| A year ago, in a worldwide internet and media analysis, The Global Language Monitor had rated the most confusing yet frequently-cited hi-tech buzzwords to be "HTTP", "Voice Over IP" (VoIP) and "Megapixel". |
| Closely following were "Plasma", "Robust", "WORM" and "Emoticon". |
| The hi-tech realm remains an incubator of great ideas and, at the same time, mass confusion. The industry, with rare exception, has never mastered the basics of translating new products and services into everyday language. |
| "It is obvious that the high tech industry has failed in its basic language proficiency test," the release noted. |
| Things haven't changed much, have they? Take offshoring and outsourcing to begin with "" since this appears to be the flavour of the year. Experts say that outsourcing is not descriptive enough. It can be onshore, near-shore, offshore or a combination of both onshore and offshore. |
| Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Offshoring are said to be sub-sects of outsourcing. As if this were not enough, we now have smart-shoring too. Help! |
| Don't panic. Here's the lowdown. Outsourcing is the off-loading of non-core business services to a provider who can perform them more economically and efficiently. "Offshore" simply means "a country other than yours". |
| Put the two together as one term and you have the emerging trend of "offshore outsourcing". Now, onshore refers to the business process being carried out at the company's own site. |
| Nearshore outsourcing or "nearshoring" is outsourcing within a nearby region or neighboring country. Finally, you have smart-shoring which is said to be a form of outsourcing in which processes are relocated to locations which are cheaper and yet nearer. |
| Nearshoring could be contrasted with offshoring or offshore outsourcing, which implies relocation of business processes to cheaper locations "" typically away from the parent location. |
| Major nearshoring destinations for US businesses are Mexico and Canada, and for Western European businesses, Ireland, Eastern Europe and the Maghreb. |
| The idea is to have work done by people who have some good neighbourly understanding of your work culture and processes. |
| Fine! But why smartshoring? So if it's smart to be near and it's smart to offshore, then why this tech-fusion? |
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