Instruction:

Evaluate this Post and express your agreement or disagreement or improve, clarify or express a clearer idea about outsourcing or multi-sourcing.

POST:
In my understanding, outsourcing is limited to hiring someone who’s providing a service or providing a product, somewhat only produced for you. By this definition, buying off the shelf software, like an operating system or an accounting product, is not outsourcing. Hiring a service provider to install and configure it for you, instead of using an internal IT team, would be. Along the same line, use a service provided online, if the service is very much the same for all customer, does not constitute outsourcing (Gmail, O365, Salesforce).

A line also needs to be drawn with staff augmentation. Hiring a specialized to perform a specific implementation would be outsourcing. In my opinion, using a staff augmentation business to add non-employees to assist in various tasks, may not always be outsourcing. If, on the other hand, an entire department function is handed out to a vendor instead of being handled internally, it would then be considered outsourcing.

I’m well aware this is a different post but I’m hoping we can get various opinions on what is or is not considered outsourcing or multi-sourcing.