MAN302 Strategic Business Management: A Case Study of PWC's Offshoring

This report provides a strategic business management analysis of Price Waterhouse Cooper's (PWC) job offshoring strategy. It explores the external and internal factors that led to PWC's decision to offshore jobs, including lower operational costs, access to global knowledge, resource scarcity, and risk mitigation. The report also examines internal issues such as the lack of specialist experts and the need to save management time. Furthermore, it analyzes the impact of offshoring on stakeholders like the management team, customers, and employees, and discusses the competitive advantages PWC can gain through innovation, partnerships, and cost reduction. Finally, the report addresses the issues and risks associated with job offshoring, such as cost overruns, security breaches, and vendor performance. Desklib offers a variety of resources including past papers and solved assignments to aid students in their studies.

Running head: STRATEGIC BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Strategic Business Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
External Issues.................................................................................................................................2
Internal Issues..................................................................................................................................3
Stakeholders Analysis......................................................................................................................4
Competitive Advantage...................................................................................................................4
Issues of Strategy.............................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
In today’s business world, strategic management is considered as one of the major
aspects for the success of the business organizations. Strategic business management is
considered as a major process that includes planning, monitoring, analyzing and assessing the
necessary aspects for the companies that are required for the companies to meet their goals and
objectives (Wheelen et al. 2017). The presence of various strategies can be seen in the process of
strategic business management and one of them is job off shoring. Job offshoring is considered
as the process to relocate the business processes of the companies to another location like
manufacturing, supporting, processing, accounting and others (Doz 2017). This report takes into
consideration the major aspects of job offshoring. More specifically, the aim of the report is to
analyze different aspects of job offshoring of Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC).
External Issues
It needs to be mentioned that there are certain external issues that lead to the decision of
PWC to move their jobs offshore. Lower operational and cost of labor can be considered as a
major reason for PWC’s job offshoring. The cost of operations and labors makes a large part in
the expenses of PWC and the aim of the company is to reduce these costs with the aim to
increase profitability. For this reason, the company adopts the strategy to offshore their jobs as it
provides the company with the opportunity to reduce both the costs of operation and labor (Da
Silveira 2014). After that, the aim of the companies like PWC is to tap into the global knowledge
base in order to bring efficiency in their operations. Adoption of the strategy of job offshoring
provides the company with the required access to the world class capabilities. Thus, it can be
considered as a major external factor. The scarcity of required resources in a particular region is

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considered as one major reason for job offshoring and there is not any exception of this fact in
case of PWC. One major motive of the company for job offshoring is to use the available
resources of another region (Egger, Kreickemeier and Wrona 2015). Mitigation of risk is another
major reason for PWC behind the adoption of the strategy to offshore the jobs. PWC can avoid
certain portion of their business risk by offshoring their jobs to another region.
Internal Issues
Apart from the external factors, the presence of certain internal factors can be seen in the
business operations of PWC that lead the company towards the adoption of the strategy to
offshore their jobs. The absence or lack of specialist experts is one major issues to offshore the
jobs by PWC. The projects of PWC with complex processes demand the expertise that may not
be present in the company. At the same time, the requirement may not be the full-time
requirements. In this situation, offshore of jobs is an intelligent alternative way to hire (Gupta,
Ganguli and Ponnam 2015). After that, certain smaller parts of the high-value projects of PWC
need the intervention of the specialists. As these needs are irregular, it is not profitable for the
company to hire full-time employees. In this kind of situation, offshore the job is a major
alternative for PWC. Saving the time of the managements is another major issue for PWC to
adopt the strategy to offshore the jobs. To PWC, time is money when their management involves
in the daily routine jobs that consist of the secondary work of the company. Thus, with the
adoption of the strategy of outsourcing, the management gets the option for concentrating the
key focus areas of their business operations (Brändle and Koch 2014). The presence of high
business risk is another major internal issue for that leads to the adoption of the strategy to
offshore the jobs. PWC can ensure the proper handling of their major risk areas by offshoring
them.

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Stakeholders Analysis
In PWC, the presence of certain stakeholders can be seen who are impacted by the
decision of the company to adopt the strategy to offshore the jobs. They are shown bwlow:
Company’s Management Team: The above discussion indicates towards the fact that the
management of PWC become able in focusing on the crucial business areas as they do not have
to manage the secondary business operations. For this reason, the management of PWC becomes
able in concentrating the specific business areas that ensure the growth of the business. In this
context, it needs to be mentioned that the management of PWC become able in include more
advanced technology with the process of job off shoring. At the same time, PWC become
majorly advantageous from the offshoring of their accounting related jobs. It leads to the
generation of more productive results for the company (Fine 2013).
Customers: The earlier discussion also shows that PWC offshore the crucial parts of their
projects that need specialist expertise. As a result of this, the customers of PWC receive their
projects that are completed by highly talented experts (Grappi, Romani and Bagozzi 2013).
Employees: PWC involves in the process of offshoring parts of their jobs and this aspect reduces
the extra amount of work burden from their employees. In the presence of this aspect, the
employees of PWC become more efficient.
Competitive Advantage
It needs to be mentioned that PWC can obtain certain competitive advantages in moving
either expanding offshore and/or offshore some jobs; and they are discussed below:

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 It can be seen from the earlier discussion that PWC can offshore some parts of their
projects that need expertise of the specialists. With the help of this strategy, PWC has the
option o bring new innovation in the market thorough the process of job offshoring. This
particular process will be majorly helpful for PWC to beat their competitors in the aspects
of new technological innovation (Mohiuddin and Su 2013).
 After that, with the strategy of job offshoring, PWC has the option to make partnership
with experienced companies outside the region or the country. This particular
collaboration with the catalyst companies will help PWC in swift entry into the new
markets in less time. In this way, PWC can beat their competitors for entering into new
market.
 In the presence of the strategy of job offshoring, PWC becomes able in the reduction of
investment in non-critical functions and this particular aspect provides the company with
the flexibility for acting with less financial burden; and they become able in responding
opportunistically in the new markets. This aspect provides the company with the required
competitive advantage (Schniederjans, Schniederjans and Schniederjans 2015).
 One major advantage of job offshoring is that the business organizations become able in
focusing on their core competencies and they can develop those skills that can add value
to their customers. PWC can gain the required competitive advantage from this particular
aspect.
Issues of Strategy
Every business strategy has certain issues and there is not any exception of this fact in
case of the strategy of job offshoring; they are discussed below:

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 In the process of job offshore, the managements of the companies have the expectation
that this process will lead to the cost saving for their business. However, in most of the
cases, it can be seen that the companies failed in savings cost in job offshoring process
due to go up in the business processes. This is a major risk in this strategy (Manning
2014).
 Under the process of job offshoring, business organizations face the risk of the security
breaks of the intellectual property. For this reason, the companies are needed to address
the privacy concerns.
 High level of competition can be seen in the process of job offshoring. For this reason,
this particular aspect can lead to the turnover of the key personnel.
 The failure of the vendors to deliver the expected job can be considered as another major
risk in the process of job offshoring. These are the major risks and issue in this strategy
that need to be considered (Tate 2014).
Strategic Implications: It can be seen from the above discussion that the strategy of job
offsoring has certain positives and negatives and PWC needs to consider both the positive as
well as negative impact of the adoption of the strategy of job offshoring. PWC can be majorly
beneficial from job offshoring as they will be able to get specialist expert for their jobs. At the
same time, the needs to consider the risks related to this strategy like the breach of security, loss
in revenue and others.
Conclusion
It can be seen from the above discussion that there are both the external as well as
internal factors that affect the decision of the companies in adopting the strategies to offshore the

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jobs. All these aspects are needed to consider for the adoption of the strategy of job offshoring.
The above discussion also shows that there are certain stakeholders that can be affected with the
decision of the companies for job offshoring. It can be seen from the above discussion that the
strategy of job offshoring provides the companies with the required competitive advantage.
Lastly, the companies are needed to consider the issue in this particular strategy.

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References
Brändle, T. and Koch, A., 2014. Offshoring and outsourcing potentials of jobs: Evidence from
German micro-level data(No. 110). IAW-Diskussionspapiere.
Da Silveira, G.J., 2014. An empirical analysis of manufacturing competitive factors and
offshoring. International Journal of Production Economics, 150, pp.163-173.
Doz, Y.L., 2017. Strategic management in multinational companies. In International
Business (pp. 229-248). Routledge.
Egger, H., Kreickemeier, U. and Wrona, J., 2015. Offshoring domestic jobs. Journal of
International Economics, 97(1), pp.112-125.
Fine, C., 2013. Intelli‐Sourcing to Replace Offshoring as Supply Chain Transparency
Increases. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 49(2), pp.6-7.
Grappi, S., Romani, S. and Bagozzi, R.P., 2013. The effects of company offshoring strategies on
consumer responses. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41(6), pp.683-704.
Gupta, M., Ganguli, S. and Ponnam, A., 2015. Factors affecting employee engagement in India:
a study on offshoring of financial services. The Qualitative Report, 20(4), pp.498-515.
Manning, S., 2014. Mitigate, tolerate or relocate? Offshoring challenges, strategic imperatives
and resource constraints. Journal of World Business, 49(4), pp.522-535.
Mohiuddin, M. and Su, Z., 2013. Manufacturing small and medium size enterprise’s offshore
outsourcing and competitive advantage: An exploratory study on Canadian offshoring
manufacturing SMEs. Journal of Applied Business Research, 29(4), pp.1111-1130.

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Schniederjans, M.J., Schniederjans, A.M. and Schniederjans, D.G., 2015. Outsourcing and
insourcing in an international context. Routledge.
Tate, W.L., 2014. Offshoring and reshoring: US insights and research challenges. Journal of
Purchasing and Supply Management, 20(1), pp.66-68.
Wheelen, T.L., Hunger, J.D., Hoffman, A.N. and Bamford, C.E., 2017. Strategic management
and business policy. pearson.