grover has around 52,000 citations in Google Scholar and over 13,900 citations in Web of Science.
Jeanne Wenzel Ross is an American organizational theorist and principal research scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), specializes in Enterprise Architecture, ICT and Management. She is known for her work on IT governance, and Enterprise architecture.
Alnoor Bhimani is Professor of Management Accounting and Director of the South Asia Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is former Head of the Department of Accounting and the Founding Director of LSE Entrepreneurship. Bhimani's academic work covers financial management and digitalisation; managerial accounting and strategic finance; entrepreneurship and economic growth; and global development and governance issues.
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a form of business process automation that is based on software robots (bots) or artificial intelligence (AI) agents. It is sometimes referred to as software robotics.
Blue Prism is the trading name of the Blue Prism Group plc, a British multinational software corporation that pioneered and makes enterprise robotic process automation (RPA) software that provides a digital workforce designed to automate complex, end-to-end operational activities. In March 2022, Blue Prism was acquired by SS&C Technologies.
Michael J. Salvino is an American business executive. He has been president and CEO of DXC Technology since September 2019.
