Overview
More often than not, the idea of relying on a third-party solution is met with reluctance. Reluctance mainly because it can often feel that the third party solutions don’t cover the specifics elements of your business. Normally businesses are more intricate than a “one size fits all” out of the box SaaS solution.
Maybe it is the fear that speed and agility will get lost in communication breakdowns or perhaps third parties are so expensive, it makes more sense to build, maintain and support in-house. So when is it the right move to an outsource SaaS solution? Whilst talking to most clients who have chosen the commitment to work with Studio Bridge, we have found that there are 3 following criteria’s that are necessary to evaluate to make the best decisions for your business:
1. The Departments’ Main Priority isn’t a Priority for the In-house Technical Team
The Tech team for almost every business are buried in work. Particularly in eCommerce, the Technical team is the foundation of the operation. They have to manage requests from every single area of the business. What’s most important for the Studio Operations and Content team, may not be even close to the top of the Technical teams’ priority list.
This doesn’t mean that the work the Studio and Content teams are doing isn’t important, it just means that moving technical resources to focus on their needs instead of things like checkout pages, payment gateways, scaling website traffic, and areas involving customers transactions with the business. When you find yourself in this situation, it’s a good time to seriously consider outsourcing.
Moving to a SaaS solution can drastically increase the speed of feature deliveries and can get priority help to the teams that may not find themselves very often on the priority list. Last but not least the dynamics of the relationship between a client and a provider are naturally skewed in the client’s favour.
For instance, you cannot go to your internal team and say, “If you don’t deliver what I need, I’m going to find someone else”. Luckily we’ve never reached this conclusion with our clients, but if they did, the response that Studio Bridge provides would be drastically different compared to your inhouse team’s response.
2. When is it More Cost-effective to Outsource the Saas Solution?
Do you know how much your company would need to spend to have a developer, product manager and project manager dedicated to the Studio Operations and Content team? What about when that person is out sick, on vacation, or for an unfortunate reason left the business? How much does it cost to retrain that person and get the next developer or product manager up to speed on how the department and workflow functions and operates? I guess that it’s more expensive than moving to an outsourced specialized SaaS provider.
Often companies can get “sticker shock” when evaluating a SaaS solution, however, it’s important to really consider all of the areas where the business is actually saving time and money. With Studio Bridge you’re not only being provided with a workflow tool that reduces time & errors that helps increase productivity, but you’re also getting specialized developers, product managers, project managers and support staff to mirror your operation and ensure your team’s successful operations.
3. When SaaS Solution Outsourcing is More Specialized and Niche.
Typically in-house technical teams are spread thin. You’ve heard the expression “Jack of all trades, master of none”. This is often the case with in-house technical teams because again their plates are overflowing with work. Specialized areas for development typically do not include Studio and Content Operations.
If you do have someone specialized in this area in your company then you are a part of the lucky exceptions and not the norm. If you do find yourself in the majority of this scenario, then outsourcing can be a great option. You get to tap into the knowledge base of a company that is specialized with your unique set of problems.
They’ll be able to instantaneously speak the same language as they deal with only these niche problems and workflows day in day out. This allows for a much quicker ramp-up and delivery of what you need because you don’t have to waste a lot of time giving context and getting people up to speed.
Think of it as trying to have a conversation in genetic research with someone who’s only been studying this area for a month, versus someone who’s been pursuing their whole life and completed a degree in that specific field. The conversations you would have would be drastically different between the two.
The Solution if you May Ask?
There are more areas to consider when thinking about outsourcing and maybe we’ll touch on going ahead in the future. For now, if you find yourself not getting priority from the in-house team, you think your department can better use their budget and you’re in a niche/specialized department (Studio and Content Operations teams) then maybe going with an outsourced SaaS solution is right for you?
As always feel free to shoot us a message at www.studiobridge.io if you’d like to find out more about what Studio Bridge has to offer.