From a management perspective, information technology resource outsourcing is a strategic business innovation program. For many companies, the increase in technical complexity and the need for high-availability systems and distributed system support have made it increasingly difficult for companies to meet their business goals and control information technology costs. In this case, resource outsourcing began to play its inherent advantages. Looking at the internal and external driving factors of companies choosing outsourcing strategies, they mainly include the following aspects:
Business aspect
Outsourcing promotes enterprises to focus on their core business and focus on their core competitiveness. This is the most fundamental reason for information technology resource outsourcing. In theory, any company that only does back-end support without creating turnover should be outsourced.
There is a very typical example to illustrate this problem. According to the survey, 68% of credit card business in the United States is implemented through non-commercial banking institutions. The core competitiveness of banks is finance. There is no need to hire a large number of network experts to maintain their own networks. favorable.
Financial aspect
Financial considerations are another main reason for choosing outsourcing. Outsourcing can cut expenses, control costs, and restructure information system budgets, thereby freeing up some resources for other purposes and avoiding “IT black holes”. In addition, for those companies that are unable to invest a lot of money and manpower to build an enterprise information framework from the hardware foundation, outsourcing can make up for their own deficiencies.
According to the estimates of the American Forrest Research Company, the cost of establishing and maintaining a Web site by American companies on their own will be $220,000 in the first year, while outsourcing this work to a specialized company will cost only $42,000.
Technical aspects
Can acquire the skills of high-level information technology workers, improve technical services, provide opportunities for exposure to new technologies, and enable internal information technology personnel to focus on core technical activities. Through outsourcing, companies can complete each link in the value chain by the professional company that best suits the company’s situation.
For example, Trust Bank in Australia signed an outsourcing contract with HP for a period of 5 years and a value of 16 million US dollars in 1997. HP is responsible for managing and maintaining Trust Bank’s IT system and helping the bank develop a new type of business-online banking. , Electronic banking, personal banking and commercial banking. It is conceivable that without the intervention of a company like HP, it would be difficult to achieve this goal by relying solely on the strength of the bank’s internal information department.
Enterprise strategic deployment
Outsourcing can improve service response speed and efficiency. Professional and technical personnel from outsourcers can liberate the corporate information technology department from the burden of routine maintenance and management, reduce the risk of system maintenance and management, and enhance the department’s Credibility. In addition, for the emergence of a new technology, it is difficult for most companies to immediately incorporate the new technology into practical applications due to costs and learning curves.
Therefore, one of the strategic considerations of information technology resource outsourcing is to take advantage of the advantages of the outsourcer to keep pace with existing and future technologies, improve technical services, and provide opportunities for exposure to new technologies, so that enterprises can spend less , Shorter duration and less risk to promote the function of information technology in enterprise development.