The question of in-house vs outsource is ubiquitous: do we hire more people or partner with an outside entity? Companies of all sizes ask this question about finance, IT, marketing, analytics, operations, and everything in between.
Choosing the right mix of in-house/outsourced is an important decision that can significantly impact your company’s workflows, costs, efficiency, and reputation. But it’s also a difficult decision that often determines your immediate or long-term success, or both. So how do you choose which route to take? It helps to know that in-house vs outsource isn’t an all-or-nothing decision.
This post outlines what you should strive to do in-house for business intelligence and why, and how to approach outsourcing partnerships once you’re ready to move in that direction.
Why In-House?
There are multiple benefits to keeping your work in-house. Ask yourself, “What should I be striving to do in-house for my BI environment and why?”.
Deeply Integrated — Most companies would prefer to own their systems and processes instead of relying on an outside agent. This is especially true when it comes to your own core competencies. In fact, the more a project or function is related to your core business, the more it makes sense to build competency in-house. You need people in-house that are making decisions about the heartbeat of the company or your department.
Cadence and control — When you outsource, you depend on the schedule and availability of others. If their speed doesn’t match yours or they aren’t as responsive as you need, you may find your projects slowing down to match their pace. Keeping projects in-house puts you in the driver’s seat.
Cost effectiveness — Why hire an agency to do what you can do yourselves? Even if you don’t have the skills, training your own team means you don’t have to constantly pay for services. However, keep in mind that although the hourly rate of work is less, the time and resources spent on internal training may be costly in the long run. That said, in-house employees will also have a greater personal investment in the project and are more likely to go above and beyond for excellence.
Why Outsource?
Efficiency—An outside agency often has specific, focused skills that address your immediate needs. They’ve solved problems similar to yours many times in the past, so they can accomplish your goals more efficiently than your own team or can enable your team to accomplish those goals with fewer or no missteps.
For example, we are often contacted by clients just before their big holiday sales. They need immediate help to market to the right people so they can make the most of their very limited sales days, and our specific expertise helps them do this effectively with a quick turn around time.
Experience—Since outside partners have dealt with many similar challenges before, they bring best practices and learnings that your team may not be familiar with. Not only will they solve your challenge quicker than your team would, they may also solve it better.
Our BI team, for example, has helped around 100 companies across multiple verticals make sense of their data. When we initially partner with companies who need help with data-driven decision-making, our questions and processes guide their thinking so that they can take better advantage of their data than they ever have before.
Strengthening in-house teams—There’s a subtle yet powerful benefit of outsourcing: your agency’s strengths can become your team’s. Provided there is an adequate degree of transparency, your agency trains your team in the methods and best practices the agency uses. This has the longer-term value of increasing your own capacity as you work with your outsourced partner.
For example, we’ve worked with hundreds of companies who need help implementing DTM on their sites. During the course of our work together, our clients learn more about implementing tracking than they ever have before. And our Media Advisory services focus on teaching our clients about the tactics, tools, and strategies of digital marketing so they can run marketing campaigns more effectively and efficiently.