The word “outsourcing” may sound a little complicated at first but its meaning is quite straightforward: it is a business practice which consists of selected activities within the company being operated by an external agent (i.e. the outsourcing company). For instance, the outsourcing company may provide accounting services or offer personnel for operating IT processes.
Outsourcing is a widespread practice in the world of business whenever the type of activity gives the possibility of having the services provided by an external company. It is an effective method, which is evidenced by the number of companies which support and use it on a regular basis. Outsourcing may take various forms. One of them is offshoring, that is – to put it simply – foreign outsourcing. What are the advantages of such solutions? It enables the company to reduce the operation costs by employing the personnel from the countries where the average salary is lower. Although offshoring is a very controversial practice, it is used by a large number of companies. Nearshoring is another kind of outsourcing that belongs to the wider category of offshoring. It is a special type of outsourcing – half way between the classic outsourcing and offshoring. It consists in having the given services provided by a company from a foreign country that is geographically and culturally close.

What is it? The simplest definition is a kind of deployment of personnel (eg programmers, graphic artists) or hire them for a certain period of time to work for a specific customer. Work is performed most often in the company’s premises, and the payment for the hired personnel is in based on the number of hours worked by specialists. Of course, outsourcing requires good and wide planning, particularly in the IT sector, which is very broad. Thus, a company that wants to take advantage of outsourcing services must determine which specialists needs, in what numbers, which are to be dealt with, so far as to devote hours a day, week and a month to work for external companies. After finding all the details an IT company set costs of cooperation. IT outsourcing allows companies a significant reduction of costs. It is more cost-effective than search and hiring of permanent specialists, creating IT sector in the company, because allow faster implementation of projects and support for business processes on the highest level, depending on the needs of companies and projects. For this reason outsourcing is more universal and more often used by companies of all industries.