Buffeted by years of offshoring, formidable Asian competitors and a global economic downturn, some companies are finding ways to make manufacturing in the U.S. a competitive advantage.

Everyone's talking about "talent management" today as a way to boost the performance of the human resources (HR) organization. But what are the elements of a talent management strategy, leveraging advanced HR outsourcing solutions, that can actually drive high performance for an entire company?

This article offers an innovative and practical approach to talent management—planning and executing an integrated set of management processes that generate greater business value by creating and continuously optimizing workforce talent. A comprehensive and strategic approach to talent management can bring together all the talent-related initiatives and workforce resources needed to execute business strategy. This approach also offers the opportunity to plan and manage HR outsourcing initiatives in a way that maximizes the value of such arrangements, not only generating cost savings but creating the means to achieve profitable growth and high performance.

For American companies, sending work overseas has been a hit or miss proposition. The winners cite the cost savings and expertise garnered abroad. However, for the losers, offshore projects gone awry can result in lost intellectual property and/or disgruntled customers. With the rate of offshoring on the rise, supply chain experts at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and other Atlanta-area outsourcing experts say for companies to succeed, the ability to navigate risk and understand the intricacies of managing an offshore project are essential.

Low-cost-country outsourcing has become much more sophisticated, but that doesn't mean outsourcing is the answer for every company. Not all products - and not all portions of a product's supply chain-should be outsourced. Lasting competitive advantage requires a nuanced approach. You must consider internal costs and organizational processes in deciding what you send, where you send it, and how you operate. Even when outsourcing is the right answer, most companies face a steep learning curve.

Companies continue to aggressively pursue offshoring, even in the face of negative onshore media attention. Why? Because offshoring offers potentially great rewards: It helps companies compete in a global age, creates value for their shareholders, and improves their operational performance.

Even as offshore outsourcing has matured, best practices have been few. Now two top academics reveal the principles that should guide CIOs.

Economists, including Paul Samuelson and Jagdish Bhagwati, vigorously debate whether offshore outsourcing in high-tech industries helps or harms the U.S. economy. The main issue is whether insourcing countries, such as China or India, will catch up with and eventually outcompete the U.S. Moreover, the dearth of off shore outsourcing data has hindered the study of the impact of offshore outsourcing. To explore the impact of offshore outsourcing, I examine how the heterogeneity of offshore outsourcing demand affects insourcing firms' innovation choices and how these innovation choices connect with the technology-driven productivity growth of the insourcing industry.

Editor's Note: a bit long and mathematical in spots...

Forget everything you think you know about outsourcing. The promised results are not materializing and while companies continue to ink deals, they're not the megadeals of the past. Today's contracts tend to be smaller and shorter. As outsourcing deals change so must a company's approach. It's time to think of outsourcing as you do a product portfolio-with different strategies for different deals.

The Index evaluates 40 countries as potential locations for the most common remote services, including IT services and support, contact centers, back-office support. Each country's score is comprised of a weighted combination of relative scores on 40 individual metrics, which are grouped into three categories: financial attractiveness, people skills and availability, and business environment.

Knowledge transfer is one of the first tasks of transitioning to an outsourced model, but it's sometimes overlooked or under-planned, resulting in a shaky start to the relationship. Here's how to do it right.

Booz Allen Hamilton research reveals that a third of those who outsource fail to achieve the expected benefits. Is that outcome inevitable? Absolutely not, if companies pay close attention to outsourcing governance.

International logistics partnerships are a key class of strategic alliance, but until now little has been known about their performance. The paper "Measuring the Performance of Intenational Logistics Outsourcing Partnerships: A Dyadic Perspective Analysis" introduces, for the first time, a reliable methodology to measure the performance of a partnership between a logistics provider and its customer. Using data from 75 top European logistics companies and their clients, authors Joan Jané of Hewlett-Packard and Professors Alejandro Lago and África Ariño of IESE explain how to measure whether or not both sides are satisfied and have met their strategic goals.

A recent Accenture global survey of more than 500 companies, combined with 32 in-depth interviews with experienced outsourcing executives, demonstrates a new maturity in the way businesses and governments are working the outsourcing lifecycle, and reveals hard-won expertise in getting the most from outsourcing partnerships. These executives embrace outsourcing as a mainstream management tool for improving performance and increasing productivity. Far from a one-shot quick fix, outsourcing plays a pivotal role for these organizations in optimizing processes, expanding capabilities and building the competitive strength of the enterprise. This research has enabled us to identify 15 distinct best practices in four key phases of the outsourcing lifecycle.

Companies that send their back-office jobs offshore often cut their labor costs by as much as half. But new research by the McKinsey Global Institute finds that these companies risk leaving billions of dollars in savings behind if they merely replicate what they do at home in countries where labor is cheap. The savviest operators redesign business processes to exploit automation and take full advantage of the new environment's potential.

As more companies move to outsource services currently performed in-house, they'll likely encounter a slew of risks, some of which become clear only when something goes badly wrong. Managers will have to mitigate these risks in order to reap the substantial benefits that outsourcing provides.

Many companies today outsource the wrong processes to the wrong vendors in deals with the wrong structure. The resulting chaos and rancor that has come to typify much of the IT-outsourcing market is a clear indication of the need for a simplifying but rigorous framework that provides practical guidance.

Making the right outsourcing decisions requires answering three questions:

* What to outsource
* Whom to outsource it to
* How to structure the outsourcing deal

Getting the right answers to these questions can transform your outsourcing initiatives into what you have always thought they should be: powerful components of your firm's overall competitive strategy. How do you get the answers right? This study from Deloitte Research describes how Value Chain Dynamics can help firms to resolve their outsourcing issues and ensure that their outsourcing contributes directly to their sustained competitiveness and to their ability to create and maintain shareholder value. Learn more from the PDF file attachment below.

In a quest for cost savings and improved efficiency, many companies outsource portions of their IT. Few companies, however, ultimately capture the value they expected. This article provides eight levers to help remedy the situation.

Having exploited most of the first-generation cost savings available through outsourcing, leading companies are now focusing on business model transformation. They are looking beyond IT and general and administrative (G&A) services and outsourcing processes closer to the core, including line operations, often using offshore resources. Moreover, many are exploring ways to commercialize their own world-class internal services through spin-offs and joint ventures.

CEOs and CFOs must ensure that internal controls in outsourced activities are documented and tested each year.

A five-dimension analytical model for deciding when (and when not) to purchase from the East.

With the problem of human-capital cost hikes reaching critical proportions, CFO devotes an entire issue to health care, retirement plans, IT/outsourcing, and perks.

Editor's Note: topical and US-centric, but of value to those who care about these things...

Gung ho for going global? Make sure to look beyond labor costs. Specifically, three major variables should be considered:
1. Transportation Cost
2. Capital Intensity
3. Lead Time

For many industries, the proportion of overall procurement needs sourced from low-cost countries will double within five years. But it's a complex technique, demanding great flexibility and a careful balancing of often competing interests within a company. Here are some successful strategies.

Outsourcing services to a third party is typically done to reduce costs. But it also holds many hidden risks. Our best-practice research shows how managers can address these risks and move beyond a cost focus to create value that delights customers.

Though outsourcing is booming, many users say they're less satisfied than they used to be.

Table Of Contents:
* Special Report: Outsourcers Lose Luster
* Indian Outsourcers Grow Fast, Gain Prominence
* The Rise of Business Process Outsourcing
* Outsourcing Outlook: Exclusive data on the cost of outsourcing
* Try our interactive tool and find out how 12 major outsourcers fared in customer rankings
* Outsourcing survey methodology
* Buy the Analyzing the Outsourcers Report