When outsourcing is the in thing

Vendors outsource their products and services when they sell to distributors

The word ‘outsourcing’ has negative connotations, implying job losses, cheap labour and struggling to get your overseas banking helpdesk to understand why you need a £500 overdraft before the weekend.

And yet outsourcing is something that resellers and channel players do all the time. Vendors outsource their products and services when they sell to distributors.

Distributors outsource the sale again to resellers with more services, and resellers play the role of both outsourcer and outsourcee, by getting distributors and vendors to run helpdesks and services on their behalf, and by taking on the role of an outsourced IT department for millions of SMEs.

But because of the negative connotations surrounding outsourcing, many resellers are still wary of dipping their toes into the market. What they need to be aware of, however, is that there are two aspects to outsourcing in the IT world.

One is the outsourcing of certain technology functions, for example SMEs allowing resellers to run their security functions such as patches and updates, or ensuring their data storage needs are met. According to Sanj Prabhaker, director of SME at the National Outsourcing Association, security is one of the key outsourcing functions by SMEs, along with helpdesks and storage.

The second aspect is outsourcing specific job roles in an SME IT department. Many SMEs are sceptical of handing over responsibility for their entire IT department. They may simply need an Oracle 9i or SAP specialist to help them occasionally, or they may need a security expert that they cannot afford to employ full time.

This is where resellers can help. And the smarter resellers are taking this a step further. If SME bosses need to employ an IT manager, how will they know whether they are employing the right person when they know little about IT?

How is the managing director going to appraise the IT manager, when he or she doesn’t know the difference between someone doing a good job or doing a bad job? It is this kind of detail that resellers can fill in, adopting the role of trusted advisor.