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IT Outsourcing: bane or boon to a company?

slash your IT costs with wise outsourcing

Unless your business relates directly to the Web, such as online retail, chances are you pay someone else to host your website. It's just not worth the hassle and cost to do it in-house. This is just one example of how outsourcing can be an important tool in your IT arsenal.

Outsourcing parts of your IT infrastructure or support programs can save you time, money, and complications on a grand scale. The trick is being smart about what to outsource and to whom. At one end of the scale, you can pay too much for lousy service that's out of your control. At the other end, you may significantly overspend by tackling IT issues in-house that you have no expertise in or equipment to handle. Do some research before you parcel out tasks, to be sure that outsourcing will be a cost savings to your company rather that a budget drain.

a partial partnership

In most cases, outsourcing is best as a partial solution, not a complete changeover from in-house IT infrastructure. Think of your IT infrastructure as modules that must fit into one complete, working whole. Many of the modules are best left in-house, especially if you have trained teams to support them. Critical applications and networks are often best supported in-house, where you have complete control over response times and support capabilities.

But think of the other modules of your infrastructure—desktop hardware and software, intranet technology, mobile connectivity and hardware, for example. A high-cost module can often be outsourced to lower support prices, without having to hand over your more critical pieces of infrastructure, or those that are difficult to outsource.

economies of scale

One major advantage of outsourcing is that you can benefit from economies of scale. Chances are, your company is focused primarily on your main mission, whether that's making widgets or selling birdseed. It can be expensive to devote resources to support roles. For instance, quite a few companies are outsourcing basic human resources tasks instead of maintaining an entire HR department. The same benefits can be reaped by taking advantage of your outsourcing partner's investments in technological equipment.

The best example of this is Web-serving. If you need a professional website, especially an e-commerce storefront, you're going to need a lot more than one or two servers. Having a partner host and maintain your website on their infrastructure means you can take advantage of massive server banks, dedicated backup hardware, industrial-strength bandwidth, and other important elements that you can't afford to buy. The outsourcing partner can afford to maintain this kind of infrastructure because they do so in bulk. Their support team maintains hundreds or thousands of server arrays, and their backup system backs up a huge number of sites, etc. This lowers their overall costs, and, in turn, can save you money.

specialized expertise

It can be expensive to set up and train your staffers to maintain an unusual or highly specialized piece of equipment or technology. They may wind up spending more time supporting a small piece of your infrastructure and less time spreading their expertise over the well-known modules, like critical networking.

Herein lies another benefit to outsourcing—you can take advantage of an outsider's specialized expertise. Often the cost of training and the extra staff needed to support a specialized infrastructure module outweighs the benefit of using the new technology. An outsourcer who specializes in this kind of technology can provide the same support at a much lower price.

For instance, if your advertising and marketing department needs to use a single large-format printer, it might not be worth the cost to use a valuable IT staffer to support that printer technology. It might make more sense to partner with a company that specializes in large-format printing, including training and supporting users. The training and updating costs of a specialized support person will now fall on the outsource partner, not you. You are essentially renting that knowledge instead of buying it—and often renting will give you the results you want without the commitment or cost of buying.

choosing an outsource partner

IT outsourcing needs can vary widely—you may save a bundle by outsourcing desktop support, while the enterprise next door may benefit most from outsourcing a complex wireless connectivity project. Here are a few things that are absolutely critical to having a successful outsourcing experience:

• Choose a dedicated vendor, or a vendor large enough to have a dedicated department. You'll probably have the best Web-serving experience with a vendor who exclusively hosts websites. There are plenty of smaller technology outsourcing firms out there that try to be everything to every customer. Be wary of shallow expertise with broad service offerings.
• Consider reliability. SNMP is a highly successful outsourcing vendor because customers know they can trust the firm to deliver on its promises, and because its core technology has been proven to be reliable. This is especially important when you are considering outsourcing critical IT modules.
• Response time is key. This is very basic. If you can, talk to other customers of an outsourcing vendor, or find reliable reviews of the vendor's services. Try to determine the company's average response time for support or maintenance. When you host all of your IT infrastructure in-house, you have much more control over how fast your IT staff responds to network outages, backup troubles, or even single-user issues. That control is effectively taken out of your hands when you outsource—for better or worse. In some cases, response time may be quite a bit faster than what you can muster with your limited staff. But be aware of the potential for slower service as well, and research carefully.

Overall, many companies could benefit by outsourcing at least part of their IT infrastructure. Do your research, then let outside experts do what they do best—so you can do the same!