Are you feeling the credit crunch? Most Americans are affected one way or the other. Higher grocery bills are hard to ignore at the checkout and many of us know of someone who has lost their job in 2008.

In my opinion, downsizing is a sign of the economy turning around. Companies realize that they need to cut-back and reorganize, and not continue the spending spree of the last decade. They are finally learning that to be more profitable in today’s economy a company needs to stick to its core competencies.

In 1990, the debate among business leaders, academics, economists, and others, was greatly enhanced by the publication of an article entitled, “The Core Competence of the Corporation,” by C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel. They coined the term “core competency” to describe competitive advantage of leveraging the collective knowledge, experience, and skills of a firm’s product lines.

So why are Solution Providers not feeling the crunch as bad? One word… Outsourcing.

Technology is not the core focus of every business, but every business needs technology. Most of the time it takes more than one person to manage a company’s technology infrastructure. Who manages Exchange? Which person makes sure that backups are done correctly? And if you get the dreaded blue screen, who will fix it?

With Outsourcing you hire a company to handle these business needs. This cuts overhead and allows your staff to focus on what is important - Your business.

Has your company considered outsourcing your technology needs? If so, what decision did you make and how did you arrive at your conclusion?

 

Tags: C.K. Prahalad, Company, Competitive advantage, Core competency, Gary Hamel, Outsourcing, Technology

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 10:35 am and is filed under Economy. 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.