How do you power your digital transformation? Should you hire internal experts or unlock the competency of an IT solutions provider to handle your transition?
A few years back, when the cloud tools on the market numbered in the dozens, the answer might have been easier. Since then, there’s been a boom of cloud platforms, which organizations need to navigate, protect, and harness while managing budgetary constraints. Here’s how taking a holistic look at your organization can provide the answers you need.
Advantages of Hiring IT Talent
From permanent staff to contract IT professionals, there can be advantages to hiring technical expertise rather than outsourcing IT projects:
Dedicated Personnel – When you have challenges to overcome or strict timelines on your mind, you want your workforce to be as engaged as you are. Hiring IT talent can get your organization to achieve those goals on your terms. Permanent staff can pivot more easily with emerging priorities, be on-call to put out fires, and drive long-term strategy that transforms your business.
Though temporary IT workers are limited by the terms of their contract, they are often only limited to one project at a time because of their bandwidth. As a result, temporary consultants can often impart best practices to your internal team or provide additional help – if they’re willing to expand the scope.
Stable Access to Critical Technologies – When a particular tool is critical to your business, you do not want to leave it to market whims: your people need uninterrupted access to top capabilities. That’s nonnegotiable.
However, there is no universal list of what’s impermissible to outsource. You need to look at your size, industry, budget, and workload to determine when you should hire tech professionals.
For example, if you run a midsized healthcare company, you’re going to need reliable access to EHR specialists, compliance leads, and cybersecurity engineers to navigate regulations and growing digital threats. Or if you lead IT for an established FinServ company, you’ll need systems analysts, cybersecurity managers, and even some developers to maintain a dynamic, customer-friendly, and well-defended organization.
Executive IT Talent – The success of IT operations and projects start from the top down. Without leaders who can blend their business acumen with a strategic technical perspective, many otherwise feasible projects and initiatives might needlessly flounder.
Currently, there’s a perceived lack of technical expertise amongst the board of directors and C-Suites, making hiring IT executives a compelling choice. In fact, 50% of executives in a PwC and The Conference Board survey expressed their concern that their leadership lacks digital technology knowledge, which hinders their long-term decision-making.
Enterprises are recognizing the role of Chief Technology Officer is only one of many essential positions within the spectrum of tech leaders. Chief Information Security Officers have risen in demand as cyber threats accelerate and grow in sophistication. Chief Data Officers have grown in popularity as AI and machine learning amplify the potential insights from vast data sets.
That’s only the start. As long the C-Suite practices some introspection to identify their most urgent goals and obstacles, they can determine which of these and other emerging executive roles must be kept in-house.
Advantages of Choosing an IT Solutions Partner
Hiring won’t solve every problem, especially as technical solutions providers have evolved to offer greater flexibility, coverage, and strategic insight than past generations. The following advantages should be on your radar when making your consideration:
Implementation Guidance – An outsourced IT partner provides additional direction that can maximize the outcome of implementations. They can oversee the processes, workflows, and trajectories of application interface development, data warehouse integration, and AI-enablement projects.
If you choose the right partner, their leadership team will act in a consultative manner to elicit greater results and changes that last beyond the initial engagement. Our own leadership team assesses client businesses and provides consultation to help their leaders unlock profitability, heightened performance, and enhance innovation. And the best caliber IT solutions partner will always act with your best interests in mind.
Cost-Effective Utilization – Hiring is always the more expensive option. Permanent workers have salary, payroll taxes, worker’s compensation, employee benefits, and other expenses. Temporary IT consultants can be more cost-effective, though their pay rate is often higher than a comparable employee’s salary.
When you work with an IT solutions provider, you get access to a team for a more economical rate. This can accelerate timelines and enhance the overall problem-solving capabilities during the midst of IT projects.
If you are launching a new application, working with an outsourced development team can streamline sprints, enhance collaboration, and even improve overall ROI. If you’re implementing a new data warehouse, a pre-existing team can follow established best practices that can improve data mapping, cleanup, data governance, and other steps along the way.
Because of their repeated implementation of specific projects, IT solutions partners can bring their own accelerators and enhancements to the process. If they’re a true partner, they can provide advice on how to maintain excellence and reduce risks in the long run.
Scalability – With the unpredictability of current economic forecasts, many organizations worry about losing flexibility as they build their technical team. Over the last year, we’ve seen large-scale corporations and Silicon Valley firms downsize their workforce after too rapidly multiplying their headcount in the wake of the pandemic. In the hopes of avoiding a similar situation, some companies are opting to work with IT consulting partners instead.
Collaborating with an IT solutions partner can allow your business to scale up your workforce as necessary. Whether for seasonal demands, fixed projects, or even just to sustain momentum during unpredictable times, outsourcing to a trusted partner can embrace your technical potential without anchoring you to a rigid workforce.
Striking the Right Balance
Though some of these decisions are cut and dry, there are times when businesses need to find a way to counterbalance competing needs. Maybe you need an executive or leadership perspective with a team that can scale up at a moment’s notice. Or maybe you need a permanent data-driven professional but also the assistance of an implementation team with proprietary best practices to create a solid data foundation.
Whatever your predicament, it helps to work with a partner that grasps IT staffing and consulting. At w3r Consulting, we have built an extensive network of IT experts, both those looking for their next job or next project, with industry-specific and local knowledge. With our combined viewpoint, we can help you find the perfect fit for your challenges.
When deciding between IT hiring and IT solutions, it helps to have a partner with an expertise in both. Learn how w3r Consulting can guide your business through technical staffing or IT consulting services.
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