In-house Photography and Outsourced Photography Essay

In-house Photography and Outsourced Photography - Essay Example They presented the key factors as - Management, Strategy, Technology, Economics and Quality. To add more to these decision points the author presents the arguments by Lankford and Parsa (1999. pp310-312) who insisted that an organization should consider economies of scale, inability to manage the function in-house, strategic realignment, need for focus on core business, short & long term financial advantages, and impact on company's competitiveness when deciding for outsourcing. Roy and Aubert (2002. pp32-33) presented a strong statement on outsourcing decision stating that "outsourcing would be appropriate for activities requiring non-strategic resources while activities linked to key competencies should be jealously kept in-house". They argued that the business critical processes, information & intellectual properties of the organizations should be kept out of the outsourcing framework and the organization should consider outsourcing only those work that does not comprise of the ke y competencies of their business model and do not invite any legal trouble for the organization if there are breaches by the outsourcing vendor. They presented the following model of outsourcing decisions: As presented in the figure, the authors argue that outsourcing should be carried out only for those aspects of the business that possess strategically low value and possess lesser presence of strategic resources. Based on the arguments and empirical generalizations by these scholars, the author presents the following decision criteria for Kudler Fine Foods for outsourcing photography: (a) It should not be part of the internal business competency of the organization. (b) It should not comprise of high strategic value or high value strategic resources. (c) There shouldn't be any legal issues. (d) It should make economic sense for the organization. (e) The technology is too complex & expensive to be handled in-house (f) The function is too complex to be handled in-house The author presents an analysis of photography outsourcing versus in-house for Kudler Fine Foods in the subsequent sections. Pros and cons of outsourcing the photography to a professional photographer or creating the infrastructure to take the photographs in-house Before we argue on whether photography should be outsourced by Kudler Fine Foods, it is important to judge whether this is critical for the business. The primary objective of photography in the business of Kudler Fine Foods is to advertise the images of actual organic products of the store on the Internet and in the Print media. It appears that the actual purpose of Kathy Kudler is to enhance the competitive advantages of the store. Hence, the photography may require lot of internal understanding of the business & products and may demand innovations & ideas from the internal employees who have worked hard to bring the stores to this level of success. It may be wiser to develop the