Even in an era of professional IT services, businesses aren’t yet willing to get rid of on-site IT staff. In fact, those support and development team members are usually crucial to business operations. They have years of experience and knowledge that can’t be replicated by a third-party provider.

But as businesses see the value in outsourcing services to talented service providers, a new term is emerging for the hybrid model seen in many companies today. Co-sourcing is the process of having a company’s IT department work in cooperation with third-party services to ensure a company is armed with the tools it needs to succeed.

What is Co-Sourcing?

Co-sourcing is a compromise between on-site support and outsourcing, with businesses choosing to retain some or all technology staff while still sending resources to the cloud. With co-sourcing, a business sees IT outsourcing as a partnership, rather than a process that requires full reliance on vendors. Co-sourcing gives the business a greater sense of control, since they’ll have on-site representatives looking out for their needs.

Business Meets Technology

In many instances, businesses are finding that on-site technology staff become more business-based, working on such tasks as business development and project management. Menial, everyday tasks can be offloaded to the third-party vendor but those tasks crucial to business development can be handled in-house. An IT team can take over the task of finding and overseeing deployment of great apps that can improve administrative tasks, for instance, while the vendor handles daily server backups and system updates.

As the cloud eases the burden on IT staffs, many are choosing this co-sourcing model, leveraging technology team members to put IT to use in business processes. This can provide personnel to handle everything from data analytics to user experience testing. All of this will put businesses in a position to tackle the technology challenges ahead without compromising day-to-day computer and network support.