Outsourcing - using the external company to conduct the services that are usually done internally - is, in fact, not the new thing. For ages, companies from the smallest to the biggest, have been outsourcing accounting, advertising, and HR processes. But with the development of the IT industry, it became more and more sensible to do so with these services as well, especially for the small and young companies. And here is why.
Money
When you are launching a startup and you are basically starting from a scratch, energized by your enthusiasm and passion towards what you are doing, the one resource you can run out fastly is the money.
Thus, many startups find it reasonable to outsource their IT services in order to cut costs on the internal IT staff. First of all, you cut the labor cost, as besides the basic salary there are many other expenditures that come along, for example for instructing. Secondly, what has been a fixed cost, now becomes variable, as you pay for the services provided, not the monthly salary to the employees.
Expertise
According to the previous point, small businesses with limited capital not always can afford to hire the team of super experienced IT specialists. Usually, the team of young entry-level developers works on the principle of learning on own mistakes, which is not a bad strategy, unless it takes too much financial and timely resources.
To avoid that one can outsource the IT services to a team that has been working together for a certain time, with various companies and scopes of activity. In this case, they will be focused on creating you the product that you require and not on training and searching for the ways to make your product real.
Safety
Who if not the startupers know what risk really is. It awaits at every corner, let it be market changes, competitors, government regulations, or something absolutely unexpected. Outsourcing companies will take care of reducing them, by offering the solutions that you sometimes could not think of yourself. As throughout the work with different clients for many years they have learned how to manage the risks and handle the threats.
The other side of safety is a cyber-security. Making sure the firewall is up to date, DMZ is installed, the workstations and servers are audited, all the payments are secured and so on will require an extra specialist of not the department. Luckily, here the outsourcing company can also help you out.
Flexibility
Another benefit that you would achieve by outsourcing your IT services, is being able to start new projects faster. While with in-house IT department it would take time to train, let finish previous tasks, an outsourcing company can dive in the new challenge right after you introduce it to them.
Moreover, most outsourcing companies use the international teams spread all around the world, what makes it able to run your business literally 24 hours a day. This is important in the fragile IT world, while the products are available non-stop and to have the best brand image you need to be able to provide your users with the best experience in any time of day or night.
Competitiveness
If you are at the start of your business path, it may be hard to compete with already established market players. And there is no wonder why, as they have been working on the level of their internal services for years.
An outsourcing company will show you a shorter path to get there. You can use its expertise and it will not only bring you to the level of your competitors but also provide you with the advantages over them.
Innovation
In most of the cases, IT outsourcing company operates with higher labor and knowledge resources than those of a startup or small IT company. So using their services can help you implement the innovative technologies, which probably were not your first priority due to their complexity or because of being too overwhelmed with the basic challenges that arise. This would create the added value for your business, help it stay afloat and attract new customers and investors.
Time
We have started our list with the important resource, and we will finish it with even the more important one. Creating and supporting your IT product or managing the IT infrastructure of your business is only one part of the tasks you will face when running a business. Alongside come to the marketing and business development challenges, sales and finances, and this is only a few examples. So outsourcing the IT part of challenges would free a lot of time to focus on the tasks that are even more crucial for the survival of the company.
Check out a related article:
Freelancer, Full-time Developer, Software Development Company: Who is the Best Fit for Your Project?
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These 7 benefits should be valuable enough for the startups to consider the outsourcing of the IT services of their business. But the biggest question, after all, is how to make sure the outsourcing company will really provide these advantages and possess the acclaimed expertise. For some companies their portfolio talks for itself. Check out our Case study page to get some inspiration and confidence to outsource.
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