As an organization makes advancements and grows, its technological needs and team advance grow along with it. The information technology (IT) needs of middle market organizations are vastly different than the IT needs of a small business. Experiencing organizational growth can uncover pain points and gaps in technology that weren’t felt before. When these gaps appear, organizations often wrestle with the fact the business requires the need of technology and software solutions, but the resources just aren’t there to acquire an internal department to support this need. As a result, many organizations have turned to the solution of outsourcing teams along with many of their IT needs.

Any organization can benefit from the services provided by an outsourced company that provide this solution. Organizations entering new markets, experiencing greater rates of growth, or facing increased competitive pressure often realize the greatest benefit from outsourcing this function. Utilizing an outsourced IT company brings additional insight, perspective, and experience from senior executives dedicated to aligning technology strategy with organizational objectives.

The outsourced software team acts as an executive level consultant to educate the C-suite of the organization on the complexities of technology at work in their business, and help set the strategic IT goals to align with the operational goals.

Outsourcing the functions of a specialized team can provide numerous logistical benefits to an organization:

• Strategic technology plans – addressing short and long term needs
• Optimize technology costs & savings – freeing up crucial resources
• Focus IT efforts on the right priorities – creating greater process efficiency
• Implement enterprise level solutions – aligning IT and business goals
• Short & long-term boosts in productivity – improving user engagement
• Improved security & security management – mitigating risks and threats
• Modernize technology & services – using the right tech for the right process

An outsourced specialised IT team also helps to keep the internal burden of managing technologies as limited as possible, enabling the C-suite and senior management to focus on more pressing operational issues. Not only does this free up valuable time and resources for the organization, it guarantees a knowledgeable and experienced individual is in the position to help push the business forward. Now-a-days experienced software outsourcing providers are getting closer to their clients and switching their focus from simple execution to delivering value and becoming reliable business transformation partners. They provide their expert guidance, consult on the best practices and technologies, analyse the needs of the target audience, and adapt the product accordingly. This way, clients perceive their distributed team as their key business enabler and an integral part of their in-house team.

ERP implementations are very hard to do without an outside firm. The packages are constantly evolving, making it difficult for staff to stay current, even if they’ve worked with the package before. An outside firm will bring current experience in the toolset and will provide a tremendous amount of insight about the challenges typical to the package. Also the presence an ERP solution, allows businesses to communicate more effectively with consumers, perform risk-analyses and create new revenue streams, among other things.

While most companies choose to work with a service firm to implement the ERP system, they must still build their own infrastructure. Since the company, not the outside firm, will be working with the systems for years to come, the company’s internal team must learn all the aspects of that system to be able to support it in the long term. Many make the mistake of not building an internal staff, relying on the consultant and keeping the ERP implementation hands-off to the staff. Without a staff to support the system, the outside firm may have to stay on, which can be very expensive. If the firm is not retained and trained staff is not there to support it, the system will most likely degrade and lose its value. Building an internal team is a crucial step to assuring success.

Analyst David Caruso, vice president of enterprise-application strategies at AMR Research Inc., Boston, explains: “The outsourcing model that began in the 1980s was simply taking the data-center operations and having someone else run them, either on-site or at a remote data center. . . . In contrast, the new outsourcing model targets an application such as ERP and attempts to treat it like a utility.”