Household DIY remains a booming industry, with most of us turning our hand to the odd spot of painting and decorating. Some might have even fitted a kitchen or bathroom, but that doesn't mean we can be a jack of all trades. Even someone with decent plumbing skills might shy away from re-wiring the electrics in their home because they lack specific skills or experience.
The same applies to 'doing-IT-yourself' in business. The most experienced IT staff may struggle to take on more complex projects, or; you may simply just not enjoy doing some tasks that are required yourself any more.
According to recent research by PA Consulting Group, the top three reasons for IT outsourcing are to cut costs; gain access to new skills; and to reduce risk. Yet a vast proportion of those who choose to outsource find themselves dissatisfied with the results. The reasons for this are numerous, with contractual issues, lack of agreement over service level standards, changing objectives and poor communication just some of them.
The appropriate solution
A significant reason is often overlooked though - outsourcing might not be the most appropriate solution for that set of issues.
As the IT industry grows in importance and matures, the benefits of the 'do-IT-yourself' approach in terms of retaining control and the ability to manage business-critical services are compelling. However, some of the barriers to the DIY approach are still very much in evidence - a lack of relevant skills to tackle large, unwieldy or complex projects being the main issue. Additionally, by now industry specialists are pretty aware of the workload involved with particular tasks and which they prefer to prioritise their own time to.
It's time to find a 'third way', and I believe that out-tasking represents just that. For businesses that fundamentally prefer the DIY approach, particularly those where electronic business continuity or service innovation is absolutely critical, out-tasking has the ability to help by providing outside expertise just when it is needed; and, by taking over burdensome technical administration workload, to free up your best staff.
Transfer of skills
This sort of approach is ideal for large, complex, one-off projects, such as establishing a new data centre, dealing with the convergence of voice and data or the set-up of a secure wide area network. There is little point in external consultants parachuting in, doing the job, then leaving without any transferral of skills.
They actually need to work with the DIY team in order to coach them through the project, so that the company benefits in terms of the training and development of its own people. Out-tasking gives you those skills in the short-term, but crucially ensures some of them are transferred for the future - rather like an advanced apprenticeship.
With IT skills in short supply it is also natural that you concentrate your resources on your priority issues. Out-tasking also gives you the option to offload some workload to a specialist, but not the whole team or function.
Outsourcing still has its place, but for some enterprises it has evolved into something more flexible that can help a business to prosper by effectively honing the skills of its own people.
