It’s getting a bit lonely out there, by yourself. Workload on that new project is a bit more than you anticipated, or maybe you just wish you had more previous involvement with a certain set of technologies.
There are many reasons why a company could be considering outsourcing, and the need is often quite pressing. Yet in so many cases the potential complications feel off-putting: this is a long-term involvement – will I have any control over project management?; every different day, there are different people working on my project – can they understand my business if we’ve only just met?; are there quality guarantees?
If outsourcing seems like a smart choice, but raises all these questions (and probably more), than you’re not looking for an outsourcing contract. You’re looking for an outsourcing relationship.
The Dedicated Team Approach – designed for business-people looking to go steady
First of all, a Dedicated Team means those people are guaranteed to be working exclusively for you. That implies they’ll have expertise with your particular set of required skills, they’ll get accustomed to your company’s climate and vision and become fully aligned with your business goals, as would an actual in-house team. It also means they’ll be sticking around long enough to be held responsible, so the classic passing-around-of-responsibility-until-nobody-can-be-held-responsible of classic working models is out of the question. You have full control over what and when they do, and can even ask your service provider to entirely manage the team yourself. Everything is transparent, as you get a list of everyone working for you, their proficiency level and salary. As with your own in-house employees, nobody can just be replaced by somebody else overnight without your knowing.
Second of all, flexibility. As with any long-term relationship, certain liberties you wouldn’t normally enjoy become natural. You may change your mind at any time and reassign tasks according to your new priorities. There’s no need to re-negotiate or go through any tedious formal procedures to do this. Since they’re your team, it’s as simple as just saying so. You receive regular status updates and project reports, so you can make adjustments as needed if you think tasks could be assigned better.
Third of all, and this probably can’t be stressed enough, expertise. Your partner selects and suggests a list of people best-suited to respond to your needs, so you have a pool of tried-and-tested experts to choose from. This will not only insure higher quality of the final product, but will also mean a substantially lower time-to-market, as those people have had significant previous exposure to those particular set of conditions.
Now that all sounds ideal. And things that sound too good to be true are at best a bit suspicious, most likely? Join us next week for this article’s second issue. We’ll be exploring the potential drawbacks of the Dedicated Teams model, as well as suggest ways to ensure your long-distance IT relationship runs smoothly and profitably. Subscribe to our newsfeed and make sure you don’t miss it.
Until next time, we’d love to hear about some of your experiences – has your company considered outsourcing or given the Dedicated Team Approach a test-run? Are there any points we’ve overlooked that you’d like us to discuss in the upcoming issue? Feel free to tell us what you think in the comment section, or join us for a more private e-chat.