Will a Statement of Work Solution Deliver the ROI You Need?

How will you complete your next IT project? Your organization can achieve a functional outcome through any variety of delivery models, but only a few will present you with the full performance and ROI you desire. The decision for many organizations is whether to hire a contingent resource or leverage an outsourced team to deliver a statement of work solution.

What’s right for your organization? There’s no universal answer. Yet asking the following questions as you consider using a managed service provider or staff augmentation solution will help you to simplify your choice.

Do You Need Strategic Input?

Often, organizations see a technical gap within their team and assume a contractor provides enough hands-on experience to deliver their full ROI. In those instances, contractors are chosen based on their technical repertoire and industry experience. What goes overlooked is whether that person is capable of leading at a strategic level. Unless your ideal contractor has a proven history pinpointing and achieving long-term goals of their clients, he or she might limit the potential of your desired outcome.

A project team provided through a statement of work program is more adaptable to thinking and aligning activities at a strategic level. The project leader of each program will have experience translating business objectives into high-quality technical solutions to address business use cases. They will even have the business acumen to assist with your planning, ensuring that the solution you use aligns with your actual goals. Long-term results outweigh rigid adherence to specific technologies or solutions.

Do You Have the Bandwidth for an Added Project?

Consider this scenario. Your internal team possesses the internal knowledge base to complete a technical project. However, the deliverable does not align with your primary objectives, is time sensitive, or may require dependency upon another internal department with a full docket. Should you keep the work in-house and modify their work load accordingly? Or should you approach a statement of work team to complete the deliverable? The answer depends on your own bandwidth, budget, and timeline.

The time and effort associated with your leadership cannot be downplayed. Creating job requisitions, managing your workforce, resolving issues, and updating internal stakeholders on your progress takes time. Do you want to lose all those productive hours to a peripheral project?

Working with a managed service provider creates flexibility and may absolve you of those time-consuming responsibilities. You set the end goal. Your partner oversees the rest. There’s collaboration and consultation with the right SOW partner, but all the heavy lifting and hands-on workforce management is done by their team. You’ll be briefed about the big picture and any approaching milestones, but you can remain focused on what’s pivotal and essential to your enterprise.

Are You Prepared to Manage Risks?

Technical projects are complex in nature and fraught with hazards that those inexperienced in the delivery or implementation process might miss. An otherwise skilled technical contractor can overlook potential threats if they fall outside of their own professional experience. Unless your contractor is skilled with QA and testing best practices, this can present some risk for the final deliverable.

The unified efforts of an SOW team are vital when you have little margin for error. They not only have experience collaborating together to deliver results, but they possess a greater breadth of cumulative experience. Together, they’ve encountered and overcome more challenges than any individual contractor could. Putting your confidence in their collective expertise puts your technical projects in better hands.

If You Decide to Go with an SOW Program…

Planning is essential to any successful project. However, though some organizations might believe it’s essential to perform some early planning before choosing between a statement of work program or staff augmentation solution, this approach leaves out a critical perspective.

Your partner has experience that can augment your own during the planning process. They can verify if your vision is on the right track, can introduce new technologies or solutions you might have overlooked, and can bring in resources that might have gone unanticipated. Regardless, leaving them out of the planning can hinder your long-term goal and determine whether you hit the bullseye or only the outer ring of your target goals.