Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

NEW DELHI: Unlike popular social networking sites where people meet to foster new friendships or search for old ones, these are sites where businesses meet in search of work.

Customers log in to outsource jobs, while individuals and businesses (read providers) bid for the work. Outsourcing 2.0 as it’s popularly called, is being touted as the new wave of outsourcing.

It’s different from traditional outsourcing where big MNCs outsource some of their processes to well known companies in India or other parts of the world to save costs.

Outsourcing 2.0 has small and medium businesses (SMBs) offshoring their work to SMBs or individuals in India, Indonesia or other low cost destinations.

As Arun Jethmalani, CEO, ValueNotes explains, “The term ‘Outsourcing 2.0’ was coined to reflect changes in the evolution of outsourcing over the last few years. From a sub-contracting activity, outsourcing has now come to occupy an important place in the supply chain. This implies that buyers have factored in the cost and efficiency benefits and are now looking beyond all that to see how outsourced operations can grow business.”

Traditionally, only large firms could think of outsourcing. now buyers are becoming smaller — as mid-market companies, individual businesses and professionals are taking to outsourcing.

It’s almost like a cottage industry. Firms like RentACoder.com, Elance, and Guru.com, are being used as platforms by customers and businesses to link up on Net. The jobs being outsourced too are basic, non-core tasks like website designing, software programming, payroll, HR, copy writing, PR material, marketing et al.

Elance has a list of certified IT providers (primarily SMBs) who provide a host of services. “We have 988,000 registered users, 34,000 active buyers and 40,000 active providers,” says Fabio Rosati, CEO, Elance.

The next breed of entrepreneurs in India, US and Europe are using such sites to grow business.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 12:14 am and is filed under Outsourcing News and Top Outsourcing deals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.