Summary by James R. Martin, Ph.D., CMA
Professor Emeritus, University of South Florida
Outsourcing Main Page |
Technology Main Page
The purpose of this article is to discuss the various types of business applications that are outsourced, the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing (motivators and obstacles) and to provide a list of companies and services offered. Some of the applications include:
Benefits administration,
Travel services,
Personnel administration,
Payment processing,
Payroll,
Billing,
Accounts receivable,
Tax management,
ERP,
Customer relationship management,
Procurement,
Customer service,
and
Sales-force automation.
A useful table provides a list of companies, services provided, core offerings and web sites (p. 136). The table below provides some of that information including type of application, company name and URL. Consult the article and the company web sites for more specifics.
| Type of Application | Company | URL |
| Customer relationship management | Salesforce.com Inc. | www.salesforce.com |
| Siebel Systems Inc. | www.siebel.com | |
| Accounting, benefits, billing, ERP, HR, payroll, Tax management and travel | Automatic Data Processing Inc. | www.adp.com |
| Ceridan Corp. | www.ceridian.com | |
| Concur Technologies Inc. | www.concur.com | |
| Ketera Technologies Inc | www.ketera.com | |
| NetSuite Inc. | www.netsuite.com | |
| Paychex Inc. | www.paychex.com | |
| Perfect Commerce Inc. | www.perfect.com | |
| Business analytics | BMC Software | www.bmc.com |
| Mercury Interactive Corp. | www.mercury.com | |
| SAS Institute Inc. | www.sas.com | |
| Managed security | MessageLabs 2004 Ltd. | www.messagelabs.com |
| VeriSign Inc. | www.verisign.com | |
| Counterpane Internet Security Inc. | www.counterpane.com | |
| TruSecure Corp. | www.trusecure.com | |
| LURHQ | www.lurhq.com | |
| Storage | Vertas Software Corp. | www.veritas.com |
| Legato and EMC Corp. | www.legato.com | |
| Hosted applications | Endeavors Technology Inc. | www.endeavors.com |
| Airframe Business Software Inc. | www.myairframe.com | |
| Application Corp | www.hyperoffice.com | |
| Intuit Inc. | www.quickbase.com | |
| Logicworks | www.logicworks.net |
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Soffront CRM Software is another software provider not mentioned in the article above. Sofftront offers Help Desk Software, Marketing and Sales Force Automation, Call Center Software integrated with knowledge Management and Customer Portal and other applications (www.soffront.com).
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Related summaries:
Clinton, B. D. and S. C. Del Vecchio. 2002. Cosourcing in manufacturing. Journal of Cost Management (September/October): 5-12. (Summary).
Clinton, B. D. and S. C. Del Vecchio. 2002. Cosourcing in manufacturing - Just in time. Journal of Cost Management (November/December): 30-37. (Summary).
Clyman, J. 2004. Business IT: Rent or buy? Many companies are outsourcing IT duties to third parties and reaping benefits. PC Magazine (October 19): 129-132, 134, 136, 138. (Note).
Karmarkar, U. 2004. Will you survive the services revolution? Harvard Business Review (June): 100-107. (Summary).
Kee, R. 1998. Integrating ABC and the theory of constraints to evaluate outsourcing decisions. Journal of Cost Management (January/February): 24-36. (Summary).
Widener, S. K. and F. H. Selto. 1999. Management control systems and boundaries of the firm: Why do firms outsource internal auditing activities? Journal of Management Accounting Research (11): 45-73. (Summary).