What is IT outsourcing: why and how to do it

IT outsourcing is effectively the new synonym term for software delivery. Why would a company want to spend time and effort trying to build a team for a software development project, if there are ready teams employed at various IT outsourcing companies? These teams can onboard your project at once and deliver it on time and under budget. We explain what is IT outsourcing, how to do it and why.

The point of IT outsourcing is to delegate the task you cannot accomplish with the resources your in-house IT department to an external team of IT engineers. Why outsourcing IT operations is better than trying to hire new talents to your team?

  1. The market is scarce for talents now. Top-notch specialists do not search for work, they are happily employed at either global corporations or product companies. Thus said, trying to headhunt and hire them can take quite a long time.
  2. IT outsourcing is much cheaper. Building an in-house team means expenses for recruitment and HR, team building and onboarding. Delegating the task to a third-party team from an IT outsourcing company means all these expenses are already paid for by their employer.
  3. Expenses end when the project ends. You hire a team to do something and have to pay their wages once the job is done. Unlike that, IT outsourcing companies use Pay-As-You-Go billing model — so you pay only till the project is completed.
  4. No hard feelings. If you recruit a team in-house, these people become a part of your family. Once the project ends and if you cannot provide new tasks for them — they have to go, which lowers the morale of their colleagues and friends. Besides, they might have hard feelings for you due to this situation.
    Unlike that, when you hire an outside team for the project, everybody knows they are here to do their job and leave. No hard feelings, and if their services are needed again in the future — they will be glad to help again.
  5. Expertise continuity. many companies believe that attracting and retaining talents is the best way to accrue technical and product expertise. Unfortunately, this does not work this way once the talents begin to leave the team. They go and take their expertise with them. Quite the contrary, every dedicated team provides detailed developer documentation of their job, so all processes are transparently described, repeatable and traceable.

We sorted out what is IT outsourcing and why to do it. The question now is how to do it right.

  1. Don’t go for cost savings alone. The cheapest offer is rarely the best one. This is the golden rule of life, and it applies to software delivery in full.
  2. Tell what you WANT and let the professionals decide what you NEED. There is a common situation when the IT outsourcing team highlights the issues in the future project IT infrastructure or product architecture, the issues you might never have known about or simply overlooked. It is best not to argue the price, but thank for preemptive problem solution and adjust the scope of work accordingly.
  3. Select a trustworthy team. Expertise speaks for itself, but finding the best fit among multiple worthy competitors might be hard. Ask the contractors about their previous customers and search for reviews. A good company will easily provide 3-5 references from satisfied customers.
  4. Don’t fall for Jacks-of-all-trades. If a company says they can do everything, they most probably cannot do it excellently — or their title would be AWS. A good IT outsourcing company like https://itsvit.com/  will concentrate on a couple of areas, instead of spreading thin over all possible applications. For example, they will provide DevOps services, Big Data solutions and dedicated teams for blockchain, web and app development — but will not offer mobile dev and IoT solutions.

Conclusions on what is IT outsourcing and how to do it right

As you can see, IT outsourcing can be hugely beneficial for your business, as it will provide instant access to skilled IT engineers, help save costs and get high-quality software products in time and under budget. What is even better, you can hire the team to do their job and then finish the contract. What more would you need?