Outsourcing vs In-House BI, which one’s right for you?

More and more enterprises are becoming aware of the many benefits of Business Intelligence – giving rich insights to teams and improving business processes across a variety of industries. 

From the highly demanding retail sector to the ever-changing construction landscape, businesses are implementing greater, more sophisticated BI Solutions to stay ahead of the competition, using their data to drive strategic decisions.  

But how do you access the advantages of Business Intelligence? Two options present themselves immediately:  

• Adopt an in-house approach 
• Contact BI Consultants for an outsourced service 

You then have the challenge of deciding which approach is right for you? But in reality, things are rarely this simple and there will be many considerations. Why not find a partner that can do everything from supplement your in-house team, right through to offering a fully managed service.  

Supporting your in-house team with outsourced specialists can offer you a quick and flexible way to tackle unexpected challenges. With a variety of resources available on-demand, you’ll have access to capabilities and experience you may not have in-house. 

Alternatively, if you don’t have an in-house team, or don’t have the in-house skills required to deliver a project, you can outsource all aspects of a BI solution delivery for peace of mind and greater operational efficiency.  

Enterprises of any size can expect to take full advantage of an outsourced approach and reach more benefits than ever before, such as:  

• Access to wider skills, experience, and capacity 
• Continuity and insurance over BI processes 
• Constant updates alongside industry innovations 

Access to greater skills, experience, and capacity

Able to take on the complete responsibility for Business Intelligence or support internal teams by adding greater value than ever to a data-driven culture, an outsourced agency can provide specialists that hold years of additional experience, and who are committed to enhancing data. 

Providing insights and expertise on a range of subjects, businesses can gain access to a wide variety of skillsets, specialists, and experience on multiple Business Intelligence aspects, from data engineering and cloud-based services to the advanced realms of Machine Learning and prescriptive analytics.  

What’s more, with outsourced specialists inspired by a value-led methodology, you can be sure that your architecture is always optimised and ready for the next project or innovation, elevating your data-driven intelligence to the next level.   

Continuity and insurance over BI processes 

One of the greatest in-house challenges for businesses wishing to enhance and elevate their ongoing BI projects is continuity and insurance in the face of risk and key threats. An outsourced approach provides much-needed assurance and flexibility over these projects.  

Placing full confidence in one team member for BI and data-driven processes can raise significant challenges in their unexpected absence or in the case they migrate to a different role. Without their presence, frameworks may become unstable or unoptimised, while results may lose consistency and integrity. What’s more, if an unexpected challenge or threat arises in their absence, it may seriously jeopardise enterprise-wide results or integrity. 

Introducing outsourced specialists allows for seamless navigation of these threats – reinforcing the stability and development of processes while being available on-demand if further issues or queries arise for rapid navigation, resolution, and aid.  

Constant updates alongside industry innovations 

The world of Business Intelligence is constantly evolving, introducing greater insights and tools every month to cater to an increasingly data-driven and sophisticated audience.  

From making Power BI reports more streamlined and customisable to making ML services more accessible than ever before, the possibilities of introducing greater BI tools are endless.  

However, to take full advantage of these innovations and to ensure that current architecture continues to run optimally to its full potential, it’s important to consistently and readily update frameworks, as well as make any necessary modifications as they arrive.  

With an outsourced team devoted to enhancing and leveraging the most value as possible from datasets, you can ensure architecture will be updated to take advantage of the latest innovations. 

As a result, your data-driven insights remain high-level, cutting edge, and as intuitive as possible throughout involvement and beyond.  

Creating long-term partnerships with a retained engagement approach 

A retained engagement approach allows future projects to be seamlessly assessed, handled, and implemented with very little interference needed, in a workflow that’s cost-effective and efficient.  

As a team of specialists have already interacted with, updated, and maintained data architecture, they are already aware of the native challenges present, overall landscape, and core factors.  

This is critical when beginning a new project aimed at delivering additional value, streamlining project delivery from the beginning, and making effective involvement manageable. 

This retained engagement approach is a fundamental aspect of what makes an outsourced BI service so valuable – allowing enterprises to get almost immediate access to a team of specialists able to implement new features, provide ongoing support or training and more, on a flexible and customisable timeframe.  

Learn how our retained engagement approach is designed to empower teams 

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Outsourced teams can enable companies to take advantage of a deeper, more experienced level of insight, capable of supporting internal data-centric teams, or fully managing BI frameworks for ease of mind and comprehensive flexibility.  

Want to learn how an agile, outsourced approach can empower your business? Sign up for a free consultation to discover more and reach truly data-driven intelligence.