Small and Midsize Businesses – Deciding on What to Outsource

Adapting to the fast pace of ever changing technology is always a challenge for organizations of any size; however the situation becomes critical when SMEs (Small and Midsize enterprises) have to face such circumstances. Keeping up with the ever-changing technologies and investing in everything up-to-date is not always as easy as it sounds. Due to this offshore outsourcing of services, especially IT services, is a great option to go. Offshore outsourcing not only effectively helps in carrying out productive operations, but ensures cost cutting as well.

So outsourcing is latest new trend by which most SMEs are ready to swear. Yet, the actual confusion lies in the fact that most organizations tend to search answer to the question, ‘what IT services they can outsource?’ Deciding upon this is always tricky, as depending upon their requirement one can outsource all of their IT services or some of it offshore. Certain services where outsourcing can lend an additional edge over competitors include:

Custom Web and Application Development – A company’s website acts as its online identity. So it is extremely important to get it correct. If you want to build a website or an application for your business, then the task of designing and developing it can be outsourced to some expert service providers. Since this requires skilled resources and expert knowledge on the specific subject matter, it is best to leave the job into the hands of those who are experienced in working on this. Once developed, the website or the application can be managed in-house. All one has to do is specify the budget, determine the requirements of the business and delegate the task to an agency, rather than hiring one’s own developers to execute the task.

Infrastructure Management – In a bid to fill up resource gap and transform the way a business operates, infrastructure management is an arena that can be outsourced. You can delegate the management of your company’s infrastructure to an accomplished service provider that includes everything from network services to server maintenance and help desk support to desktop management. This is a great way to save time and effort of your in-house resources, which can be made available to handle other functions.

Testing/QA – To improve the quality of production and reduce business risks, quality assurance (QA) and testing is something you cannot afford to overlook. Outsourcing this set of tasks to independent skilled resources will not only help you to meet quality deliverables, but also ensure operational excellence.

Thus, these are some of the services that can be outsourced to increase efficiency and productivity, while reducing time, cost and effort of in-house resources of a small and midsize enterprise. Based on their specific needs, SMEs can decide which of the above mentioned aspects they can outsource or hand over the entire IT responsibility to an expert service provider.