The increasing digitization of companies across all industries over the last decade has dramatically changed the business landscape. Today, if your company doesn’t have a solid digital infrastructure, it’s already trailing behind the rest. That’s why most organizations are investing in digital acceleration processes: to quickly scale up their digital capabilities to get the agility they need to face new challenges.
But to do so, they need the expertise of seasoned IT engineers that can work on the solutions those companies require to sophisticate their digital infrastructure. Since everyone else is doing, getting those engineers can be hard, especially if you’re based in the US, where there’s a significant talent shortage that can make it even harder for you to find the proper team to develop the IT solutions you want.
That’s when IT outsourcing services prove useful. Through those services, you can access expert software engineers and IT professionals on-demand as well as IT management and support services. Thus, you can reach out to an IT outsourcing company with your IT requirements and find the help you need to develop solutions to meet them.
Let’s dive a little deeper so you can truly understand what IT outsourcing services are all about, how can you benefit from them, and some tips to find the best ones out there.
What Are IT Outsourcing Services?
Companies like BairesDev are providers of IT outsourcing services, meaning that they have the talent, knowledge, and experience you need to get your digital acceleration process going. In other words, by hiring IT outsourcing services, you’ll be partnering with a third-party company that will supply you with the IT roles you need to further develop your IT projects and infrastructure.
Naturally, there are a number of ways in which you can tackle IT outsourcing. You can hire an IT outsourcing company to take full responsibility for your entire IT requirements or just use them for a particular project – or even for just a phase of a project! What’s more, you might use one IT service provider for your entire IT needs or you can outsource to multiple providers that better fit your specific needs.
Which IT Services Are Typically Outsourced?
Virtually anything IT-related you have in your company can be outsourced, especially now that distributed teams and remote work have become a standard in the business world. However, there are certain IT services that are more commonly outsourced than others. These include the following:
- Software development
- Web development
- Mobile development
- Network management
- Quality Assurance (QA) and Testing
- Technical support
- Infrastructure management and support
- Datacenter management
- Cybersecurity, data backup, and recovery
- Disaster recovery
- Tech road mapping and planning
What Models of IT Outsourcing Services Are There?
As mentioned above, IT outsourcing companies offer services through different models that aim to cover every possible need. You’ll have to pick one of these services depending on the project at hand, your personal preferences, your budget, and your overall resources. Though the kind of services may vary from company to company, there are 3 common IT outsourcing services to most of them.
- Dedicated teams. A dedicated team is a service where the IT outsourcing company provides you with a team formed with all the roles necessary to tackle your IT project. It typically gathers a project manager, software engineers, QA engineers, and specific roles according to the project at hand.A dedicated team works autonomously and it’s managed jointly by a scrum master/project manager and the product owner. And though they work on their own, dedicated teams communicate and report status as frequently as you request. Dedicated teams are perfect for you if you don’t have the bandwidth to address your IT challenges and need to focus on your core business.
- IT Staff Augmentation. Through this on-demand service, you can add talent to your team and bridge any talent gaps you may have. IT staffing services can quickly fill any open position in your team, be it temporary or permanent. This allows you to quickly scale the expertise of your team, providing you with speed, flexibility, and expertise to tackle your IT projects. This extended team will work as a part of your local team, participating in regular meetings, and reporting to your managers. Thus, IT staff augmentation is a cost-effective way to increase the size and productivity of your IT teams in no time.
- End-to-End Software Development. This is probably what most people imagine when talking about IT outsourcing: full-cycle custom software development. With this service, you provide the requirements and specifications for the project and the outsourced team delivers the solution, from design to end product.This is a great service for anyone looking to build high-quality software in the most cost-efficient way, as it puts the entire development on the shoulders of a seasoned development team that has the know-how to tackle projects of varying complexity using the latest technologies.
What Types of IT Outsourcing Are There?
While picking the perfect model is important for the success of your IT outsourcing experience, you also need to consider the types of IT outsourcing available to you based on their location. Depending on where they are based, outsourcing companies offer you different outsourcing experiences, which leads to the following types:
- Onshore outsourcing. Onshoring happens when you outsource IT services to a company or team within your home country. For instance, if you’re based on New York and hire an outsourcing company from Chicago, you’d be onshoring. This is a pretty convenient type of outsourcing if you don’t want cultural and language barriers and want minimal timezone discrepancies. However, this type is often the most expensive and it isn’t always readily available.
- Nearshore outsourcing. A nearshore development company is an organization that’s based in a country or region that’s near your country. For example, if you’re in the US, you could find a nearshore company in Latin America. Nearshoring is a great alternative for anyone looking for minimal cultural and language barriers, similar timezones, and competitive costs.
- Offshore outsourcing. Offshoring is probably the most well-known of the outsourcing types, as it’s the one that’s been around the longest. It basically means you hire an IT service provider from a distant region or continent. Thus, a company in the US that works with a team in India or Ukraine is offshoring its IT needs. The most notable benefit of offshore outsourcing is its lower costs but there are plenty of challenges in this arrangement, such as potential language and cultural barriers and vastly different time zones.
Why Outsource IT Services?
There are plenty of reasons that justify outsourcing IT needs, regardless of the model and the type of outsourcing you pick. If you find the right IT outsourcing services company, then you can enjoy the following benefits.
- Access to Top IT Talent. Any digital acceleration process needs experienced engineers with the right expertise to tackle a diverse range of projects. By outsourcing your IT needs, you’ll open the gates for that kind of talent, as you’ll have a larger pool of professionals from where to pick.
- High-Quality Delivery. Expert IT professionals can add value every step of the way, ensuring that your projects run smoothly and that you achieve the desired results within the established deadlines. Reputable outsourcing companies aim to provide high quality in all the stages of the project.
- Optimized Workload. When you outsource your IT needs, you free yourself from the burden of having to do everything by yourself. This means that you’ll have the time to take care of the core of your business while having your back covered by the best IT professionals in the industry.
- Shorter time to market. Digital acceleration processes are all about speed to respond to ever-fluctuating demands. In that context, having the perfect solutions to meet those changes is key, which is why outsourcing is a good idea: outsourced IT teams can quickly tackle any project and bring you the best results to keep you moving forward.
- Limited risks. While IT-related projects always have risks, outsourcing them to a reputable company can drastically reduce them. That’s because outsourcing teams can provide you with flexibility and agility to quickly adapt to new demands while always presenting you with high-quality output.
When to Outsource IT Services?
While you can use IT outsourcing services at any moment you want, there are specific instances where doing so can quickly give you the competitive edge and the value you’re looking for. Some of those instances include the following.
- Talent shortage. If you’re having trouble finding IT professionals with the level of expertise and experience you need for a project, outsourcing is the perfect solution, as it gives you access to a global talent pool.
- Hard-to-find roles. Some projects require hyper-specialized professionals that you can’t find in your area or that you don’t need on a permanent basis. Outsourcing can help you find them and add them to your in-house team in no time.
- Tight deadlines. Scaling up your team in critical phases can be the defining point between a successful project and a disaster. By outsourcing IT, you can quickly add essential roles to your team to speed up your development or face increasing workloads.
- Issues with ongoing projects. If you are working on a project that has stalled or that has hit a dead end, you can find the solution in outsourced services. The right professionals can guide you through different ways to put the project back on track and even add more value to the resulting product.
- Budget constraints. IT solutions can be costly, especially if you keep its development and maintenance in house. Outsourcing a part of your IT requirements can help you alleviate costs and stay within your budgetary margins.
How to Make the Most Out of IT Outsourcing Services
Outsourcing your IT needs isn’t necessarily hard but it can have some challenges. You can avoid most of the potential issues by following these suggestions:
- Define the specific parts of the project that you’ll outsource as well as the skills you’ll need. You need to have a clear understanding of what you are outsourcing and what you need out of your outsourcing partner before starting to contact them. Create an outline of your project that includes the kind of expertise and the technologies you’ll want so you can better discuss with your potential outsourcing partners.
- Establish your project’s scope and future scalability. IT projects are rarely a one-and-done kind of thing: they often need upgrades and updates to scale and meet new demands. Thus, you have to define your starting point and where do you imagine the project will be headed later on. This will help the outsourcing service provider to better design your IT solutions.
- Consider your preferred workflow. You’ll have to take several things into account: the outsourcing model you’ll want, the type of outsourcing you’ll need, the kind of tools you’ll use to collaborate with the outsourcing partner, and the overall schedule. Think of your project’s requirements and analyze your options before researching companies.
- Conduct thorough research. Finally, try to be as detailed as possible when researching IT outsourcing service providers. Check references and portfolios, read reviews and testimonials, ask for proposals, and talk to the companies that seem like the best matches for you. After all that, balance all the factors to come to a final decision.
A Gateway to Better IT Development and Management
As you can see from this complete guide, IT outsourcing services can be the thing you’re lacking to finally get your digital acceleration process going. These services provide you with the talent, agility, experience, and expertise to tackle all your IT requirements in a quick and cost-efficient way.
The most important thing is that outsourcing your IT needs can put you on the same level as the rest of the digitally-driven companies out there. In other words, IT outsourcing services can be the key that opens the door to better IT development and management.
