A Brief History of Outsourcing

Sending off a job outside the organization is called outsourcing. Although it seems like one of the latest trends, the history of outsourcing is older than we imagine. Whenever people have been working for their clients, they have shared the task with other people somehow.

There are numerous cases where the virtual employee doesn't need to be an expert at a specific task. In those cases, the work has been delegated offsite. This practice is the ancestor of outsourcing. As time passes by, the tradition of sharing tasks outside the organization has created a specific field where people are specially trained and show expertise in outsourcing.

What does outsourcing mean?

It refers to allotting some job responsibilities to an outsider of the organization instead of giving the task to the existing employees of the company.

How did it start?

In the 19th and 20th century businesses didn't use outsourcing as a trading custom. The conception of outsourcing remote employees was just a myth then.

Sending off jobs outside took place as an outcome of the industrial revolution. It brought modifications in the strategies that companies used to implement as a business practice.

Founders of the organizations realized that outsourcing a few tasks can be more beneficial than assigning them to in-house employees. The fields like architecture, insurance policies, engineering always need quite a lot of customers.

Sometimes a company like this has to serve several clients in various cities. They need local experts who would be located in the same city as the client and serve them on the behalf of the company.

Outsourcing in manufacturing companies

In the seventh decade of the 19th century, manufacturing companies that used to produce shoes, toys, clothes, etc, discovered they could outsource their production. The organizations started to search for workers abroad to work for them. It could save their shipping cost a lot.

When the foundation leaders gained confidence in outsourcing their manufacturing tasks, they started outsourcing several parts of their businesses to foreign countries.

Outsourcing in this day and age:

Today sending a job off-site is quite a common thing. Industries like digital marketing and software development outsource a large number of remote employees every year.

Business process outsourcing is one of the most prominent fields now. They are always serving numerous customers who want to outsource jobs.

Wrapping up:

All outsourcing businesses don't deal with virtual employees from foreign countries. Many independent contractors serve various kinds of companies. Outsourcing is a very promising field now that has no chance of slowing down in the future.