ICT department: is it better to choose insourcing or outsourcing?

The arrival of globalization , together with the development of communication technologies, has favored the emergence of several potential scenarios for those who find themselves managing a company and above all its resources. The organization of the ICT department , in particular, is a fundamental choice that must be made by the IT manager and the CEO in most companies; this department can be in-house or outsourced. Both solutions are characterized by advantages and disadvantages, which it is advisable to know in order to understand which option is more in line with the needs of your company. Here, for example, you can learn more about the implications of choosing to outsource .

The outsourced ICT department

An outsourced ICT department is characterized by several positive aspects. Firstly, this solution helps to enhance skills and people , ensuring greater work flexibility, but also more versatile schedules. Furthermore, outsourcing ICT services means reducing the risk, which is shared by both parties. It is clear that a company that makes ICT services available to its customers acts in such a way as to satisfy their needs and win their trust, carrying out the work on the basis of predefined times and standards . Finally, we cannot forget the fact that with an outsourced ICT department the value for money is much more advantageous. The customer ends up paying only for the hours that have actually been worked. If you are lucky enough to find a quality outsourced ICT department, you can be assured of the services of a staff of skilled programmers supervised by a project manager .

The disadvantages of outsourcing

Unfortunately, not all companies are able to guarantee an excellent service. An incorrect choice of the company to which the services are outsourced can also cause problems from an economic point of view and in terms of corporate image , which always depends on technologies. External ICT teams often fail to resolve emergencies quickly.

The in-house ICT department

The internal IT department was a typical prerogative of the companies of the 50s and 60s: the period in which the assembly line and Fordism dominated. The IT, in fact, mainly dealt with numerical data, with a deterministic approach that could be traced back to a specific recombination through the expression in bits. The internal department is intended to be followed by a manager, and offers top management the possibility of monitoring both employees and external events with the utmost punctuality and in an extremely precise manner. This means being able to count on complete control over the processes and the various aspects that can be regulated. Following the Fordism crisis of the 1970s, with the arrival of ICT and the new economy, many large companies decided to keep the department in-house, so as to be able to control the entire bureaucratic machine . The aim was to promote the growth of a centralized and coherent system.

The advantages

The advantages of an internal ICT department are more evident for large companies, ie those with more than 250 employees, where the ICT department plays a leading role. It is desirable to have complete control over it, so that economies of scale can be used. Of course, the potential disadvantages must also be taken into account. With the new telematics and information technologies, it has become possible to operate in a global context with lower management costs and without the limits of a precise physical space. This means that a company that chooses to manage the ICT department internally has to deal with higher maintenance costs compared to companies that choose to outsource the department . For example, salaries must always be paid, even in periods of the year when there is little work, and in addition there is the set of fixed costs that arise from work tools such as software and hardware. Finally, here are the rental and facility costs.

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The article ICT department: is it better to choose insourcing or outsourcing? comes from Economic Scenarios .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/reparto-ict-meglio-scegliere-linsourcing-o-loutsourcing/ on Mon, 19 Dec 2022 21:09:12 +0000.