Module 3

Ryan Williams

            Outsourcing is taking one specific thing a company does and moving that one process to somewhere else where it can be done cheaper and have that product sent back to the company. Off shoring is similar to outsourcing. Instead of taking one process and sending it to another country to be done, off shoring moves the whole factory from the same country that the company is to a different country where the factory can operate with lower costs and higher quality products.

            Supply chain is controlling the production of a product from the raw materials required to make the product to the actual finished product in order to reduce the total cost of making a product. Walmart has the biggest and best supply chain in the world. Since they are the biggest supply chain in the world, if a product were to be reduced in price, Walmart would be able to reduce the product without much effect since they probably sell the most of that product anyway. Another way they can use their supply chain to an advantage is if a product were to go out of style in say New York but not in Arizona, Walmart can reroute all the out-of-style products that were going to go to New York and send them to Arizona instead. This will help save Walmart some money because if the products were to get to New York before the message was received, they would then have to ship the products all the way from New York to Arizona.

            Google has affected businesses in a variety of different ways. One way is research. One no longer is required to go to some out-of-the-way place to get some information, now you can just Google it. Say you had been stuck on a problem for a while and still couldn’t find the solution, just Google it. If companies want to find out about the products of other companies, like reviews or product specifications, they can just search Google for it and find an answer almost immediately. Before, companies would have had to buy a product and examine it themselves and have their own people review it, they can still do it today but it has become easier to just find it using Google.

            This reading has really been an eye opener, especially when it comes to Google. Google is a great company, but it also has its downsides. The more you use Google, the less private information becomes. In the book, it talked about privacy. Anything that you post online will eventually be searchable, whether it be something small, like your favorite color, to something more private, like where you live or how old you are. Where you live might not seem like a big idea, mostly because many people around you know where you live. The reason it can be personal is because anyone could know where you live, would you really like anyone in the world knowing where you live anytime?