It Outsourcing: What It's All About

Although every firm is a candidate for IT outsourcing

, not every company is a good fit. Only by identifying an organization's motivations, core competencies and corporate culture can a company properly determine if they should outsource. If the organization can clearly identify these factors as they relate to outsourcing, and have a clear vision of their desired results, they should be able to objectively analyze whether an IT outsourcing strategy is a good fit.

An objective analysis, however, may not be as easy as one might think.

It requires a look at the organization through slightly different eyes, removing the "this is how we've always done it" mentality and replacing it with the "if we were to start over today, what would we do?" way of thinking.

DEMYSTIFYING IT OUTSOURCING

Misconceptions abound concerning IT outsourcing. Many people, especially in the media, equate outsourcing to "off-shoring." While some companies do off-shore certain components of their business, off-shoring is not the only option available when considering IT outsourcing, nor is it necessarily the right decision. Almost every company today outsources in some capacity.

Whether it's their payroll, application hosting, or something as routine as printing business cards, most companies simply cannot do everything in-house. And, why should they?

Businesses today have become specialized at what they do best. They've exploited efficiencies to increase profit on their core operational activities, and in most cases, look to other organizations to complete tasks which are not within their own core competencies.

When looking at IT outsourcing for what it is, a service provided by another company that would otherwise be done in-house, rather than a sinister plan to redistribute human labor costs by big corporations, the topic becomes more approachable and a logical solution to business challenges.

For example, consider Information Technology (IT) outsourcing. Why should a manufacturing company be expected to build a world-class technology department when they manufacture widgets?

When done right, an IT outsourcer can give a business economies of skill and scale by aggregating demand across their multiple customers. They can force the adoption of proven methodologies, best practices and procedures that create not only a more effective IT function, but a better company as well. An outsourcer can also provide world-class facilities, system availability, monitoring tools, and 24/7 customer support that would normally be too expensive to provide in-house.

IT outsourcing today has evolved from a purely cost-based decision that a few companies deploy to a widely accepted business practice and legitimate solution used by many companies to achieve their business goals.

by: Chuck Vermillion

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