Outsourcing - 1 Service, 2 Views, 3 Needs, 4 Myths
Content
Outsourcing is a word that has been with us for a long time. And even longer are with us the activities that can be considered outsourcing.
In someone, the word awakenes negative emotions, with others it evokes a safety in today’s economy.
But what actually is it, which activities should be outsourced and why should you consider it? These are the questions we will answer. We will look at specific needs of companies and the ways outsourcing can elegantly solve them. And last but not least, we will shine some light on myths that arise in relation to outsourcing.
What Is Outsourcing?
When we look at the word itself, we could say that the goal of oursourcing is to find an outside source for a specific activity. For example, we can think about activities we all have to do – like cleaning. We have two options – clean ourselves or have someone do the cleaning. In the latter case, I outsource cleaning to an external supplier.
What can you outsource?
Simply said – anything. Outsourcing can be applied to almost any activitiy that fills our lives. But a much important question is – when does outsourcing make sense. Let’s look at the examples that will point us in the right direction we whould consider when we think about outsourcing.
One of the most logical aspects are costs. And the equation is very simple:
Costs when I do the Work > costs for outsourcing the activity
In this case, mathematics gives us a clear answer to when it makes sense to outsource. But beware! Do not take the activitiy out of the context because somme costs are invisible when outputted in the terms of money.
It is important to focus also on opportunity costs. My time can be cheaper but what if I amount it to the money of an activity with much higher utility? That isn’t projected into mmoney but the efficiency of the time spent can be much higher if I outsource the activity.
There can also come time when we are truly able to ensure the activity by ourselves but then there comes sickness or time off. At that point, the activitiy recedes into the background and its progress goes to zero before we come back. When we select outsourcing, our substitutability can be fully covered by this service because the outsourcing company then takes care of the needs that need to be covered under any circumstances.
And then there is the little thing called quality. It is possible that I can manage to do the activity well and there are no obstacled in mmy way. The thing that doesn’t have to be aligned with the expectations is quality. An outsourcing company focuses on specific activities whihc is why its knowledge and know-how is on such a high level.
When we think about what we could outsource, it is good to keep in mind this simmple principle – never take the activity out of the context of the whole business operation. It is true that outsourcing can sometimes be more expensive, which doesn’t mean that it cannot be a better choice, as we have seen in the cases when we focus on quality, substitutability or opportunity cost.
If you could choose, would you rather spend time with a potential customer or think about why a system is not working? In this case, the answer is pretty clear but in other instances, we have to think about it more.
Needs of Companies and Outsourcing Response
Needs of many companies have changed over the last decade mainly due to the rapid development of technologies, larger interconnection and the global pandemic of Covid 19. Some of the needs can, however, be quite satisfied quite well with oursourcing services. And often time even better than if a company had to work it on its own. Let’s look at 3 of them.
24/7
Errors, failures and outages don’t always pick the best time to happen. And they don’t even care if you are at work or not. The thing you can influence, though, is the time and manner in which you respond. Of course, you can wake up to a beautiful day to grow red, white and then purple when you start your work day. For this extreme not to happen, it i possible to ensure an immediate help with IT problems regardless of the time of the day.
This step-in will be much more efficient than Freaky Friday adjustments. Outsourced professionals will provide you with remote help as soon as something happens. And you may not even notice there has been a solution to a problem because you just go about your regular work.
Instead of living in the uncertainty of what you will wake up to or having the little worm tell you something has gone wrong, you can utilize 24/7 remote help which will ensure in the majority of cases that there will be no more wrinkles on your forehead due to IT.
support your support and beyond
This can sound like a paradox but we have not made a mistake in the heading. Your tech team works as best as it can to ensure everything runs smoothly. But even professionals need help some time, especially when it comes to IT. Technologies change so fast, we don’t even notice, and not always is it possible to keep up with suchj a wide array of changes.
Outsourcing is a good fit for such situations. External professionals can help your technicians get the necessary help when needed. Or they can step in when the number of technicians matters (maybe you cannot see a situation like that occurring, so maybe it is time to think again).
Your technicians have a detailed knowledge of your internal operations and that is a crucial thing for everything to run as it should. But even in such a specific environment, there could come a situation which is more general in nature and there is a need for a different point of technical view.
multi-expertise activities
So far we have discussed purely IT activities that can be passed on to someone else. It is also necessary to mention a certain area that is closely related to IT but is not completely IT.
Imagine you need to migrate all of your servery, maybe because their lifespan is out and you have decided to move into the cloud. It does sound IT-ish but this project needs management and a financial plan. It is a multi-expertise project and with a big chance it will not become a part of the regular operations. What next?
Even in this case you can turn to an outsourcing company that has experience of IT experts along with the knowledge in the areas that are related to it. Server migration is, of course, just one specific example but it shows quite well the necessity to have a crossfunctional team at hand with experts from various areas.
IT operating lease
This way of getting company cars is well known. What is not so well known is the potential to utilize it in IT. In the interest if efficiency you may decide you don’t want to take care of it. Regardless of whether that means not wanting an internal IT team or your guys focusing only on specific tsks.
For example, you may have a team of IT guys and you don’t want them to have to resolve L1 tickets. For situations like this, outsourcing is a perfect fit. As soon as you want to be stress-free in certain areas, ask for that in outsourcing.
Quite often it is helpdesk or support that are provided externally. But of course you can also go to the opposite side of the spectrum and have your whole IT fully outsourced. The level will always depend on your needs and efficiency of the solution. Balance is a crucial thing in this regard.
Myths
Now that we have clarified what outsourcing is and how it could help you, let’s deep dive into a more dark topic. There are many myths surrounding outsourcing. Hopefully e have exitted the time of outsourcing being equal to services provided from another country in another language. But we still encounter people feeling negative emotions because of the myths that are spread about it.
Outsourcing can be a relief to companies so let’s debunk some of the common myths.
Data
„I don’t want anyone else having access to our data.”
Fear for data security is surely the right fear to have and it is crucial to really pay attention to it in a company. But…
Be honest – how many of us don’t share our data, whether business or personal. How about the annoying bar with cookies? After some time our hand can grow weaker and we just start to hit “Accept” because it is easier and much less annoying. In certain cases we use apps and company SaaS whose terms and conditions clearly state that the provider is entitled to access and work with your data.
Or let’s have a look inside the wires. You have probably selected to have Internet provided to you by an ISP (Internet service provider). One of their priviledges is seeing the flow of data going through their network. Besides, there are also policies in place that these companies have to provide access to data to the government.
And there is one more area to sort out this myth. In our browsers we encounter more and more often websites using the https rather than the http. When we look at the URI, we see a nice lock and everything is okay. But do you really check who issued the certificate and who was it issued for? How many times have you clicked this lock and actually probed?
We are not saying all of this because of trying to make you feel bad due to your approach to the Internet. It is just valuable to realize that we have given up much of our control over data – and we have done it willingly. It would be a shame to let an opportunity to optimize company IT to slip away just because in this particular case, the data are made available to someone else.
And we have one more view for you. In many companies there is the position of an IT administrator. This person has to have full access to your copmany data . otherwise the job cannot be done. So there will always be someone havíng access.
Know How
„Our technician knows everything we need.”
The era of renesainnce men and women are long history. We now live in the era of specialization and that is a big advantage for contemporary outsourcing. IT professionals in outsourcing companies constantly educate themselves in their area of expertise and collect valuable experience thanks to resolving the specific situations. Technologies are running fast ahead and for your copmany it is important for technologies and IT not to be the reason for bottlenecks and issues.
Experienced technicians also can resolve problems much faster – especially when the problems occurred for the first time and at that point they are something unknown. Even though an internal technician can have the advantage of knoweing the specific internal systems, this advantage also has its limits. These can be easily eliminated if your IT is supplemented by outsourcing in certain areas.
Outsourcing technicians collect various experience thanks to the variability of problems the solve. This helps them to put together a set of tools that just won’t be found on the shelf by default. They are the best practices, tools and loopholes that cannot be created, just collected.
Besides, these technicians have specialized tools and quality equipment. So when a server goes down, there is not a problem to cover you. In an internal IT department, it would be hard and expensive to just have a server laying around, just in case…
IT is an area where a person spends the most of the time trying to figure out where is the source of the problem. And problems that seem easy may in fact be difficult. IT always stands on physical infrastructure because cloud and virtual services have to run from a data center or server room. It can happen that a technician has to be involved personally and physically.
It can also happen for his work to be good to have a second head or another pair of eyes. The work of technicians in a team is not the result of them feeling lonely. A key component of their work is to be in two places at one time or think about a problem that is not so common. And at that point, one technician is just not enough, even if he were the best.
Internal IT vs. Freelancer vs. Outsourcing company
„We can outsource to a company or a freelancer but we will choose option number two because it is cheaper.”
These are the three options you have. But think about the in-house one-person department is awfuly close to a technician that is an external entity but works alone. At the same time, it is good to think about an internal IT department being a better solution for your specific company or if you will bounce into limits we have mentioned already – knowledge, experience and availability.
There is always a hybrid option. That is most common when combining physical infrastructure and cloud but it can be also very useful in the IT services area. The goal is not to fire your technicians at any cost. The goal is to find the best option for your IT to run as smoothly as possible. And the combination of the internal team and outsourcing specialists may not be a bad decision at all.
availability
„We are not in danger from some large problems. ”
Availability is a huge advantage of outsourcing. We have gotten used to infrastructure having the label HA (High Availability). This element can also emerge in outsourcing that stands on people. A specialized outsourcing company can afford to have the availability of the team 24/7.
Your technicians do not have to be tortured with long working hours, getting up 2 AM or switching family time for problem solving. You can have colleagues for them that will cover their time off.
