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Authors says tech, finance, and other companies should begin to ''re-tool their skill base''

NEW YORK, New York – 05/17/05 – The US ranks third after China and India, and ahead of Russia and Brazil,  on the list of countries that will find themselves the top destinations for global outsourcing over the next decade, according to the authors of a new book – The Black Book of Outsourcing: How to Manage the Changes, Challenges and Opportunities.

"Offshoring undoubtedly offers significant financial benefits for companies across a wide range of fields and sizes", said author Scott Wilson at a recent outsourcing conference in New York.

"Undertaking such a venture, however, requires a cost benefit analysis that includes downsides such as political instability, language, and cultural barriers, and time zone differences," he said.

According to Wilson and co-author Douglas Brown, evidence of this outsourcing evolution “is taking first form in the movement termed ‘nearshoring’.”

While over 75% of US companies currently outsourcing have decided that the potential benefits outweigh these costs, many potential outsourcers would be willing to sacrifice some cost savings for significantly limiting their risk, they said.

This, they added, is the principle behind ‘nearshoring’ – a form of sending operations offsite to nations closer, both culturally and geographically, to the source nation.

"Nations such as Canada, Mexico, and the countries of South America are benefiting greatly from the expansion of this modifying practice trend," said Wilson, "Next, we can expect America to become a super-contender in the outsourcing provider ranks."

Contributing to the counter-intuitive prediction is the hastened leveling of the outsourcing playing field. The costs of supplying services are anticipated to level off, regardless of geography.

"Political unrest, price of fuel, professional personnel shortages, customer dissatisfaction and demands, and upward creeping costs of labor are major factors will that propel and disrupt the balance. Opportunistic US entrepreneurs and workers can reap the benefits by preparing for the silver lining developments," said Wilson.

Coupled with recent research that offshoring will affect 30% of current US jobs by 2015 as they are now structured, Brown and Wilson advise that individuals in the technology, finance, human resources and business processing professions begin to “re-tool their skill base to include the fundamentals" of outsourcing processes.

"Those hindered in anti-outsourcing activities, will likely be too caught up with proving the observation wrong, and miss the boat," said Wilson.

“However,” he concluded, ”The evidence is compelling economists and executives alike to start changing their own forecasts to follow suit."

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We Will If You Will, Says White House

WASHINGTON, DC – 09/20/05 – The world’s trading nations ''must work together'' to eliminate agricultural subsidies ''that distort trade and stunt development, and tariffs and other barriers to open markets for farmers around the world,'' President Bush told a meeting of the UN General Assembly last week, asserting that his Administration would accept the elimination of all barriers to free trade – both agricultural and nonagricultural – if other countries reciprocate.