External company is called the outsourcing company
Project overview

The objective of this project is to research about outsourcing various services to an external company. The external company is called the outsourcing company. This research is based on outsourcing call centers of Dell Computers.

Dell Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. The company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 103,300 people worldwide. Dell Computer's strategy was built around a number of core elements: build-to-order manufacturing, mass customization, partnerships with suppliers, just-in-time components inventories, direct sales, market segmentation, customer service, and extensive data and information sharing with both supply partners and customers. Through this strategy, the company hoped to achieve what Michael Dell called "virtual integration"—a stitching together of Dell's business with its supply partners and customers in real time such that all three appeared to be part of the same organizational team.
Outsourcing

Outsourcing can be defined as the contracting out of business function(s) to an external, provider. The ability of businesses to outsource to external companies outside the nation is referred to as offshoring or offshore outsourcing.

Outsourcing is done for various purposes. Business organizations outsource to seek benefits or address the issues that they currently have. The mains reasons and benefits of outsourcing is to save cost, focus on core business, improve quality, knowledge, operational expertise, reduce time to market, risk management etc.

Outsourcing helps to reduce cost and need of in-house expertise. The company can focus more on core business. For example, most business organizations outsource their IT support to specialized IT service companies.
Scope and objective

The purpose of this project is to conduct a research on services provided by Dell computers worldwide and how outsourcing can be a better option for Dell to improve their services.

When offshoring, companies have a choice in outsourcing the customer service work, or operating their own call centers. Outsourcing helps dell to enable them to quickly ramp up and down additional capability. Outsourcing also helps dell to benchmark and fix their costs. Moreover, Dell can learn from the experience gained by the outsourcers while working with other companies. Outsourcing also gives Dell the ability to spread call centers geographically.
Areas of Research

Many different factors should be considered while choosing an outsourced partner. The right outsourced partner will work with the company's specific needs and execute your unique solution. For the purpose of this project the following outlines will constitute the areas research:

* Understanding the Power of Team

* What is the Vendor's Core Competency?

* Do You Know the Total Cost?

* Are You Really Hiring Experts?

* Does the Vendor Have Sufficient Project Management Experience?

* How Does the Vendor Ensure Scalability?

* Can the Vendor Commit to a Schedule?

* How Stable is the Vendor?

* What is the Vendor's Overall Reputation?
PRPOJECT PLANNING AND PROCESS
TIME MANAGEMENT

A Gant Chart will be prepared to identify schedules with milestones and dependences to monitor progress.
QUALITY PROCESS

This will be achieved by ensuring that tasks are clearly defined, relevant and attainable within the allocated time period. The allocation of tasks to individuals will be negotiated and agreed on by all.
COMMUNICATION PLAN

There will be face-to-face meetings to be held at the college, libraries or homes of team members as appropriate. Members will also be encouraged to use telephone, email or online chat to discuss progress, difficulties or to inform the team if they are unable to attend a meeting.
DECISION MAKING

The team will have total responsibility for all decisions about the project and will be accountable for every process, task and the project outcome.
PROJECT SELECTION MODEL

The table below shows the selection criteria I used to assess the project proposals of my peers. Score 1-10FACTORS TALLY WEIGHT PROJECT 1 PROJECT 2 PROJECT3

Feasibility
10
6
8
7

Planning
8
5
6
5

Work breakdown structure
6
5
3
6

Project process
8
6
6
7

Clarity of proposal
9
5
7
8

Relevance to assignment
10
10
10
9

Areas of research
7
3
5
8

Scope
7
4
5
7

Availability of research materials
8
5
6
6
TOTAL 73 49 56 63

EVALUATION OF THE PROJECT
INITIAL PROJECT SELECTION CRITERIA

The reason why I used the Scoring Model to evaluate my peers' project proposals was that I believed that there was no profitability, or long term strategic factors to be considered. The purpose of the project was to complete an assignment; and that meant none of the other models could be used for project appraisal in this case.

A number of factors were used to assess projects. Each factor was given a score or weight to indicate their importance in determining the success of the project. Factors such as feasibility and relevance to assignment topic were given high score because they were considered important to the final product of the project. Meanwhile work breakdown structure and project scope were given low score because they carry less weight.

On reflection, I now realize that work break structure should have carried a lot of weight because during the course of the project we had a number of arguments about what should or should not be included in the work breakdown structure.
PROJECT PROCESS
QUALITY ASSURANCE

In order to achieve quality assurance we identified time and assignment requirement as our critical factors. Our priorities were to finish the project before the assignment deadline and to ensure that we produced an assignment that met NCC requirements. We also adopted certain approaches to improve the quality process of the project. For example we ensure that every member of the group was treated equally and given the opportunities to fully contribute to the project so that they did feel ignored or undervalued. We also had mechanisms such as reviews and reports for monitoring and of progress to avoid spending too much time on tasks. We also drew a project checklist against which we measure our project process and deliverables.
TEAM COMMUNICATION

We recognized that proper communication was a key to the success of our project. Therefore we maintained open and regular channels of communication between members to review project progress, and analyze risks and constraints. The objective was to ensure that everyone was clear about what was to be done in terms of the project requirements on the project deliverables. This has helped avoid misunderstanding and delays.

We carefully considered the communication requirements of the project; because we did not live together or work in the same office we realized that we had make use of the telephone and the internet to communicate more effectively. This had helped us to deal more effectively with unexpected events such as a team member not being able arrive at meetings on time, or not being able to complete a task on the agreed date. We also tried to adopt some flexibility in our scheduling by trying to make provisions for personal schedules. This had helped us to facilitate better team building and better communication.
GROUP FUNCTION

We had a team of three members. For practical reasons we allocated roles responsibilities as team leader and team members. The main role of the team leader was general coordination of the team function such as chairing meetings and allocation of tasks to members. Team members had to carry out tasks allocated to them and work in partnership with the team leader as required.

We had a series of face-to-face meetings to review and report on project progress. However, we conducted we made use of telephone and email because it was quite difficult to schedule a meeting on a time and date suitable for everyone.

Team members got on well with each other and we never had any personal differences. However, we occasionally argued over technical issues regarding procedures and approaches to the project. Conflicts were also difficult to resolve because no one had overall responsibility. For example we spent a whole day arguing over whether the WBS should be part of PID.

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