The benefits of outsourcing for SMEs

Companies outsource for a myriad of reasons. For smaller businesses, outsourcing might become necessary when the company feels it needs to concentrate on its core processes, and relegate non-strategic areas to a specialist with the resources and know-how.

In the last few years, the outsourcing of IT decisions has grown exponentially and the trend is set to continue. Access to innovation, increased speed to market and service quality are important factors that make the outsourcing of IT maintenance a worthwhile value proposition.

Although sometimes seen as an expensive alternative, outsourcing of IT-related tasks actually reduces costs and frees up valuable time for employees to perform their most essential functions. However, not many companies thoroughly understand the value of outsourcing or how to handle the outsourcing relationship.

Companies with a specialist outsourcing division like MWEB Business can provide a valuable service to small businesses by providing maintenance, project management, technical resources, software support and infrastructure maintenance to SMEs who do not have the necessary in-house resources.

Some key benefits of outsourcing your IT:

* Increased productivity through the optimal use of resources
* Improved competitive edge by focusing on core business areas
* Reduced costs by decreasing overheads and expenses
* Access to world-class IT skills, experience and resources

The key aspects of a successful outsourcing relationship are transparency, trust and collaboration. Both service provider and customer should strive for these qualities in order to get the most out of the relationship.

Once an outsourcing contract has been concluded with a service provider, committed management of the outsourcing relationship is critical to its success. Successful outsourcing does require some processes and procedures, for example, regular service meetings, agreed review processes (preferably involving benchmarking against other service providers) and reporting procedures.

An outsourcing services contract - sometimes called a Service Level Agreement - is not a contract which should be put in a drawer once signed, it should be a live and operational document.