Globalization

I get approached by a company in India about once a week to provide me with some form of outsourcing support.  The usual sort of fair is: Web Design, Data Entry, Data Mining, and Phone Support, to name a few.  Every now and then, I get a pitch from a company that wants to form a sort of informal partnership.  They know that I provide document scanning services and propose that I perform the scanning and they perform the indexing (file naming/metadata tagging).  It's an interesting proposal, but not for me.  Here are a couple of my concerns with outsourcing out of the country.

1) Privacy.  One of the keystones to providing onsite document scanning services is privacy.  These companies promise locked doors, locked computers, secure servers, etc.  None of it is ever going to be enough.

2) Laws.  Let's say that you do have a serious problem with your relationship with your international partner and you've suffered a financial loss as a result.  There is a big difference between winning in court and actually receiving your damages.  It's enough of a problem without an ocean between you.

3) Control.  Consider the difficulties in running a project in your line of work.  Now consider that you still have all the responsibilities for the project, but have little to no control over the outcome.  Enough said.

Thanks for reading.

L