Outsourcing Marketing Technology Support To Boost Efficiency and Profits – Part 2 | Chris Fritsch

But Is Outsourcing Marketing Technology Right for Your Firm?

There are many factors to consider before deciding to outsource CRM,  eMarketing or Data Quality functions. To help determine if outsourcing marketing technology support is right for you, consider these four questions:

1. Why are you thinking of outsourcing?

If your existing staff is too busy with day-to-day tasks, processes and requests to focus on more strategic initiatives or goals, or if gaps in knowledge are preventing you from realizing the benefits of your marketing and business development technology systems, your team could likely reap a significant return from outsourcing.

2. What are the short-term and long-term goals you want to achieve or problems you want to solve?

Mapping out your goals and/or identifying problem areas in advance can help to clarify your needs and ensure that you enlist the right assistance. 

3. Do you have the right team members with the right skills to accomplish the goals?

Hiring marketing technology support staff with the necessary experience and training can be prohibitively expensive, and finding good candidates can be challenging. If hiring or training are not viable options for filling your in-house skills gap, outsourcing is a good alternative and will likely even bring added value. 

4. Is your need temporary or long term?

Outsourcing can bridge gaps when there are staffing transitions or skill deficiencies, fill needs related to special projects and help the in-house team to meet critical deadlines. Outsourcing can also provide the additional capacity to manage routine tasks and operations when teams are focused on major projects or organizational change.

Where to Begin

For firms considering outsourcing marketing technology support for the first time, a measured approach might be beneficial. Start by outsourcing some routine but essential functions such as CRM contact record cleanup and deduplication. Then, as confidence in outsourcing builds, you may want to tackle bigger projects such as industry categorizing for key companies, data migration from other systems into the CRM or categorizing key company records to help target and segment lists. In fact, many firms have been so pleased with the results and benefits of outsourcing for a project or initiative that they keep their outsourced staff on for a longer-term or even permanent basis.

With a reliable external team to handle specific essential functions, firms also experience fewer disruptions and gain operational stability and consistency and more streamlined workload management. These operational efficiencies lead to greater productivity and returns on marketing spend – meaning greater profitability for the firm.

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