Optimum Outsourcing

For larger companies with established IT departments, outsourcing means asking those staff members to give up their accustomed role as troubleshooters, and focus more on the managerial big picture. “Outsourcing requires a real change in mindset,” agrees LaForge. “IT managers need to trade off purely tactical work, like system monitoring, maintenance, and management, and instead focus their IT management efforts on aligning with the business’s strategies.”

Also, some IT tasks should definitely be kept in house and maintained by employees who know your business and how the technology relates to it—regardless of their familiarity with the finer points of the technology itself.

There are functions that some experts feel can be handled capably by an outside company, but which others insist should be performed onsite. Kieffer says such functions include “what I call ‘run the business’ applications—business-line applications like ERP. Also, ‘face the market’ applications such as e-commerce and supply-chain programs, should be kept in house.”

And again, there’s that pervasive tech bugaboo, security. Liability concerns mean that good service providers will keep an extra-tight clamp on your data, but not all of them are as careful with your sensitive data as they should be.

“Our industry isn’t very standardized, and consequently there are good IT service providers and bad ones,” says Mooney. “Too often, we are called into a company because their previous service provider made bad recommendations or improperly deployed a technology.”

Costs

A logical question at this point might be, “How much does outsourcing cost?” The answer is an unqualified “It depends.”

Rates can range from around $50 per hour for one-time projects to big-dollar contracts with companies that want up-to-the-minute, on-call tech expertise. For instance, many of Best Buy’s on-site IT staff are supplied by Accenture, according to Mooney. Target is another company that relies heavily on IT outsourcing, McFarland says.

But suppose you’re not Target or Best Buy. How much should you plan on spending? “It depends on how sophisticated your needs are,” McFarland says. “But I’d say $2,000 per year per [client-company] employee is a good benchmark.”