The year is about to close and this could very well be the most interesting part of the year as predictions for the succeeding year are in abundance and this is the perfect time to see whether outsourcing predictions for the year 2011 did actually come true. Just around this time last year, Outsourcing Insider published a blog with the title “Outsourcing Sectors to Watch In 2011” where it points out that information technology and recruitment process outsourcing are the clusters that were identified to thrive this year. While on another note, the cluster of healthcare outsourcing companies were seen to maintain a stable position in the industry this year.

In an industry like outsourcing, wherein there is a constant push towards development and expansion, mergers and acquisitions are commonplace.  Outsourcing companies acquire other companies in order to grow and expand into related business domains that they can integrate with their business, in the hopes that such actions would yield more advantages than disadvantages. In addition, companies acquire other companies in order to branch out their services and diversify their solutions so they can capitalize on a particular market, which are usually the ones that are booming.

Managing a company’s HR and finance and accounting processes can be strenuous for a company’s administration personnel, which is why outsourcing such tasks are becoming more popular. Aside from saving a lot of effort, payroll and accounting outsourcing have been shown to help a company’s budget. More companies are opening their doors to payroll and finance and accounting outsourcing and this may be due to the fact that outsourcing may bring in more benefits to a company than they could have imagined. The Internal Revenue Service of the United States government sanctions those employers that have committed errors in their payroll filing. In order to avoid being sanctioned, companies are turning to solutions providers to handle their company’s payroll and accounting processes.

Despite the news that Teletech (NASDAQ:TTEC) has recently reduced its manpower in an office in Amherst, Nova Scotia, it seems that the business process outsourcing industry is still booming with expansion plans. The global industry expansion is already moving forward and the key industry players have also been taking advantage of the global economy’s recovery.

It was English historian Edward Gibbon who said that that, “all that is human must retrograde if it does not advance”, and in outsourcing, this is likewise the case. As the end of the first quarter draws near, it is noticeable that business expansion among outsourcing companies have become more marked, and is in various different parts of the world. Companies are expanding their global presence in anticipation of more business in different fields such as legal process outsourcing (LPO), business process outsourcing (BPO) and information technology (IT) outsourcing. It is encouraging that the anticipation of the influx of business for the outsourcing industry has been steadily rising since the start of 2010. It would seem that despite the effects of the recession having barely begun to wane, outsourcing companies are still expecting a better outlook.

With the passage of the historic, although much maligned, Obama healthcare reform bill in the US, a new opportunity has opened up for outsourcing companies as hospitals and insurance providers will now be seeking ways of minimizing expenses.

Reading the Indian mainstream news yesterday about India Inc.’s strategy to expand operations in Eastern Europe and hire multilinguals to serve the European finance and accounting sector does not surprise me anymore. In my April article, I talked about how Europe is becoming more comfortable with outsourcing not just to its neighboring countries but also to Asia particularly to the Philippines. The following month, I wrote an article on Philippine Outsourcing re-focusing its efforts to the European market instead in anticipation of US political and trade condition changes.