Should you outsource your Drupal website maintenance?
Investopedia defines outsourcing as “A practice used by different companies to reduce costs by transferring portions of work to outside suppliers rather than completing it internally.” In this article, we shall discuss the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing web maintenance.
Here are the major benefits of outsourcing web maintenance:
Keeps you focused in your business: Time management is crucial when it comes to web maintenance. In most cases, business owners have to focus on the company’s business and it’s strategies for further development and hence can’t afford to spend time on web maintenance. Having said that, in the modern corporate scenario, you also cannot afford to neglect web maintenance if you want to keep up with your competitors. If your staff does not have the necessary expertise, web maintenance will become a rather time-consuming job. Outsourcing is a good way to take care of this issue. A good web development company can take this burden off your shoulders and get the work done in a shorter time frame.
Economical: Offshore outsourcing is a good way to cut down costs because of the foreign exchange rates and cheap labour. Outsourcing to a company could be economically beneficial as expenses related to health care, vacation time, unemployment insurance and other costs, and overhead associated with hiring employees, are out of the picture.
Expertise: As mentioned in point number 1, if your expertise is in a field other than web development, you should focus on it and let the experts build and maintain the website for you. A good web development firm can give access to experts in web development technologies, testing, graphic design, SEO etc. Moreover, their experience in similar projects can also work to your advantage.
Flexibility: Whether your requirement is for 1 hour per week or 100 hours a week, you can find outsourcing agencies that are willing to undertake the required volume of work. Hiring an employee for too little work and too much work would land the company in a troublesome situation.
Risk Sharing: Outsourcing agencies will be familiar with potential threats and web security solutions. They will be able to plan your risk mitigating factors.
Disadvantages of outsourcing web maintenance
Risk of Exposing Confidential Data: There is a risk of exposing confidential data to the vendor. Sensitive company information may have to be shared with the vendor in certain cases.
Control: You get more control over the job when your own employees work on the project. However, you might become too much dependent on them and will have to make some major adjustments if they leave.
As you can see. the advantages of outsourcing web maintenance outnumbers it’s disadvantages. Zyxware suggests that it is good to go with outsourcing, unless privacy or control is of paramount importance.
