Although many business owners are often looking to outsource as much as they can to reduce their workload and access expertise, we’re seeing modern businesses thriving by shifting back to insourcing. Choosing to perform important tasks within your business’ existing human capital and infrastructure can provide you a lot more than full control. Keep reading to discover the main advantages of insourcing for your business.
You enjoy more agility and flexibility
As business expansion and reduction cycles become more rapid, businesses are looking for ways to increase agility. In most cases, outsourcing contracts come with certain restrictions that usually slow down the needed time-sensitive procedures. When you insource your workforce, your business becomes better able to scale projects either up or down fast while maintaining the headcount of the workforce.
Like other companies you may be looking to benefit from human resources flexibility; you that can achieve that seamlessly through insourcing. If you’re in the medical equipment or drug development industry, for instance, this arrangement can help you a great deal, as you often have to respond to the discoveries of your competition and the nature of your innovation. Outsourcing would most likely impede your flexibility in this regard. This leads me to the next point:
You get solutions that fit your needs
Outsourcing is great; however, there’s always a huge chance you’ll get more or less the same treatment and service as your competitors if you decide to outsource. This would be more likely the case if the supplier you’re considering has partnered with many businesses within your sector. With insourcing, you get solutions that fit your specific needs because your teams spend time developing a strategy for your business alone.
Remember, your workforce already understands your business better than the outsiders. This is a huge benefit as it can help you come up with personalized solutions fast.
You may enjoy huge cost savings
In most cases, businesses often seek managed IT services for business and other critical functions to avoid making costly mistakes; however, it’s not always necessary for businesses that have the necessary resources. When you use existing resources, employees, and business skills to perform a project in-house, you may find that it’s way cheaper than outsourcing it. This is especially great if you have the capacity to handle the project(s) internally. In other words, enjoying the new infrastructure, new expertise, new skills, and so forth comes at a cost. If you have all of these in your business, you’d save the outsourcing costs.
It provides reputation management benefits and customer satisfaction
Many consumers appreciate businesses that handle all their affairs internally, as it shows that the businesses are autonomous and competent. For instance, U.S. consumers tend to have a favorable outlook on companies that employ U.S. workers to provide services or goods, with infrastructure like call centers being based in the U.S. instead of abroad. Moreover, many people would prefer to buy products manufactured locally in a domestic plant. That’s why major companies are always trying to shift towards insourcing.
In 2013, for instance, General Motors said that it was working on bringing its call center back to the U.S. to boost customer satisfaction.
You enjoy effective quality assurance
As a business owner, I’m sure you understand that quality is a major driver in your industry. Quality issues can lead to many issues that can disrupt your funding and customer satisfaction. The IT industry, for instance, has always provided many examples of how the pervasive “over-outsourcing” has pushed companies back into insourcing. In many cases, the shift always leads to positive results. Actually, Deloitte made an IT insourcing report in 2014 that showed that 79% of companies were extremely satisfied with the change.
Moreover, outsourcing regulatory affairs often have a negative impact on quality assurance, as there’s often a difficulty in monitoring and evaluating performance in the outsourced company.
Other benefits of insourcing include:
- Cultural alignment
- Better communication
- Faster development
If you want to shift from outsourcing to insourcing, or you just want to start your business operations the right way, you should always keep the benefits of insourcing at the back of your mind. As we’ve seen, insourcing can help you enjoy more agility and flexibility, find solutions that fit your specific needs, enjoy massive cost savings, enjoy effective quality assurance, and boost your reputation and customer satisfaction.