Self-built teams are unaffordable, short-lived, and hard to retain? Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) most need information outsourcing during digital transformation.
"Wanting to hire engineers for our own projects but can't find them, afford them, or keep them once they finish their tasks." This is not an isolated case; it's a common challenge faced by over 85% of Taiwan's SMEs during digital transformation.
Deeper analysis: Why is building your own team so painful?
- Affordable - Invisible costs stacking up: wages + year-end bonus + labor insurance + hardware + software license + office space + management time, an average mid-level engineer's total annual cost often exceeds 1.5 million yuan.
- Affordable for a short period - Lack of technical growth paths: with few projects and a shortage of mentors, engineers struggle to accumulate projects and sense of achievement, averaging only an 9～12-month tenure.
- Tough to retain - Lack of development culture and management: without code reviews, CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment), pair programming, technology professionals struggle in environments lacking peer groups, leading to high turnover rates.
The result is: System half-written → Incomplete data → Unstable online platform → No maintenance available → Repeat project.
Outsourcing ≠ Hiring people to write code, but owning a complete team through the 'rent' method
True information outsourcing involves shifting the risks of 'not being able to hire', 'can't afford it', and 'hard to retain', allowing companies to focus on core operations:
- Adaptable staffing: Scaling up human resources during peak demand periods, reducing cash flow pressure during off-peak seasons.
- Diverse capabilities in one team: Project management (PM), system architecture, front-end and back-end development, UI/UX design, DevOps support all together in one team.
- Standardized workflows: Scrum iteration process, CI/CD pipeline, automated testing ensure quality delivery and timely schedules.
- Industry expertise borrowing power: The outsourcing team accumulates case studies from multiple industries, quickly adopting best practices.
- Sustainable maintenance: Monitoring, backup plans, documentation, training programs provide all-around support to minimize technical debt.
The most suitable cooperation model for SMEs
1️⃣ Agile MVP assault
In the first 4～6 weeks, deliver a minimum viable product (MVP) to quickly validate business hypotheses and avoid starting with overly ambitious projects.
2️⃣ Rolling optimization
After launching products, determine feature priorities based on ROI indicators(customer retention, process efficiency, income growth) monthly or quarterly.
3️⃣ Resilient maintenance package
Ensure stability through SLA (Service Level Agreement), routine checks, and cloud monitoring; simultaneously reserve cloud resources for future scalability.
Case in brief: The turnaround of an accounting department
Company A from the manufacturing industry only had one accountant dealing with sales and inventory daily through manual processing. After collaborating with NTT:
- Month 1: Cloud-based inventory management MVP launched, data input time shortened by 75%.
- Month 3: Automatic reconciliation and standard reports implemented, month-end closing completed in advance by 5 days.
- Month 6: Integration of e-commerce and logistics API, order synchronization and inventory prediction fully automated.
Within a year, no increase in human resources costs but freed up over 40% of time for financial analysis.
NTT: A sustainable technical partner for SMEs
- Integrating Excel and Line Bot workflows into cloud-based systems to have data available once.
- Incorporating permission control and traceable logs from order, inventory to HR management.
- Utilizing modular architecture + API-first approach ensures smooth expansion without having to start afresh.
- Offering flexible maintenance services and advisory training to help companies take over or continue outsourcing in the future.
You don't need to invest heavily in an IT department, just choose the right partner, and you can enjoy the digital capabilities of a large enterprise!
