Why should I outsource stuff when I can have a full-time resource at my beck and call?

For the past several years I have been encouraging businesses to outsource their IT. Over the past fortnight I have had reason to reflect on what I am asking people to do, and contemplate it from the client’s perspective.

It was not outsourcing of IT that got me – as I have a great company looking after my computers – it was the marketing department. I made a mistake that I often see my prospects making. I assumed that a full-time person working on my marketing would be a better use of money than outsourcing to a marketing company.

I had chatted with some marketing people and did not feel they understood my business well enough to be a good place to outsource to. Really, in hindsight what I had meant was that I had not found a company I felt I could trust to do a better job and provide value for money. I outsourced HR ages ago but hung onto marketing.

So the key for me with outsourcing is trusting that the company I will use can provide the solution required, while trusting them to provide value. Clearly outsourcing will access much better marketing skills than my in-house solution could bring to the party; after all, there are several experts on their team with different specialisations.

So having figured this out, it got me thinking: how do businesses select an IT company to outsource to? Clearly they need to find a company they can trust to deliver value for money as well as good technology solutions. It’s well-known that a lot of IT solutions cost a lot of money and provide little or no value to the business. So clearly they need to select a company that really knows the requirements and has a good track record for resolving problems in similar companies.

I think that in small business there is very poor understanding of industry certifications and so it’s easy for pretenders to claim years of experience and look as good as the real experts.

Industry exams are not the be all and end all of the IT industry but in my opinion they help sort out the people who know what they are doing from those who think they can. Companies that chase industry certifications tend to be more quality focussed and are more likely to give good advice based on education and experience.

I know that I have spent a lot of money on training already competent technical people in new technologies to get new industry certification at the company level. This gives me confidence in the ability of my team.

So I have now found a marketing person I trust and have met his team of experts, I am sure I will now get better results for my marketing budget. I am also sure that if you are looking for an IT company it is worth taking some time to understand the various levels of certification to understand what a qualified company has done to be ready to provide services to you.

When you have the right team in place, you will be able to do more at a lower total cost to be more effective and efficient.

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