turn the following into 800 words:
This essay discusses the risks, benefits and tools of outsourcing and how to balance them.

Outsourcing is a process that obtains services from outside suppliers. Issues exist that the stakes and potential for setbacks are high and failure to apply best practices leads to business declines. Management must be forewarned about potential problems and effective processes must be followed to minimize risks and ensure successes.

Benefits to outsourcing includes cost reduction, improving focus on core competencies and accelerating product’s time to market, and upgrading firm capabilities, increasing overall specialization and efficiency. 
However, risks include lower morale due to layoffs, quality and data security issues with unreliable partners, reduced direct communication between the firm and customer, preventing development of strong customer relationships, and prematurely ending agreements may generate expensive legal fees. Outsourcing flawed processes does not mean they will be fixed.
Managers should also note that outsourcing activities to developing countries, while enjoying cost savings, have innate risks: language barriers, timezone differences and the inability to meet physically might lead to misunderstandings, translating to lost productivity overall.
	To balance the benefits and risks, managers should adopt a smartsourcing strategy: where decisions are based on analyzing and understanding processes and the most optimal routes to ensure successful results from outsour