Global Ethics & Security Management

When your company plans to install an ERP system that company has to decide how they are going to implement it. The most common way to implement ERP is to hire another vendor to do it for us. This method is commonly known as outsourcing and offshoring, while outsourcing simply means hiring another vendor, offshoring means we are hiring a vendor outside of our country to implement ERP. Offshoring are generally less expensive since the main target are developing countries with their abundant workforce. However, offshoring is not the best way to implement ERP despite it’s low cost premise that many people tease. Offshoring could actually increase the expenses of implementation and bring ethical issues like risk the security of your company and customer’s valuable information.  

One of the biggest advantage of offshoring is that it is supposedly cheaper than creating an entire team of ERP implementation or outsourcing from local vendor. While it is technically cheaper on paper but you need to be wary of hidden expenses. With offshoring the company you’re working with will have to count in the logistics of travel. If you want to them to implement ERP in your company then you will have to make them fly over to your country. This would be fine if it was only a one way trip but implementing ERP takes a long time, so it might take several more expenses out of your company’s budget. Not only that if the vendor’s native language is different from yours you might also need to factor in language and culture difference. This might slow down implementation process and overall become slower than simply outsourcing or making your company implement it themselves.  

The other threat that offshoring pose are ethical problems that it brings. With offshoring and outsourcing in general you are letting another company be in charge of your company’s integrated system. By implementing ERP, they would know the weak points and loop holes in the ERP system that they could take advantage of by mining their customer’s data and selling them off for profit. Not to mention sensitive information of your company can be used in a negative way that can threaten the security of your company.  

These are some of the many other threats that can occur while your company decides to offshore. Invisible expenses can bring an element of surprise when you thought you were saving money and not to mention the ethical issues and problems is important for the safety of your company. However it is important to note that every single method of implementing ERP system for your company has risk and rewards. With safety measures, setting up ethics, legal, and  

security management, the risks of offshoring can be reduced but never eliminated. The next time our company decides to pick offshoring we need to be prepared of the risks and weigh in the consequences that benefits the betterment of our company.