April 2009
It seems like only yesterday that the biggest problem that many Australian organisations faced was “how do I keep up with the growth?” Outsourcing was seen by many as an ideal way of allowing an organisation to manage the issues of staff turnover, scalability and staying focused on the core business.
Now, suddenly, many are facing a new challenge. Staff, or even entire business units, are being trimmed. At the same time they are trying to maintain their levels of service and marketing in order to retain existing customers and keep income flowing. The equation has suddenly shifted from “how to I do more with the same?” to one of “how do I do the same with less?”
Once again outsourcing non-core business functions may be the solution. Let’s look at the example of one of our customers who run a typical marketing department.
Like many organisations, they are large enough to have a marketing department and yet small enough that even at the peak of the economy, they struggled to have specialised people in each of the roles of campaign manager, copy writer, Google analyst, graphic artist, website designer, programmer, IT administrator etc. And yet they require each of these roles in order to do their job properly.
Now, as budgets across the board are being trimmed, suddenly there are holes opening up in what the department can do.
At DMS we have developed a solution based strategy for many of our clients. It’s not one size fits all, it’s tailored to provide just the services that each client requires.
While many of our larger clients only require our software products, for an increasing number our services resources are becoming an important addition to their own in-house team. DMS has provided marketing, software development, copy writing, graphic design, even the hosting of servers and infrastructure to various clients. Some organisations choose to outsource almost their entire marketing and/or fundraising processes to DMS, while others like my example client, pick only certain areas like the hosting of server infrastructure and technical services to outsource.
This client now runs a reduced team who work closely with DMS staff as though they were their own employees. We provide the services and expertise they require, often exceeding their previous levels of capability because we have staff dedicated to roles like server administration, Google analytics, website development etc. For them, it has been an ideal solution, meeting their twin objectives of reducing cost while maintaining capabilities.
At DMS, we give our clients complete freedom as to what they want to outsource and for how long. For example, an organisation who choices to outsource their server infrastructure now, is fully able to bring it in house again when things pick up.
The bottom line is that DMS is a dependable, well resourced organisation that can provide a robustness to sections of your organisation that are suffering under the economic strain.
If you find that your business or charity suddenly has holes in its capabilities or resources, call us now and let’s talk. There may be a solution that we can offer that will not only help you survive the recession, but put you in an excellent position for growth once it’s over.
