A lot of modern companies have already appreciated the benefits of outsourcing and are actively using it for business development. Transferring an enterprise to outsourcing means entrusting the conduct of certain business processes to an outsourcer. Most often, accounting, advertising, logistics or IT are transferred to third-party contractors.
What is IT outsourcing?
To put it simply, this is the transfer of work on the maintenance of the IT infrastructure to a certain specialized company. At the same time, the contractor can be entrusted with both the entire system (full outsourcing) and its components or services (partial outsourcing).
Service refers to the development, implementation and maintenance of the IT infrastructure. At the same time, many companies prefer to order a full package of services at once, which includes:
- 24/7 monitoring of infrastructure or individual services;
- Providing information security and protection against hacking;
- Configuring and updating software;
- Support and implementation of information backup services;
- Consulting and training employees on IT issues, etc.
Imagine that you have established your own business and are now thinking about taking off some of the burdens from yourself and transferring IT to outsourcing. Then you will be interested in learning about the most likely prospects and possible risks of such a decision.
Advantages
You save money. After all, now you do not need to maintain your staff of IT specialists – all their work is performed by an outsourcer. The one-stop-shop format for technical issues allows for the procurement of the most suitable equipment and software at affordable prices.
Optimize production processes. By placing IT in the care of an outsourcing company, you can fully concentrate on your own business and invest more time, effort and resources in the main production.
You get access to high technologies. Need a top tier to set up a cutting-edge service? Do you want to implement the latest development and stand out from the competition? Now, this is not a problem. Guaranteed result. The contractor is solely responsible for the competence of its employees and undertakes to provide all specialized services following the current SLA.
Disadvantages
Adaptation. As a rule, at first, some problems are possibly caused by the establishment of interaction between the contractor and the client. Reduce managerial flexibility. Such an outcome is quite likely if you concentrate too many processes in the hands of one performer.
But the objective advantages of IT outsourcing still outweigh the probable disadvantages. And if you take a closer look, it becomes obvious that all possible risks are somehow connected with the shortsightedness of the customer or the bad faith of the contractor.
