IT Sourcing Strategies
What are four types of IT sourcing strategies an organization might adopt?
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- In-house strategy—This refers to internal IT staff doing the work. In-house staff may be best-suited for providing unique functions such as systems analysis, legacy system support, or strategic system development.
- Self-sourcing—As the number of IT requests becomes backlogged in an organization, technically adept end-users might self-source by performing IT work themselves. These users utilize off-the-shelf packages, like database and spreadsheet software, to create their own reports and applications. This reduces their dependency on the IT staff.
- Outsourcing—This is a strategy in which companies utilize an outside organization for systems development or to provide other IT functions. Outsourcing can be an effective strategy for providing common IT functions like website development and hosting, or billing and payroll.
- Hybrid—An organization utilizing this approach has the technical expertise in-house but chooses to purchase the source code of a software product and make modifications to fit its needs. This has the advantage of a shorter development cycle because the in-house developers already know the business operations.
