Pros and Cons of Outsourcing IT Services Support: First Unbiased Review

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing IT Services Support: First Unbiased Review

If you’ve ever tried to google the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing, it’s most likely that ninety-five percent of all Google results were the articles on blogs of outsourcing companies. Such articles are far from being unbiased, and all that you can find there is a long list of dubious advantages and a few disadvantages that always seem to be minor and easy to deal with.

In this post, we want to take the pink glasses off and face up to the truth. If you’re longing to find unprejudiced information on the true pros and cons of outsourcing, then stay with us cause you’re going to dig deep.

True benefits of outsourcing IT service support

Let’s take a look at the true advantages your company can get when ordering technical support services from an external vendor.

Can fit into your budget

It’s obvious that if you have an unlimited budget, you’ll hire an in-house team that will satisfy all your business needs. However, if your budget has some boundaries, you’re forced to look for ways to limit your expenditures.

To hire an in-house team, you need to recruit, legally employ, onboard, train, place, and equip people. It all takes too much time, money, and effort. Outsourcing is a way to get necessary services avoiding all these expenditures. All you need to do is to find a decent company and sign a contract with it.

Please note that we wrote “Can fit your budget” because, in some cases, outsourcing can cost you even more than employing a team in-house. What are these cases? We’ll discuss it below.

Can find necessary specialists easier

If you have ever tried to find an in-house C-level specialist, you know how hard it can be. It’s much easier to deal with beginners cause all that you want from them is a huge desire to learn. When you’re dealing with a position that requires higher seniority, you have many more requirements for the person. At the same time, you face a problem with a limited talent pool that is available in your city. In the final equation, you have a lot of requirements combined with high expectations and a very limited number of candidates to choose from.

Outsourcing solves this problem while imposing a new one. Outsourcing allows you to broaden the geography of your search to the whole world and find a necessary specialist easier and faster. At the same time, rare specialists (ones who are proficient in new, complex technologies, like artificial intelligence, data science, or Blockchain) can charge much more than candidates from your city.

In this case, outsourcing can be even more expensive than employing someone local.

Let’s you manage less

Imagine you want to build a house. You can either hire all separate specialists for the job or find a building company. So, what option requires more management effort from you? The answer is obvious. When working with a mature company that has all specialists on board with an experienced manager at the head, you don’t need to check the construction process every day and coordinate workers.

If you choose to build your home employing every specialist one by one, you will have to coordinate them, distribute responsibilities, make sure they have all the necessary equipment and materials. Otherwise, you have all chances to break both the deadline and budget and get nervous collapse as a bonus.

Wrapping up. If you have never dealt with team management, you will most likely make mistakes, especially at the beginning. No one says you can’t learn it. It just takes time.

True disadvantages of outsourcing IT service support

Now, let’s take a look at some real drawbacks you have all chances to get when delegating your tasks to a third-party team.

Scams….scams everywhere

Outsourcing is an extremely profitable sphere. According to Statista, this market reached $130 billion in 2020. Today, it’s difficult to find a child who wants to become an astronaut or a policeman. Everybody wants to open their IT company and make loads of dough. No wonder there are dozens of new IT companies that appear every day, especially in countries that are popular outsourcing destinations. Such an abundance is a source of concerns about the quality of services provided.

When we say scams, we don’t mean that there’s a large number of companies that do nothing but take your money and disappear. Although there are some shell companies, it’s very easy to expose them, even if it’s your first time to outsource.

However, there are too many teams that lie about their experience and expertise. Such teams would tell you that they have dealt with the technology stack that your software product is based on and that they can do all the tasks easily.

Another popular scam scheme is to lie about the team composition and use one developer instead of several. After all, you have high chances to contact a team that simply can’t provide you with high-quality services due to its immaturity, chaotic workflow approach, and lack of specialists.

Communication issues

Even if you find an excellent superstar team that can seamlessly handle the most challenging tasks, you can’t get the necessary results unless you establish efficient communication with the team. Communication is everything. It’s your key to project success.

Here are the most crucial aspects that influence the efficient communication between you and your vendor:

  • Language barrier. It may happen that the team manager you deal with knows English (or another language you chose for communication) pretty well. However, other team members may have difficulties with it. In case a team member couldn’t understand how something works, he or she can make the task in a way they interpret it. Thus, you’ll have to spend more time and money on reworks.
  • Different time zones. The team that is half the world from you can live in a different time zone than you do. In this case, you may have no overlapping hours to talk in person in the real-time mode. Communication via letters is much less efficient and requires more effort from both parties.
  • No cultural fit. Culture has a significant influence on people’s way of thinking. It also forms the way how workers make decisions and express them. For instance, people can’t argue with older people in some cultures, even if they disagree.

The final thought

The decision of delegating your company’s task to someone else is always on you. This process has its benefits and drawbacks, similar to forming an in-house team. We hope our post helped you sort all things out so you can make an unbiased, informed decision. 

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