Your IT team and environment is the lifeblood of your organisation. Without them you have limited operational capability, no data for decisions, no revenue, no web presence or digital footprint, or IT landscape.
With demand for IT professionals at sky-high levels, companies around Australia and New Zealand are facing a growing challenge in recruiting and retaining top talent. This raises the question whether outsourcing some or all of IT services is more efficient and cost-effective than managing in-house.
The decision to hire an outsourced IT consultancy is a complex one that depends on a wide variety of factors including budget, skillset availability, workload, and where your company is in its digital evolution.
So how to you choose the right partner? Considerations such as these below, and from our latest guide The Buyers’ Guide to Sourcing the Right IT Partner will outline how.
Whether you are a startup or established company, choosing the right technical partner will be crucial for your business success.
Understand their area of expertise:
Any outsourced IT service should have their various areas of expertise, whether it be application development, infrastructure or cybersecurity services for example. This expertise will guide you all the way through, consulting and suggesting innovative solutions that would work specifically for your business needs.
When sourcing a provider, it is useful to investigate these areas:
- Do they explain why a certain technology is applicable to you?
- Do they think out of the box?
- What challenges did they solve in their past projects?
- Are they creative and flexible when it comes to problem-solving?
- Can they demonstrate a time when they delivered a solution that fit to a long-term customer business strategy?
Consider factors other than just pricing:
A common mistake for customers is letting price become the only aspect of IT services purchases. What looks like an ‘economic deal’ is often costly in ways of requiring more time and attention.
Still, maintaining the budget is a significant concern and it plays an important role in the decision-making process.
Make sure the company offers value and it is worth the cost. In the long-run, you want to have a partner who will help you return your investments, not only save those.
Hence think about the following:
- Do they provide value?
- Do they give clear return on investment metrics?
- Do they suggest options to optimise the resources?
So even if you get the numbers that seem to be higher than your initial expectations, but the company inspires confidence in the result and offers a reasonable working model, pricing should be a secondary consideration.
Ensure they have a transparent working process that gives you visibility:
It’s easy these days to track vendors working progress, via the implementation of a simple few tools such as Kanban boards, or communication channels such as Slack. Your IT partner should provide a working process that is well-defined, clear and allows you to track the progress throughout the whole development cycle.
Ask your supplier if they:
- Do they have a clear working process?
- Do they provide you with the tools you can follow the progress and control the development process?
- Are they open to adjusting their process to your specific needs?
Don’t be afraid to ask questions or gain visibility on the process. Often IT organisations have these tools readily available and are keen to show these off to their customers.
Request customer case studies, testimonials and references:
Gaining real feedback from your potential technical partner’s customers will be helpful and give you a better picture of what to expect.
Be sure to check all publicly available references such as:
Testimonials on their website or social media
- A list of reference customers that can be phone called
- A list of customer logos on their website
- Search through review sites such as Trustpilot to see if there are any reviews there
The most straightforward way to get real feedback about the tech company is to ask for a reference from their existing or previous clients. The company that brings value to their clients will be happy to refer you to the right person to talk to.
Ready to look at some outsourcing models? We’d love to hear from you.
ITANZ is a global leader in consulting, application development and digital transformation. We partner with our customers to deliver integrated technology services that continually evolve their organisations, enable their operations and connect them to a bright future.
Using the full breadth and depth of our technology expertise, including in the Oracle product suite, we create touch points to enhance business and customer experience. We enable our customers to accelerate digital service adoption, enable their remote workforces, secure their businesses and keep up to date with the latest data and cloud offerings.We deliver 24/7 always-on and continually improving our customers organisations.
