IT Outsourcing and IT Business Process Outsourcing
Information technology has evolved in leaps and bounds in the last half a century. It had been evolving rapidly even before that. At each stage it has appeared that momentous changes are taking place, unlike any that have taken place in the past. And we are still saying the same thing, which means that the pace of development has only been accelerating. Many of the things we take for granted today, did not always exist. The pocket calculator is only about 50 years old. As is the Intel microprocessor that opened the floodgates of the computing industry. Video games started with Pong and birthed a technology-based industry larger than music and movies put together. The first cell phone call was also made in the seventies.
TCP, Ethernet and fiber optics came into being as well. The eighties saw personal music taking off with the Sony Walkman introduced a year earlier. IBM introduced PCs. Lotus 1-2-3 came into being and became a hit as the PC’s killer application. People old enough to have used it still swear by it. Microsoft came into its own. The World Wide Web, that has revolutionized everything since, came into being at the start of the nineties. SMS messages were exchanged for the first time, and Amazon was born. Netflix and Google were also founded in the late nineties. The start of the 21st century brought forth more revolutions in technology. Social media became the thing with the launch of Facebook. YouTube and Twitter were also born a few years later. There is no saying where we will be in ten years hence, such is the pace of technological change. Companies have come to recognize the importance of technology in creating efficiencies and being competitive in the marketplace. This has given rise to IT business process outsourcing. The partnerships we have forged with leading IT companies, gives us an edge in delivering on client projects. We are able to leverage the latest technologies for their work which they would otherwise have no access to. 85% of our clients are technology companies themselves. Needless to add, we are ISO (27001:2013 & 9001:2015) and operate with the highest standards of data security. We are also GDPR compliant.
IT functions that a company needs to carry out are no different. With rapid digitization over the last few decades, digital technology has become an integral part of most businesses. Like someone said, today every business is a technology business, whether in the retail industry or manufacturing or banking or another. It follows, therefore, that all companies have a dependency on this function for the smooth operation of their business, of course some more and some less. Again, no different from their dependency of HR and Finance and Legal and other functions that support their company. Requirements could be many, starting from the simplest. Every business needs a website, for example. Even though it is not a legal requirement, it is considered to be a ‘proof of life’ of a business; that it exists. However, not every company or business is proficient at building and maintaining a website, even though hosting companies say that their tools make it easy to build one. Besides, there are ongoing adjustments that may need to be done because underlying technologies also keep upgrading and offering newer versions. And again, on many occasions, the company may not be in a position to employ suitable or expert personnel in the IT area. A company may well need the support of an expert in the area to ensure that they have a website that is suitable and current. This can be achieved in many different ways. The company could engage a task-based freelancer or time-based contractor. It could engage an IT staffing company for the resources or it could go to an IT company that delivers the services it requires. oWorkers operates 24×7 from all its centers for clients who need those hours. We are also able to provide support in 22 languages, often a requirement in supporting large, global corporations with staff members around the globe. Several global unicorn marketplaces already use our services to support their business.
Though it would vary with the needs of each outsourcer, there are a number of services that are selected by many companies for IT business process outsourcing. Some of the popular ones outsourced are:
Based on the scope agreed, the vendor puts together a team of competent resources that, together, is able to meet the client requirements. This model is, perhaps, as close as one can get to an inhouse solution where you control the resources and what they do. They could be full-time or part-time resources depending on the requirement of the project. The key thing here is that the resources are identified and interact directly with the client. Since the team is individually identified, it lends continuity as the same people are involved day after day. It can also create a harmonious working relationship very similar to being in the same group or team. However, the effectiveness of this model increases over time and may not be suitable for short-term requirements.
This could be considered as a purer form of outsourcing with the focus being on the tasks and outcomes and not on the team or people. The vendor takes over the complete responsibility for agreed deliverables for the in-scope products and services. This model has been mostly adopted for requirements pertaining to software development and implementation where the requirement to work with the client team is occasional and not frequent. Its efficacy for other IT requirements is not yet uniformly accepted. Hence, if the primary requirement is application or software development, this could be a good model to choose. The client perhaps has less control over the development process, but then, he needs only the finished product.