The term outsourcing can be defined as the relationship between a client and a vendor wherein the vendor is held responsible for the business processes or functions of the client.
In outsourcing Information Technology (IT) Project Management, the management opts for outsourcing a particular work, for example, they select the vendors in order to develop some new system, handling disaster recovery, supporting an existing application, providing training to the staff, managing a network, etc. In such cases, the vendor will look after management operations.
In this modern era of digitalization with changing trends, all the businesses need to come out from traditional project management services and focus their energies on outsourcing project management by selecting competent project management consultants as vendors.
By outsourcing project management services, a business can get major benefits covering different aspects such as meeting the core objectives of a business, cost reductions, adoption of latest technology and skills, capacity building of Staff and Organizational Flexibility and introducing change in an organization. These benefits of outsourcing project management can be summarized as below:
Meeting core Objectives of Business
Outsourcing is highly rated in terms of objectives of the business as it gives opportunities to organizations to enhance their business functions by involving project management consultants or a project management company as a vendor. Using outsourcing, the vendor will manage IT systems of organizations dependent upon the business process having the specific purpose of getting improved business results. Similarly, an organization may re-engineer processes of business with the assistance of a vendor. The vendor offers the best methodologies in practice in order to manage important business functions. An organization can also link IT systems service delivery with outsourcing project management, in order to position itself for ever-changing business trends. This will increase customer satisfaction, business options and improve the business processes involving IT aspects.
Cost Reductions
Cost reductions can be one of the major benefits attracting organizations to go for outsourcing project management services. By outsourcing, organizations can get the services of a good project management company at a lower cost as compared to services provided by the internal department of an organization. This will make costs predictable with better control as the services are contracted with a vendor. Outsourcing can be used as a vehicle in order to transform IT services from an asset with fixed costs to some variable costs so that IT services activities may be easily increased when business increases to get more profit and also ramp down when business scenarios change. It will also help organizations adjusting IT budgets accordingly when there is an abrupt increase in business activities.
Adoption of Latest Technology and Skills
Technology means new knowledge and ways to do the work. It has become difficult for organizations to keep skills and knowledge of internal staff keeping in view the fast pace of new technology. An organization through outsourcing can reap the advantages by having fast access to the latest technology and a new set of skills.
Moreover, an organization can also get access to the available resources with project management consultants or vendors by having close contacts established with these vendors. This would not be the case for internal IT departments. Furthermore, an organization or business can also share the risks involved by adopting new technology with a project management company or vendor and transfer all the risk to that vendor.
Another benefit of outsourcing project management services is that it will enable an organization to shift the inherent risks involved in outdated technology to a vendor. This will enable the organization to focus only on such prospective areas of technology and skills which may create real-time value and also gives a competitive advantage.
Capacity building of Staff and Organizational Flexibility
The capacity of in-house IT staff can be built by outsourcing project management of IT services as in that case there will be a greater focus and less organization hierarchy in the existing IT structure which will allow the staff to get improve their skills. This will allow an organization to focus its energies to meet new business challenges ahead. Although, project management consultants or vendors may have the upper hand thanks to their broad range of services, staff with more skilled, and availability of better technology. Nevertheless, outsourcing of the IT project management may result in increasing the motivation level of in-house staff through greater focus and restructuring of the organization.
Sometimes, outsourcing project management services can also increase the flexibility of an organization and enable it to handle workload fluctuations. An organization always has this option to go for outsourcing the services when their demand for IT services is on a rise, and ramp it down when demand falls. This situation can supplement an organization to maintain some IT staff, by using project management consultants or vendors to absorb such fluctuations in IT functions. It will increase the response rate in case hiring and/ or releasing the vendors or staff of the vendor can be accomplished quickly as compared to the same sort of fluctuations within internally available resources.
Introducing Change in Organization
Project management consultants or vendors always come with the resources that may enhance the ability of an organization to restructure processes of its business significantly and offload the functions being not of core nature. Outsourcing can surely be utilized to accelerate and implement change in an organization.
Today, some start-ups opt to outsource their IT services so to reduce their initial investments, thus removing this potential hurdle from an already over-occupied agenda. Likewise, some organizations like outsourcing just to facilitate future mergers or acquisitions and to corporate organizational restructuring by having a contract with most of the work to project management consultants or vendors. A project management company or consultant most of the time has required experience and expertise for which organizations are looking for. These vendors are protected from internal pressures that may create hurdles in bringing the change.
MindsMapped, an online entity offering online courses to students or customers in different fields can be a good choice to benefit from outsourcing IT project management services in terms of enhanced competitiveness, improving their service quality to students or customers, cost savings by reducing operational and workforce costs and increased access to expertise available in market.