The outsourcing industry has taken the previous year by storm with the amount of deals signed and developments in the industry. There were both highs and lows within the industry and within the global picture, but what is important is that process outsourcing solutions providers were able to surpass the hurdles that were encountered along the way.

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.

With regards to spending and budget, it makes sense for companies to outsource back office functions which range from simple processes such as web data entry, to more complex functions such as procurement and to a certain extent, payroll.  The trend however in back office outsourcing is mercurial at best with some companies achieving more success than others such that it becomes quite unpredictable to determine at first glance how the back office outsourcing industry will fare.

For a big fraction of the market, back office outsourcing pertains to outsourcing of finance and accounting processes, an assumption that was usually the case before. However, times have changed and solutions falling under the bracket of back office outsourcing are no longer limited to merely just finance and accounting; data entry services have also become a part of back office outsourcing, with more companies realizing that this aspect of their operations can be delegated to solutions providers.

Companies are continuously looking at outsourcing non core functions in order to address constraints on budget and increasingly limited resources. With recent current events including unrest in the middle East and now the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, affecting the global economy including oil prices and the energy market, some companies such as telecommunications companies may now opt to outsource functions such as finance and accounting outsourcing of accounts payables and accounts receivable collections in order to ease financial burdens.

The growth of the IT outsourcing industry is part of the effect of IT solutions commanding a big share in company processes. But in the wake of advancing technologies and processes becoming more streamlined with focus on energy and cost efficiency, the face of IT solutions is already changing. Traditionally, IT outsourcing companies provided services such as programming and development. But with the increasing popularity of cloud computing, the IT outsourcing industry is feeling the pinch as more companies turn to the cloud rather than develop or purchase software, computation, data access or storage.

The Big Blue has found itself in hot water once again when earlier this month, disagreements over the company’s outsourcing contract with US state, Texas, lead to an ultimatum from the state to fix the alleged problems involved in their outsourcing deal.