Outsourcing in medium-sized businesses: no core business should be outsourced
Many entrepreneurs are of the opinion that it makes sense to outsource some tasks to experts. And this applies above all to marketing in medium-sized German companies. Why, in addition to marketing, PR & Digital Sales should also be outsourced is explained in a commentary by Alexander Roth, Managing Director of Evernine GmbH.
By Kathrin Drechsler
Sen. Communication Manager & CMO /
Campaigns & Media Partnerships Evernine Group
In digitalization, everything is networked with each other. This offers opportunities, but is also very complex. Thanks to the cloud, even the smallest company can now access services that were previously reserved exclusively for large corporations. German SMEs in particular can really profit from this if they do it right. Marketing automation is always a topic that occurs – here again the networking of social media control, lead generation, newsletter dispatch – and all via one tool. Companies are approaching agencies and consulting firms with the request, “we now have a new system – take a look at this. We don’t really know how to deal with it”.
But there are also counterexamples that show how the use of supposedly complex digitization in medium-sized companies works successfully: There are bakery chains that successfully use Big Data analyses from sales & market figures to produce their rolls much more efficiently and cheaply, with significantly increased sales that clearly exceed the digitization expenditures. It is clear – you can get lost in digitization topics or just sit on the right horse. And as a medium-sized company, how can I be sure that I am making the right investments?
The recommendation Alexander Roth then often makes is not new: “Go to an IT expert, to a consulting firm, to a managed service provider who is familiar with the digitalisation of your industry”.
Don’t leave the decision to your team, your own IT, rather let yourself be well advised about opportunities, stumbling blocks, implementation costs and mistakes of others. If you have then decided on a new solution for transformation, it has proven to be a tried and tested model to outsource operations as well and internally only keep an eye on the added value, costs and relevant key figures of your purchased / outsourced services. To concentrate on what you are good at: Baking bread rolls.
The complete comment of Alexander Roth, managing director and director of the Business IT-Unit of the Evernine read here.
Source cover: iStock / Pekic