IT outsourcing has grown into a prosperous practice, and many managing directors are looking forward to harvest the diverse advantages of outsourcing. But it isn’t that all commercial enterprises should subcontract just for the sake of it; you have to measure what jobs you can do better internally.

Then comes the stage to find a workable subcontracting model. Recognize your necessities and see what your aims are. Do you only wish to have a one-time subcontracting deal? Queries like these should be addressed before you decide to go for personnel subcontracting, function subcontracting, or project-based outsourcing. That’s what we will be looking at in this article.

Firstly, we will discuss personnel outsourcing. This is basically the need when you begin to get more work than your present manpower can handle easily. But you may also be wondering what happens if the need for excess workers goes down later. Also, hiring permanent in-house staff means increase in fixed costs like extra computers, furniture, etc. for all the new entrants. And most importantly, it isn’t easy to layoff numerous employees when you don’t need them any more.

Contract employees are normally too expensive to afford, particularly in these bad economic times. Here comes personnel outsourcing, which allows you to employ fulltime overseas employees who will work only for you 40 hrs every week. The aim here is to increase the workforce for doing additional work without hiring in-house employees.

Secondly, sometimes you get clients who need a variety of services and your current manpower might not have the essential skills to execute all those mandatory services perfectly. This model of subcontracting works fine if the task you are subcontracting doesn’t necessitate bilateral work between several departments. For example, data entry work can be executed without much interdepartmental communication if you furnish all the information and a good description of the work involved.

Therefore, it is fine to outsource this unique function to an overseas IT service provider. And this function-based subcontracting framework also works well when you want to shut down an internal department like the helpdesk and outsource that entire function to cut expenses.

In the end, we have project-based subcontracting, where we outsource only specific IT projects. Projects usually have pre-specified aims and end points, and the deliverables in projects can be defined in detail. This is a one-time deal and you can choose to disburse payments only if the project finishes as per your necessities.