[thelist] In-house vs outsourced credibility
Boerner, Brian J
brian.j.boerner at lmco.com
Tue Jan 20 22:44:08 CST 2004
sam,
thanks, you bring up many good points -- i suspect i'd like it better in
the tower. my design skills are mostly lost on the corporate ladder.
-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Sam-I-Am
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 6:18 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] In-house vs outsourced credibility
From the agency ivory tower:
Very often the clients we work with do have capable in-house people who
could or have been doing the same work we are being asked to do. The
reason they pay us large amounts of money to do what (arguably) they
could do can include:
* The in-house talent is already busy.
* The in-house resources are best focussed where they add real value -
leveraging specialist knowledged gain from working at that company and
in that problem space - not handling work that could just as easily be
done by an outside agency.
* The exec wants to see/hear something new (by the same token, on longer
term engagements, this is the same reason we are eventually fired)
* The exec want to step outside of internal politics (see above)
* The exec needs accountability. He/she will pay a premium to know the
job will get done, there'll be a paper trail on every decision,
documentation delivered, etc. etc.
* The exec has money left over and needs to spend it fast to ensure the
same budget next year!
* The exec gets an ego rush from dishing out large contracts, and having
his opinions listened to by expensive professionals.
* The exec want the benefit of experience gained solving similar
problems for similar companies.
* That experience is on display in an extensive portfolio of relevant
projects undertaken, and being talked up by enthusiastic sales staff of
the outside agency.
..to name but a few. I've seen all of the above, sometimes in the same
client. What is very easy to lose - when you contract outside for
design work - is history: the agency doesn't have the benefit of all the
lessons learned over the years. When the system is working well, you get
the best of both worlds and the work produced is a meeting of minds, a
collaboration, and greater than the sum of its parts. Also bear in mind,
by engaging an outside company, a project might get new momentum - time
wasted is quantifiable as a cash expense. Resources are guaranteed, and
not liable to get swiped by some other internal effort, and so on.
Sam
who works for a well known design agency, AND knows about FTP (and SFTP,
SCP and WebDav, not to mention HTTP(s), CD-ROM, DVD, and plain old email
too.)
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