Outsourcing

Outsourcing is the practice of having another company supply an organization with the goods and services needed for the day-to-day operation of the business. Rouse & Sales (2017) claim that the majority of businesses will opt to outsource in order to reduce associated production expenses. Outsourcing has several benefits, including lower labor costs and higher production (Rouse & Sales, 2017). Loss of operating controls, confidentiality, and quality assurance are just a few of the drawbacks.
The biggest issues with outsourcing to other countries are largely linguistic and cultural obstacles (Tate et al, 2009). As such the five best practices to implement in outsourcing licenses, experience, work related certificates, qualifications to meet the set standards and financial capabilities.

SaaS in simple terms is outsourcing for software which can be rented or bought entirely. It is considered an outsourcing option because the services as provided are from another company or individual and in addition to this, will require future maintenance and upgrade with constant support to help run the software and all this have to be done externally (Carbaugh, 2009).

An auditor gets involved with ERP implementations on the extensive functions required to be implemented for the processes to work. Tate et al (2009) explains that the IT and IS functions entail different changes with having an array of consequences to be accounted for. As such, it s the mandate of an auditor to understand the business risks through auditing. Therefore, the auditor becomes involved in the implementation of ERP so as to understand the business processes that will be involved and affected.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is important to investors because it highlights the obligations necessary for different company management to satisfy. In respect to this, the Act also allows for proper auditing to be undertaken as independently as possible thus reporting on the true financial situation of the organization. Consequently, the Act becomes important to investors as it allows for the accurate reporting of financial records to be maintained thus the investor understands the true risks they are taking.

A disaster recovery and business continuity plan should include the following as explained by Carbaugh (2009), system procedures, data protection, recovery options, security outlays and also all failures. In addition to this, the people involved in the plan are senior managers. It is their work to ensure that the plan is developed respectively and that the recovery plan is effective.

PART 2

Some of the security questions I would ask in order to understand the numerous components to system security and why it should be planned, tested and ready for the implementation of ERP include the following:

What are some of the security policies that will be defined in order for the ERP to be effective?

Do we have a disaster recovery plan and has it been tested?

What is the authentication that will be in place with the ERP?

Has the encryption network been defined and is so, when will it be enabled?

How will traffic be handled within the network?

Given that the administration has to be involved, what restrictions will be placed?

Reference

Carbaugh, R. (2009). International Economics. Mason: Cengage

Rouse, M. & Sales, F. (2017). Outsourcing. Retrieved from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/outsourcing

Tate, W., Ellram, L., Bals, L & Hartmann, E. (2009). Off- shore Outsourcing of Services: An Evolutionary Perspective. International Journal of Production Economics, 120(2): pp. 512-524.