3 Offshore Big Players

We talk about offshore outsourcing and usually treat them as one whole package. We say China, India and the Philippines and figure that the outsourced work is all the same and that is Information Technology. What we don't usually point out is that there are types of work that these countries excel in. Not everyone can do IT, not everyone can do customer support. They each have their own strategic strengths.

India
India is playing the IT card. Their software engineers are sought after by companies outsourcing their work offshore. There is a logical reason behind this. When India released the mandate that all foreign businesses have Indian majority ownership, a lot of the US companies left and India had to compensate for that by investing on IT education. So now they're mostly made up of programmers and IT specialists. With the advent of offshore outsourcing, India now becomes ripe for the picking.

China
China has long been a manufacturing country. I'd bet my socks that in each household there's at least one item there that's made in China. Most of offshore outsourced manual work is done in China and in huge amounts too. Even before the trend of offshore outsourcing started to surface, companies have been sending work there particularly when it comes to toy manufacturing. That's where their strength lies.

Philippines
Philippines has a lot of common with the American lifestyle. They have a high literacy rate and the similarity in lifestyle makes them perfect for call center work. Most call centers are set up in the Philippines. Whether inbound or outbound, the Philippines has hold of most customer support work. Their accent is easily passable for authentic American English too and that's what's important in customer support services.

These three countries play a different role in offshore outsourcing and soon enough more countries will be stepping up and filling in the needs for offshore outsourcing.