Module 3

The two terms are often interchangeable.  However, the concepts of offshoring and outsourcing are extremely different for the mere reason of just distance. Offshoring is moving your business and its processes into a new country.  In other words, offshoring is moving your whole LA office to the Philippines for the cheap overhead and most likely the labor as well.  The outsourcing process is keeping the LA office and staff in the US and using products and/or services in Philippines for the cheap labor and products.

I believe that Wal-Mart Empire has become of much like the Dictator’s and Emperor’s we have seen in the past.  However, Wal-Mart is a corporation and of course not a country but much its leadership and the way it conducts business is very much like a country ruled a by ruthless leader’s.  They have the coined the term “everyday low prices” but what are the unseen costs to achieve this day in and day out? Well it’s simple - squeezing the heck out of your suppliers and employees like Stalin did in his day but now you have this business concept draped over with the flag of capitalism.  Don’t get me wrong I love the process of competition but you have storm troopers in Bentonville, AR, headquarters of Wal-Mart, controlling suppliers’ way of doing business.  Nevertheless, if a supplier wants to have the pleasure of having their products shine in Wal-Mart stores worldwide they have to cut their profit margins to fit within the Wal-Mart’s supply chain business model.  Wal-Mart not only wants to flatten the world they want to put a crater into it.

I purchased shoes laces several months ago - no big deal right.  My good friend was along for the ride.  He, a loyal Wal-Mart disciple – Informed me that Wal-Mart would be my best bet and he was right on the price.  The shoe laces were only .99 cents, a bargain for any savvy shopper.  Only week later the shoe lace broke and again I went back to Wal-Mart purchase another.  Well the same result a week later.  I finally ended up in Target and paid 2.50 for a pair of shoe laces and to this day I have the same laces.  Somewhere in the supply chain Wal-Mart found the cheapest way of mass producing shoe laces from suppliers in other countries…just for me come back again and again.  By the way I ended up spending more each trip to Wal-Mart a little milk here soda there and so on.  They know what they’re doing and now I know what they’re doing.

The world is never going to be the same ever…the mighty Google is everywhere and I mean everywhere.  Google is global and knows you better than you probably know yourself.  Just type your name in Google I bet you will be surprised at what you find.  I don’t think that any business can hide from this Mammoth of a company.  I use Google on a daily basis for my online business and other research I do as well.  However, one might have to be very careful of the content on Google or other search engines. I still believe there is a fundamental flaw in trusting too much information that search engine provides all of us.  The information via the internet might be very wrong or incorrect so searchers beware.