Assignment on Outsourcing of retail sectors

The retail industry is one of the priority sectors of the Australian economy, as reflected in the Trade Development Strategy for the Australian Federation for 2011-2015. The average annual growth rate of retail industry turnover since 2000 was 9.7% per year. However, due to the economic crisis in 2008  2009, the drop in retail trade turnover was 4.9%.

Many Australian retail chains have included in their programs various ways of adapting the management system to changing market conditions. One of such ways to optimize the management system is outsourcing that involves transferring of part of the business functions of the retail trade network to external executors. In the conditions of development of technologies and innovations in management, market economy and competition, economic systems formed on the basis of outsourcing occupy the most important place in the world economy.

Over the past two decades, three main types of outsourcing have developed: IT outsourcing, business process outsourcing, and knowledge management outsourcing.

Outsourcing of information technology (ITO) is the transfer of a specialized company in whole or in part to functions related to information technology. These functions include maintenance of the network structure; designing and planning of automated business systems with the subsequent constant development and support; system integration; placing corporate databases on the servers of specialized companies; creation and support of public web servers; management of information systems, acquisition of computer equipment in the leasing.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the use of external resources and expertise, an established service provider infrastructure to organize and provide its own specific functions, reduce costs and increase business efficiency.

Along with the main types of outsourcing listed above, it is necessary to outsource single processes that require in-depth study or serious analytical processing of data. Outsourcing of these processes is usually called knowledge management outsourcing (KPO)