Contents
Introduction
People around the world are more connected to gadgets now than ever before this fast-paced digital age. Humans have become more used to spending several hours on their devices day in and day out, regardless of the type of device – mobile phone, tablet, or laptop or computer. All of these devices, as well as the numerous applications available in stores, have made a noticeable impact on people’s lives. As a direct consequence, the number of existing websites and mobile applications is growing, and the quality of these applications is improving by the day.
Many businesses start creating an application to increase the brand awareness, improve customer loyalty, or sell more products in order to stay competitive and keep up with the latest trends in the industry, but not every business has the necessary resources and expertise to get started. In these kinds of cases, there are primarily two options: hire software developers in-house and manage the development process in-house or outsource application development to a professional third-party organization.
Because working from home has now become the “new normal,” companies have embraced the benefits of the technology. From outside the business park, they are searching for specific expertise at reasonable rates. Outsourcing business operations and IT projects generated an estimated $92.5 billion in global revenue in 2019, a figure that is expected to rise in the coming years as companies stay competitive with one another to fulfill growing consumer expectations, adapt to the changing demands, and compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.
Contents
Pros and Cons of IT Outsourcing. 1
Why Do Companies Need IT Outsourcing?. 2
Different Types of IT Outsourcing. 3
Advantages of IT Outsourcing. 4
The Disadvantages of IT Outsourcing. 4
What is IT Outsourcing?
IT outsourcing is the use of third-party service providers to achieve IT-enabled business operations, application service, and infrastructure solutions for business results. Outsourcing, which also contains utility services, software as a service, and cloud-enabled outsourcing, assists the client in creating the right procurement strategy and aspiration, selecting the best IT service providers, structuring the best contracts possible, and establishing deals for long-term win-win relations with multiple providers. Outsourcing allows companies to cut costs, shorten their time to market, and leverage external expert knowledge, investments, or intellectual property. To put it simply, IT outsourcing is the business practice of just using external service provider to effectively manage information technology operations such as application development, infrastructure solutions, and software support. Getting access to better skill sets, price-to-quality ratio, and convenience of upscaling are all widely known reasons for outsourcing. Companies also frequently outsource data storage because it is less expensive to hire a someone else than to purchase and keep up their own data storage devices and equipment.
Outsourcing is a common process by which a business hires a third party to perform tasks, manage operations, or provide assistance on its behalf. The outside organization, known as the service provider or third-party provider, sets up for their own staff members or computer networks to execute the duties or services either on-site at the hiring company’s own accommodations or at remote locations. A variety of duties or services can now be outsourced by businesses. They frequently outsource information technology services such as programming and application development, as well as technical assistance. They quite often outsource service to customers and call center operations. Furthermore, they can also outsource other types of work, such as manufacturing technology, human resource tasks, and financial functions like accounting services and payroll processing. Companies can also outsource entire departments, such as their entire IT department, or even just parts of a specific department.
Why Do Companies Need IT Outsourcing?
Globalization has had a profound impact on businesses, causing them to grow and transform. This globalization has resulted in business outsourcing by providing ways for them to communicate with various companies and expand their business. Businesses outsource for two main reasons. The first is to save money on design, development, and implementation. The second reason could be to achieve the expert knowledge and experience of other businesses so that they can concentrate solely on their main agenda. Here are a few of the main reasons why companies choose to outsource.
- To cut some of the extra costs associated with recruiting, infrastructural facilities, and training resources
- Concentrate more on core business processes.
- Scale up and scale down assets based on project requirements.
- Increase the business capacity by leveraging the knowledge and experience of other businesses.
- Using cutting-edge technology, change the shape of their business.
- In-house knowledge and experience are limited.
- Responsibilities and services were badly managed.
IT outsourcing stepped in to help businesses take full advantage of finest skills and resources. Outsourcing is used by small businesses, medium-sized businesses, and large businesses alike. Business owners don’t have to look for resources near the area or in a particular location since offshore outsourcing provides businesses with a broader range of options for hiring talented IT experts and software developers.
Different Types of IT Outsourcing
Hundreds, if not thousands, of businesses use IT outsourcing to some extent these days, with the majority of it involving the tech industry. IT outsourcing is the practice of outsourcing work or “farming out” specific information technology functions to separate, third-party individuals or organizations rather than keeping those functions in-house. “Virtual” is another term for hired help from outside the country. In other words, a “virtual employee” or “virtual workforce.” There are three main types of outsourcing.
1. Offshore Outsourcing
“Offshoring outsourcing” refers to the procedure of purposefully recruiting or contracting a third-party professional headquartered in a completely different area in order to utilize on cost savings. Offshoring generates innovative industry solutions by coordinating market products with a company’s capability and technological superiority. If the meaning of the term “offshore outsourcing” is to be deduced, “off” means “far” and “shore” means “country.” As a result, offshore outsourcing is understood as the practice of outsourcing a company’s needs to third-party organizations located off the coast in a distant location, region, or geographic location. Offshore outsourcing companies can easily access global resources, skills and abilities, and expertise, and put them to use for their tasks. The price and availability of a world class supply of skilled resource base is the most important and significant factor in offshore outsourcing. Because of concerns regarding authenticity and consistency, offshoring is not highly recommended. Offshoring helps to ensure that despite its remote location, the business receives all of the advantages. Offshoring is hampered further by time zone differences. Nevertheless, the goals are still met, as well as the tasks are successfully delivered.
2. Nearshore Outsourcing
With major corporations gaining access to brand – new knowledge and experience and capability, the concept of cross-border deal is rising in popularity. The nearest location or neighboring country is the nearshore outsourcing location, which is also a nearshore outsourcing model. Most companies would prefer nearshore outsourcing since it is more convenient, and most programmers share the same language, which helps to reduce development costs. They can also come to the office as much as they want. Furthermore, there is a high level of trust among businesses, which makes it easier for them to work together. Businesses willingly give and work collaboratively with the outsourcing firm on their custom business requirements. The disadvantage is that companies will enter the country since it is geographically close by, and it would cost less to travel there. For example, if a business owner’s company is in the United States, the closest outsourcing locations are Canada and Mexico.
3. Onsite Outsourcing
Onsite outsourcing is a type of outsourcing in which the third-party service provider provides a group of specialists and professionals to the customer’s premises. The onsite function is time-constrained. This type of outsourcing conceptual framework, on the other hand, continues to be associated with a rise in working population numbers. When compared with other types of outsourcing, onshoring reduces costs and ensure outsourced workers live in the same region and time zone. The one and only contrast is that they prefer to outsource to local or national companies. Typically, in these kinds of software development facility, the business is limited to a single location, as there are less companies, and limited talent capabilities and team members.
Advantages of IT Outsourcing
IT outsourcing has numerous advantages for both small businesses and large corporations. It can provide more than just cost-cutting opportunities as a great strategic tool.
- Flexibility – Outsourcing aids in the quick and efficient management of IT tasks and workload spikes. And the best part is that the client company’s business owners will not have to spend too much money on employing and then dismissing an in-house employee. This is especially helpful when a company requires a specific expertise for a short amount of time.
- Access to a wider pool of expertise – Access to a larger pool of skilled experts and scarce resources has emerged as one of the most important benefits of outsourcing IT services. It can be difficult to find an in-house employee with a specific set of skills at times. It is even more difficult to develop those abilities. As a result, it makes far more sense to have a third party outsourced service provider who are capable of providing business owners with the necessary resources and meet their company’s needs in terms of skills and technologies.
- Focus on core business activities of the company – The ability of an in-house team can be increased with the assistance of task outsourcing. It is particularly important for small to medium-sized businesses that have little or no a diverse set of IT resources. So rather than overloading employees with tasks they are unfamiliar with, it is preferable to delegate those work activities to experts, permitting an in-house team to focus on major business operations. This IT outsourcing advantage is especially beneficial for businesses that function in non-IT niches. If this is the case, it is always preferable to outsource all IT tasks to a single service provider.
- Cost effectiveness – One significant advantage of outsourcing IT services is the potential for cost savings. According to Deloitte research, 59 percent of businesses choose to outsource IT services to save money. What exactly happens in this case? IT outsourcing saves money because it nullifies any need for recruiting and training new employees, which is a time-consuming and expensive process. Furthermore, when a company outsources, it may overlook additional charges and hidden charges such as buying additional expensive hardware and software, having to rent office space, paying taxes, and so on. Employment costs can be significantly reduced since the rates of outsourced service contractors are typically much lower because they are located in less expensive regions for IT development.
- High Productivity – When the workload is divided up into multiple functional parts, performance improves, and results are obtained more quickly. That is what outsourcing is all about. The business owner can entrust some work activities to external experts, and those tasks are completed concurrently with their core business tasks. Furthermore, due to time differences, it is able to sustain an uninterrupted flow of work. As a result, the client company’s development performance is improved.
The Disadvantages of IT Outsourcing
- Time Difference – This can be both a blessing and a curse, and in the worst-case scenario, it can severely hinder communication between both the client company and their outsourcing partner.
- Less Control – Control loss is one factor that frequently progress has stalled outsourcing investment. When an enterprise uses third-party services, it entrusted critical services to a different team body. Some people are concerned about having a secondary company manage their security or essential functions, and it is entirely feasible that a secondary MSP will not manage tasks to the same benchmarks as a company.
- Communication – Communication can experience severe mishaps depending on the provider, which is an important factor to consider. Long gaps between inquiries and conversations are problematic because the slower the outsourced reaction, the more services are impacted. When dealing with a security issue, for example, rapid communication is critical. In this scenario, if the business owner outsourced cybersecurity services to a third party, communication breakdowns would severely hamper business efficiency and exacerbate other issues such as downtime.
- Security risk – Security can struggle from possible risks as it improves. This is due to the fact that a company relies on a third party to manage and control its data, in either part or entirely. If said company does not adhere to almost the same safety regulations or is adversely affected in some way, the client company’s data will suffer. Typically, third parties will take proper precautions to protect the customer’s data, but this is not always the case with managed service providers. For example, if the client company uses a data center for BDR, what if the data center loses data due to downtime or information security issues? In this type of situation, risk has increased rather than decreased.
- Lack of coordination – Some businesses will attempt to patch together outsourced consulting firms with their internal staff. Whilst also hybrid IT models can be extremely effective, they do necessitate some form of IT leadership, whether internal or external. Cutbacks are more likely in the absence of an IT leader, and responsibilities become muddled.
Conclusion
Outsourcing software development is now seen as a necessity rather than an option by businesses all over the world. There are a thousand reasons why companies would choose to use IT outsourcing services. It is the process of utilizing third-party service providers to deliver cost-effective IT solutions and to improve the development process. The numerous advantages provided by various types of IT outsourcing enable businesses to pave their way to success by developing best software solutions for their operations. With the passage of time, outsourcing has become more straightforward, and the best part is that it is no longer limited to a single method; rather, businesses can outsource in a variety of ways.