IT Outsourcing - a sustainable competitive advantage

There are a lot of words in the title of this post. IT Outsourcing. Supported. Competitive. Advantage. It feels almost "heavy" is not it? It is not so bad. In fact - it is more advantageous than heavy. Outsourcing is probably the word "negative" in the title. We have linked to many negative connotations that word for a long time now and the reason is simple: it meant the loss of jobs. Well, much has changed since the early days of outsourcing and the great news is that outsourcing does not mean what it used to say. Today, you can actually be a source of smart growth, competitive advantage, and creating jobs rather than losing them.

IT Outsourcing

First, we talk about outsourcing. What does it mean for you? It means that they give you a portion of your business in another country? Does that mean you use a "call center" in another country to handle customer support questions? It means that you leave your current IT staff to go to hire cheap labor in another country? Well, it can mean any of these things, but it can also mean other things very important.

Outsourcing, IT outsourcing and more specifically may mean using the resources of experts who are not within your business, but not necessarily outside the country either. There are terms for this: nearshoring, onshoring, off-tasking, etc. These days, outsourcing has taken a completely different person. IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) are a great example of a resource "local" that can be used for your IT needs without hiring foreign workers. There are also situations where you might want to use external resources for a part of your homework it as well.

So why would you want to pursue this in the first place? Several reasons actually.

* Cost savings. When you use the resources of external service providers can save on overhead costs and use that money for reinvestment back into society. The savings can be substantial or lower depending on your needs. The key here is that the money you save is that you have much more in capital requirements for such growth, marketing, projects, etc.

* Human Capital. The resources of an outside firm is an investment by an amazing point of view of knowledge. Call it "wisdom of crowds". These companies have many customers who have their own set of issues. They solve problems all day and into contact with more resources. Chances are, you can benefit from the heavy use of these resources at hand. Sometimes the internal resources can only see the internal problems with this point of view "external" is actually a huge advantage when it comes to information that needs and direction.

* Create less "mass". Staying lean and mean is a huge advantage in these days. With that, I mean to have less mass to carry around and be more agile. When a company is stuck having so many departments, massive increases in the amounts of the decisions and the amount of cost increases. Leaving them vulnerable to changes in their market that force them to change rapidly.

There are probably more than a dozen reasons why outsourcing may make sense, but for the sake of brevity, I'll stick to the above three. The point here is that outsourcing can help with many things that often get in the way of a very thriving business. These are the things that lead to loss of concentration and loss of customer loyalty / trust, and ultimately contribute to less competitive advantage.

So I ask now, how to find a supplier of IT? How to find this perfect society and trust your entire infrastructure in their hands? Well, you can search Google or talk with others or you can use new types of services such as (gorilla-force.com) to search by location / business portrait and view information of each company. I'll do another post soon to discuss what to look for when selecting a quality provider of IT services for your business. Until then, start thinking of ways your company can use the know-how and cost savings benefits of an IT outsourcing provider....