Moving Day

Okay. The time has come to move your current email system over to the outsourced company and you don’t know where to begin. Luckily for you, these companies typically take care of all of the transferring and you won’t have to lift a digital finger.

This doesn’t mean you should be clueless about the process. That’s why this section is devoted to showing you just how the company you’ve chosen will not only transfer your data but will also set up new accounts for all of your employees, install protective software and keep you informed every step of the way.

However, it is important to divide this section into two parts. Below, we will describe the two major types of email outsourcing: managed infrastructure and route filtering. It is important for you to choose the method that best suits your needs and your company’s needs.

Cutting the Necessary Corners

If you’re preparing to make a switch in your email system based on the above information, chances are good that one of your main goals is to cut down on overall operating costs. You’re looking to outsource your email in order to find a more cost-effective way of doing business. What often happens, however, is that businesses enact a cost-cutting measure—and then fail to follow through with the actual cost cuts.

Now, then, is a good time to look at the structure of your organization and take a hard look at what will change once your email is outsourced. Consider, for example, changes you might want to make in human capital. Are any of your employees currently engaged in tasks that will be taken over by the new email company? If so, carrying out the changeover without adjusting your existing status quo is a recipe for failure (and overspending). Consider rewriting job descriptions, combining positions, or moving people to different departments where they can continue to offer great things to the company. Assure your employees that you’re seeking to find the right ways to use their talents—and that you don’t want anyone’s time to be wasted on tasks that no longer need to be done or monitored.

Another sector you will want to check for new overlap is in terms of equipment and hard resources. Do you have excess computer equipment that you will no longer be using? Think about what you might be able to sell—or what space might be cleared out for extra storage or office space.

Properly handled, the switch from in-house email to outsourced email can be a great cost-cutting measure. It is important, however, that you manage things properly to guarantee that you’re getting the most money out of the changes you are making.

Set Up a Temporary Service

Before you venture into transferring all of your email accounts over to an external service, you should set up backup accounts in the meantime. While this is not a necessary step, it can be useful in case there is any sort of delay between setup and full use. For instance, if you find that you’ll be transferring your email networks over the course of a week, you will need a backup account or service. During this time, you may be unable to access the old service hosted on your own networks or use the new one hosted on the external networks.

Again, this is not a required step for the transfer, but it can be beneficial if you do a majority of your communication through email and expect to have a considerable gap between service stop and start times. Just remember to go over all of the particulars with the company with whom you choose to outsource. A good company will want to know your needs and do their best to meet those needs.

Back Up Everything

Whenever you’re using anything involving computers, it is always a good idea to back up important files. Whether you use an external hard drive, Zip disks or any of the other radically changing and expanding backup media available today, it is absolutely vital to make backup copies of all important emails, attachments and even your mailbox. In some cases, you will not be able to transfer your mailbox over to the new server, so you will just need to keep that saved in a separate folder or file.

An accurate record of correspondence is vital to a successful business. It is especially important to have accurate dates on your saved emails. Once you save a backup of everything, do a quick comparison to make sure the dates are the same on both copies. This is very important, especially if important documents are sent via email to external locations. If your company should ever find itself facing litigation of some sort, it will be vital to have accurate timestamps on each and every email for documentation purposes.

Preparing for the Move

Before you even consider moving your email network over to an outside company, be sure that you have everything within your office in order. Here are some tips to make the move smooth and easy and to ensure nothing goes terribly wrong after the fact:

Brief Your Employees

It is never a good idea to surprise your employees with anything. That’s why it is so vital to communicate to your employees exactly what you’re planning to do. Break down why you think it is beneficial to transfer all email functions over to an external server and hosting service. Be sure to include information from any research you may have done. Show your employees how this move will improve the function of your business and save money. While you don’t have to do any of these things and you certainly don’t have to convince your employees of the benefits of the move, it is always a good idea to get full buy-in and support from your company. This will create a sense of community, should there be any difficulty in the transfer or any other bumps in the road.

Once You've Decided to Outsource

It may not seem simple or feel right to outsource right away. That’s okay. It’s normal to feel out of place with something new and different, particularly when it comes to something that can affect the productivity and bottom line of your business. But keep in mind that outsourcing really is the new paradigm in business processes, which is why beginning with email can help so much. The shift of the email functions of an entire company can be quite a huge undertaking, making it necessary to bring in outside help for the journey and to prepare yourself.

The best place to start is the beginning, so let’s get going.

Top Outsourcing Companies

If you’re serious about transferring from an in-house server or email system to an outsourced one, you should definitely check out the following companies. They are a great place to start looking for the right contractor for your business.

Mail2World - mail2world.net

This company serves some very large businesses, including ICQ and iVillage.com. You can view their services as well as detailed case studies on past clients.

LuxSci - luxsci.com

With great customer service and tech support, LuxSci sets itself apart from its competitors. You can purchase email outsourcing services and even Web hosting packages.

The Messaging Engine - messagingengine.com

With comprehensive email services and high levels of functionality, The Messaging Engine is a natural choice for outsourcing business email.

MiraPoint - mirapoint.com

They go beyond your email outsourcing needs and offer web mail and email migration. Regardless of your needs, this company is sure to offer something to meet them.

Connectria - connectria.com

Another natural choice for your business’s outsourcing needs, Connectria offers so many services that their company could be called comprehensive. They also boast the parent company of “American Idol,” FremantleMedia, among their high-caliber clients. The list also includes 3M, A.G. Edwards and The Wharton School.

These are just a few of the many outsourcing companies out there today. By engaging in your own search, you’ll be sure to find more information than you’ll know what to do with. But a large list is beneficial and allows you to be really thorough in screening and selecting the perfect company with the right skill set and level of commitment you deserve.

Just remember to employ the tips provided in this chapter to stay safe and maintain only the highest level of quality in every single aspect of your business.

Look for the Lock

Security

You know that little padlock that appears somewhere on your browser when the website you’re visiting has become encrypted? You should see this symbol whenever you are asked to input personal information. If you do not see this symbol when doing so, do not submit a single thing. Your personal and corporate security are worth much more than taking a risk on a company that failed to encrypt their site. Plus, if they can’t even make their own website safe, what could you possible expect from their email outsourcing services? Unfortunately, probably not very much.

Now with an idea of how to pinpoint a professional website, you can be your own judge when it comes to outsourcing companies. Now you’re ready to get started. Below is a list of some of the biggest and most prominent email outsourcing companies around at the time of this writing. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do your own research on companies you find suitable for yourself. But it can give you a head start on getting that email system transfer started today.

More Tips for Spotting a Good Website

Consumer Information.

This can be anything from notes from satisfied customers, to reviews or even a standing with the BBB. Generally, you just need to see some reassurance from others like you that this company is, in fact, authentic. If you can’t find anything like this on their site, feel free to search the Web for any information on the company itself, the owners or even those who have used their services.

Clear Pricing Information

While some companies may have you enter into discussions with them first before stating a price for their services, whether they provide prices on the site is usually a good guideline. They may just be general prices for a certain grouping of services, but there should be some sort of pricing system available, nonetheless. An absence of any prices at all may be a sign of a company that charges way too much or is running a scam.

Defined Services

If you find yourself leaving a company’s website wondering what it is they’re selling, it’s not a good choice. Detailed information on what the company offers is just plain necessary for you to understand and make the right decision. After all, how will you know the business is the right one to outsource your email to?

Tips for Spotting a Good Company Website

The appearance of a company’s website can provide a good idea of whether or not they are worth your time and money. However, don’t get caught up in fancy graphics or elegant designs. While these are signs of professionalism, they are not always the signs of a truly successful company. If you’re looking for a way to spot a decent and up-front company through their website, look for the following:

A Clean, Straightforward Design

Flashing banners and gaudy, dancing animations are a surefire sign that something is awry. You can more readily place your trust in a site that is neat and organized and provides vital information upfront. You shouldn’t have to search very hard for the information you need.

A Logical Interface

Again, you shouldn’t have to spend hours figuring out how the menu works or how to navigate a company’s website. If they don’t know how to organize their site, how do you think they’ll do with system administration and your network?

Clear Contact Information

Contact information should include more than just one email address. You should be privy to who works there, where they are located and how to reach them in several different ways—by phone, fax and email. If content looks to be missing or if the only way to contact the company is through a form or an anonymous-looking email address like “admin@such-and-suchwebsite.com,” you may want to move on to another site. Note: An address that takes this form is not a sign of a poor company in and of itself, but paired with a complete lack of additional information, it may be a red flag. Watch out.

The Latest and Greatest

The Newest Software

Any company you deal with should boast the newest, cutting edge software. Whether it is security, messaging, or other software aspects of email management, do a little research to be sure that the outsourcing company is not cutting corners, particularly in the realm of software that will keep your email data safe. Going one step beyond, is the company flexible when it comes to future acquisitions? Have they budgeted to upgrade or purchase the newest software innovations?

These and other questions will help to form a good image of the ideal email service provider for you. So now that you have an idea of what a great outsourcing company looks like, let’s take a gander at how to find such a company.

Bandwidth and Storage Space

High Bandwidth

As stated before, bandwidth is much like a pipe through which information flows. The smaller the pipe, the less information can flow in a given period of time. Much of the time, in-house servers do not have a wide bandwidth and are forced to dramatically limit the size of files that can be sent or received as attachments. While this may be reasonable for some offices that only deal in small documents, think of those that deal with large graphic design files. Such files are several megabytes in size and may need to be transferred to someone outside of the company and not on the network. When this is the case, email is the most viable transfer option—but not if you don’t have enough bandwidth on your server. That’s why so many people opt to outsource their email systems and servers to a company that has more bandwidth available and the higher-end systems to cope with the load. When you subscribe to their services, the bandwidth costs will be much cheaper for you, as the company has their own server and will have bought bandwidth in bulk.

Maximum Storage Space

It can take up a lot of space on your hard drives to store all of those old emails. That’s why a company with large amounts of storage space is essential to keeping your business streamlined and operating at its highest capacity. With a lot of storage space, you can be sure that no emails will be lost in the mix and that you will never run out of room. You especially want to find a company that allows you to upgrade your account easily. If you suddenly find yourself needing more space or more bandwidth, a quick upgrade should be all it takes to keep up with your needs and make your company the most functional it can be.

Response Time and Constant Support

Fast Response Time

Outsourcing would be worth nothing to you if you have to wait a week to hear back from the company on how to fix a small problem that your old IT department could have fixed in an afternoon. Nor is it acceptable to have to badger your provider until they do something about it. A company that is worth your money is one that will take your problems and questions seriously and get back to you in a reasonable amount of time. Really, it should take no longer than an hour for them to get back to you. Anything longer than that and you’re looking at potential problems down the road. What if you have an emergency situation like a security breach? Fast response on the outsource company’s part can save you a lot of trouble. You don’t want to find out they’re spotty when there’s an urgent need for their assistance.

24-Hour Support

No matter where you are in the world in relation to the outsource company, you should be able to reach them at any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Because many outsourcing companies are located overseas, it is especially necessary that they be available at any time. A company that is only open or available for limited business hours will not prove very helpful in a crisis.

The SLA should make specific mention of help desk support hours and availability. You should know that there may be some limitations on the availability of help, such as the number of calls in a month, or the category of technical personnel who can be assisted by the help desk. In some cases, only technical support staff can be assisted, in others—and sometimes for an additional fee—administrative staff, or the entire staff, can be added to the helpdesk component of the SLA.

Support, Access and Features

Comprehensive Support

With any service you buy, you should be able to expect a high level of customer support. The same goes for an outsource email company. You should be able to expect customer support for every facet of your email operations. This should include continuous availability and a willingness to assist with many different situations, even if it’s just explaining how something works. A good company will never make you feel as though you need to hesitate before calling.

Settings Access and Features

Even if you know next to nothing about email, it is still important that you have some access and the ability to change settings. This can range from simply adding a new mailbox or user to adding new content filters. A worthwhile outsourcing company will give you the option to change what you’d like to change or make the changes for you. It’s all determined by what you prefer—your preference should be their top priority.

In addition to this, an email service provider should go to great lengths to preserve the features and functionality of your current email system. Retraining staff is costly, and so the closer the new system can mirror the old, the more efficient and smooth the changeover will be.

Uptime and Access

Consistent Uptime

On the topic of SLAs, uptime is an essential element of a good service provider. Guarantees may seem cheap or unrealistic at times, but they really do matter when it comes to choosing an outsource company. You will need to find a company that has consistent uptime and guarantees that they do. Anything less than that is unacceptable and insufficient for a business such as yours. After all, if you rely heavily on email, every minute of email downtime could mean loss of productivity, business and profits.

Web and Mobile Access

In the current business climate, email should not only be accessible through the desktop client in the office. Email should also be available from home or on the go through web access or specific tools allowing email to be "pushed" to mobile devices. It’s always a good idea to look for a company that offers you the ability to access email through web mail or an online access portal to your mail through a web browser. This way, if you are at home or away from your office computer you can still access your email in a convenient manner.

These features should be explicitly described in the SLA, and while they may cost more (beyond the per-mailbox base price) it is the sign of a good, cutting-edge provider that they have the features available. Some companies have multiple redundancies when it comes to alternative modes of email access, including alternate websites for web mail, VPNs or Virtual Private Networks, and even dial-up modem access.

This is a sign that a company fully appreciates the necessity and importance of email in the modern business environment.

The Biggest and Best Hosting Services

What Defines a Good Outsourcing Company?

In order to take care of a large company’s email needs, the outsourcing company you select needs to be at the top of its game, with large servers and comprehensive customer support in order to really take the lead in this market.

A company you select should have/include:

A General Level of Competence

This may seem obvious, but the fact is, many people will not seek to validate claims of prior competence on the part of an outsourcing company. When such validation is undertaken, you may find that the company is too new to have testimonials, or that those testimonials are from unknown companies in distant parts of the world—not a great start to proving competence.

An email service provider should be able to provide proof of experience, references, and contact numbers so that you can ask any questions of those references. Simple quotes on a testimonials page of a website should not suffice. Additionally, investigate documentation for the provider's procedures and policies in any eventuality. They should have policies in place for crashes, data restoration, backups, and security breaches.

Reasonable Costs

It is reasonable to see an email provider offering their services for a monthly, per-mailbox fee. This is the industry standard and should be expected. What you need to know is how many additional services are included in the base, per-mailbox price. It is also reasonable to see additional fees for additional services. The industry often charges slightly more for features such as additional storage, secure socket layer (a type of encryption) and possibly for virus and spam filters, though increasingly virus and spam protection is falling under basic standard service agreements.

You should also calculate the cost of bandwidth usage before committing to a service provider. This is a cost that will increase the average monthly per-mailbox cost. This is out of the provider's control, but it still needs to be calculated.

You will also need to calculate the cost and effectiveness of the company's SLA or Service Level Agreement. This is an agreement between you and the contractor that will need to cover the availability of system access or "uptime" and general guidelines on availability and performance. This agreement should have reasonable components and be part of the base price, as it should be the most fundamental selling point for the company, so far as customer service is concerned.

Where to Look for a Hosting Service

You can find a hosting and email service provider just about anywhere. However, quite fittingly, the best place to look is online. It all really depends on the level of service your company will need. For instance, you can usually purchase email hosting for a business at a bulk rate with a maximum number of users (your employees). If you run a smaller business, however—those with fewer than 100 employees, for instance—you will need less bandwidth and considerably fewer usernames than a company with over 1,000 employees might require.

One of the easiest ways to locate email providers initially is to search for the phrase “outsource email” in your favorite search engine. Doing so should bring up a substantial list of results. From these, visit a few websites to get a basic idea of each company’s costs, their services offered and how the setup process will commence. Also keep your eyes open for user reviews. You want to outsource with a company that has a lot of positive feedback from satisfied businesses that are comparable to yours.

You will also need to be careful in your selection. For instance, some email host companies merely provide you with the resources to host the email and manage the accounts on your own hard drives and network. This is not what you want at all. Rather, you want an entirely external email hosting system that allows you the freedom to manage it but with the assurance that everything is well-monitored and secured by the outsource company themselves.

Transitioning to Outsourcing

So now that you’re thoroughly convinced you need to outsource your email for the financial benefit and overall security of your company, it’s time to select a business that can handle your specific communications needs without making you spend more resources than you would on an in-house system.

One way that some outsourcing companies keep their costs down is by locating themselves outside of the U.S. and Canada. These companies often operate overseas and can provide you with excellent services at a real bargain rate. If this makes you uncomfortable for any reason, however, it is possible to find U.S.-based companies with fair rates as well.

You need to pay attention to several factors, including location and cost, as you select a good outsourcing company.

Domain Names and Privacy Issues

I Want to Keep My Domain Name

One reason that is often given for avoiding any changes to outsourced email is that companies want to keep email addresses along the lines of firstnamelastname@yourcompany.com. Having email addresses that use your own company name as the domain name is smart. It means that email addresses at your organization will be easily recognizable and memorable. When you outsource your email, however, your domain name does not have to change. A good outsourcing company should be able to help you keep your domain name so that there will be no change for your customers, clients, or employees. No new email addresses—and no new business cards to print.

The Trouble with Privacy Issues

When it comes to email, privacy is often a huge issue. It goes without saying that you want your emails to remain secure and well looked after. The idea of turning over your email to an outside service can seem like a major violation of privacy—something along the lines of asking a 13-year-old girl to let you read her diary. The right outsourcing company, however, should offer you increased security (rather than decreased). Properly handled, a changeover to outsourced email should result in no decrease in company privacy. If a given organization makes you feel in any way nervous about the privacy of your information, walk away and move on to the next. It is your right to choose an organization that makes you feel comfortable. Not only this, but any reputable service provider should have an extensive confidentiality and privacy agreement and mechanisms in place to ensure that the agreement is followed to the letter.

A Loss of Hands-On Control

With the migration of your email systems to an outside provider, the feeling of control you might have had with an in-house system will vanish. While you will still be in control to a certain degree, the processes will be physically moved—in some cases to providers in foreign countries.

To put it another way, no company is an island. There is often a temptation to keep as much work as possible within your own walls—it makes you feel safe and secure, as though your company would be able to survive a major global cataclysm simply because you kept all of your business processes in-house. The truth, however, is that letting the right email service into your organization will help your reliability (and survivability) rather than hurt it. Keeping things in-house is often cost-ineffective and can be a recipe for impending meltdown. Again, the key is in choosing an organization that meets your needs and makes you feel comfortable. You don’t have to work with the first outsourcing company you contact. You should feel free to keep shopping until you find one that feels like a good fit.

You can also alleviate some of the stress associated with this loss of control by ensuring that your needs will not be competing with (and losing out to) the needs and interests of other companies. Make sure that your new provider is flexible and generous in their ability and willingness to respond to any issues that may arise.

Common Fears

No matter how nimble you consider your company to be, chances are quite good that your organization fears massive change as much as the next. It’s always hard to implement a new system or method of organization. In this section, you will find a listing of some of the fear and apprehension-related issues that can keep businesses from making the email change.

The Potential for Unforeseen Costs

There are some costs associated with outsourcing and the "migration" of email from one system to another. When the operation of an essential business process is outsourced, there is always a possibility that the contractor could fold or change their policies in some way that would make it necessary to migrate to a new service provider, incurring more costs. This is an unknown element, but the fear can be mitigated by research and investigation into the reliability and stability of the provider.

Another Look at Analyzing Your Needs

By reading this far in this book, you have certainly learned a great deal of information about the process of outsourcing your company’s email. You’ve learned to consider the specific needs of your company and have probably made note of some important services you’ll want to consider using from a freelancer or outside agency. It is likely that this process has gotten you thinking about your company’s email systems in a more holistic way, meaning that before you move into the process of transitioning to outsourcing, this is a good time to make policy changes or changes in practice.

What’s in Your Inbox?

If you’re going to go through the trouble and expense of having your own email pre-screened and sorted by an outside agency or individual, you’ll want to make sure that your own company isn’t part of the problem. Are forwarded messages and personal emails overwhelming you and your employees? Now might be a good time to overhaul your company email policy to cut down on personal emailing or the spreading of messages that are not necessary to the operation of the company. Make sure each employee is clear on the changes and knows why each was implemented so that they understand it is not punitive, but for the benefit of the company's bottom line.

Professional Expertise, Fixed Costs and Technology

Increased Professional Expertise

Outsourcing will give your company access to a large, dedicated technology staff that has experience in email and messaging management. This kind of access is prohibitively expensive and certainly inefficient in the case of in-house email, but when contracting out to a dedicated service provider, your money will pool with other companies' to allow access to a talented and highly paid technology staff. These people will be specialists, rather than the technology "generalists" available to your business currently.

Fixed Rather Than Fluctuating Costs

The contract you sign with an outsourcing firm should usually not include a fluctuating cost. This fixed cost will be easy to budget for and will give you the peace of mind that in-house management cannot. If a problem arises with a server or software in-house, the costs associated with the repair are completely on you and will become a drain on your budget. With an outsourcer, all unforeseen costs are absorbed by the contractor, leaving you with a steady and predictable cost.

The Newest Technology

Outsourcing your email needs will allow you access to the newest (and often most expensive) technology in the field. The hardware and software available to a dedicated outsourcing company may be financially out of reach for a company whose business does not center around the technology of email. This higher-end technology will allow for better security, reliability, and usability. The benefits of the newest and best technology cannot be understated.

Reliability, Technology and Reduced Management

Reliability Issues

Have you noticed any particular lack of reliability in relation to your email servers? If you haven't, it's probably only because you haven't had the experience of truly reliable email infrastructure. Even if this doesn't apply to you, and you have a remarkably streamlined and effective system, as with all technology, it can fail. And when it does, you will be saddled with the cost of repair and replacement. Email outsourcing places the burden of this repair on the head of a different company—one which is devoted to the task of email management. Additionally, the guarantee of reliability will be delivered along with the new outsourcing contract, removing a worry from the day-to-day operations of your business.

Financial Benefits of Technology

Depending on how much you spend on in-house messaging and email support, outsourcing can dramatically reduce costs. It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which outsourcing could possibly cost more than in-house email. Based on the figures and estimates in this book, outsourcing can save your company up to 90% over the in-house alternative.

Financial Benefits of Reduced Management

Rather than burdening your IT staff with the mundane tasks associated with email troubleshooting, a dedicated email service provider will have the best and most efficient and cost-effective tools for supporting your staff. This will reduce the costs associated with the management and administration of help desk service and free up staff to attend to other administrative needs.

Clarifying the Factors you should Consider

Here is a brief discussion of a number of elements of an informed decision on email outsourcing. These are not all of the elements you should consider, but it's an excellent place to start, and will place you in a much better position when it comes time to make the final determination on the necessity or cost effectiveness of outsourcing.

Efficient Human Resource Deployment

How many IT staff do you have? How much of their time is devoted to the mundane problems with email and connectivity trouble? If your business is like most businesses, the answers are "very few" and "too much" —in that order. Most IT departments are overrun with requests for help on email-related issues, and what few resources your IT staff has will be misdirected to issues that could be solved by outsourcing. When outsourcing becomes a reality for your company, that same staff, should you decide to retain them, will be able to focus their efforts on more complex and vexing problems, or develop new approaches to streamline the technology resources the company will choose to keep, rather than outsource.

Expenditure, Advantages and Disadvantages

Despite the prior discussions in this book as to the cost of email handling in-house, many companies are simply not aware of the total expenditures on email and messaging. When determining whether to outsource your email, all advantages and disadvantages of the move should be considered, not only the cost and savings. There are factors involved in email outsourcing that are completely unrelated to monetary savings, and while these qualitative elements may be hard to quantify, their effects should be considered along with all other factors.

In any case, the outsourcing of messaging is something that should be pondered and contemplated. Reading this book is a major step toward an informed and intelligent decision, but your case will have its own complicating factors, and each will need to be handled carefully and in turn.

Essential Elements of Email Outsourcing

In the case of email, however—a service you do need all the time—is it the right choice to outsource? It is such an essential business component that it may seem counterintuitive at first, but in the end, the cost/benefit analysis may very well indicate that it is an expendable in-house process, and that outsourcing will ultimately prove beneficial.

Traditionally, companies have been reluctant to outsource those business functions that are absolutely essential. In-house operation of information technology is just such an essential element. It is a mission-critical, essential element of day-to-day business, but it has one complicating factor. Imagine the telephone service at your business. Your telephone service is essentially an outsourced business function. It is outsourced to the telephone company. When a customer or client calls your business, the call goes through and no thought is given to what telephone company operates your system. The same can be true for email. It does not necessarily differentiate one business from another, and offers no benefit from being somehow faster or clearer—email is essentially the same, no matter who operates the server.

With this understanding of email as a non-differentiating business function, you can see that outsourcing it to save money should not have an adverse effect on your business process.

Cutting Expenses and Downsizing

This is when outsourcing can serve a small- to medium-sized company well. With a simple contract and simple expectations, small and medium-sized companies can reap the same benefits of experience and expertise as the highest-paying multinational corporations.

Companies most often consider outsourcing when they want to cut expenses and perhaps even downsize, though these aren't the only reasons to think about it, and they may not even be the best. The way that the eventual transfer of outsourced business process will work, of course, depends on what sorts of services or functions you decide to outsource. You also need to consider what type of outsourcing you’ll be doing. Will you be hiring employees from another company? Will you be hiring contractors? Will you be hiring an outside business to take care of one of your business’ needs? Knowing why you want to outsource is one major key to success when you actually do outsource.

Another time to consider outsourcing is when you find yourself about to venture into new areas, such as new marketing techniques, or when you need a public relations agent. These industries lend themselves very well to outsourcing or contracting, as they can be hired as needed and can be called upon only when you need a press release, a logo, or something of that nature. Again, if you find yourself needing a certain type of service all the time, it may be more efficient to hire someone to fulfill that need as an employee. But if you only need someone once in a while, outsourcing is the way to go.

When to think about Outsourcing

The pace of modern business is relentlessly fast. Many companies are struggling to keep up, and those that can't are falling into insolvency and ruin. The companies that have managed to keep up with this speed of innovation have done so by constantly adapting to the changing character of 21st century business. It's fast, it's aggressive, and it's often ruthless, but one thing it is over everything else, is creative.

Some of that creative approach can be seen in the various methods and directions of outsourcing and contracting. The reorganization and restructuring of businesses and business models around the outsourcing or specialization of labor can be seen throughout the economy, in many different sectors, though perhaps none so apparently as information technology.

IT is a difficult and demanding field. The knowledge base is enormous and the stakes for failure are extremely high. A large market in IT contracting has developed in the last ten years, and that sector continues to grow with the others that demand it—and that is nearly everyone. In the new economy, the transmission and control of information is essential to growth, and so those able to maintain the IT machine, as it were, are highly desirable.

This also means that some of the largest and most specialized companies take the lion's share of the best IT professionals, while smaller businesses are left with competent, though often not premier, IT staff.