Resourcing options for data roles to achieve cost savings

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Blog Apr 20, 2020

David Bissainthe

CEO

As people are being instructed to stay home across the globe as a result of the recent outbreak of COVID-19, the stress on business operations and the forecasting impact on the economy is tremendous. Business leaders have the obligation to keep their organizations operational while dealing with the deep economic downturn that is impacting every decision they make.

Technology in most large companies plays a vital role in the growth of the organization. Companies heavily rely on their technology team in order to increase internal operations and optimize corporate products and services. Keeping this division operational and working efficiently is critical for any company.

In many cases, IT leaders must continue providing their organizations’ with technology services as they were before this pandemic, while adjusting to drastic cost savings in order to keep organizations afloat.

If you are faced with this daunting task, technology departments will need to review:

• The departmental resource allocation
• Needed skillsets required for the department to remain efficient
• How best to maintain data management processes
• Cloud hosting options as employees work from home
• Management, infrastructure, administration of technology services

Upon this review, leadership may determine that the best use of resources in order to stabilize operations and costs, will be to let go or furlough many of their employees. The underlying question for heads of technology departments is how best to operate efficiently while considering appropriate headcount at the same time?

First, assess which tasks can be transferred to external resources to be performed at a lower rate. The determining factors will vary based on company and industry, but in general, here are some roles that are often outsourced to specialized companies or skilled professionals:

• Advanced Analytics
• Data Architecture / Data Warehousing
• Data extraction, transformation and loading (ETL)
• Enterprise Reporting
• Network Administration
• Security Analyst
• Support Desk
• Software Tester
• Software Development

Of those listed, the most expensive duties typically fall under data architecture, software development, enterprise reporting, data extraction (ETL) and advanced analytics. On average, these roles can cost a company anywhere from $180,000 to $250,000 per resource, per year when factoring in paid benefits. At this juncture, considering costs alone, businesses might explore outsourcing to highly specialized companies as a cost saving measure.

Using outsourced staff can potentially reduce those costs by 20% to 30% or more, by leveraging companies that specialize in these specific business intelligence roles cited above.

Roles such as Network Administration, Security Analyst, Support Desk and Software Tester would be advantageous to continue to utilize in-house staff. These roles are typically less expensive, and for the most part, associated with automation tasks.

Another consideration is the regulations to what can be outsourced, based on your industry. For instance, if you are in the healthcare industry, there are strict HIPAA guidelines restricting outsourcing patients’ data information outside the U.S. Health information technology firms are liable under the HIPAA Privacy Rule for sharing data. Roles like data warehousing, ETL, reporting and even advanced analytics services can’t be provided outside of the U.S. These types of restrictions also apply for the financial services industry according to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC).

Depending on your industry, company size, business priorities and other factors, your decisions around determining resource utilization and cost savings program will differ greatly. In normal times, one can argue there is no clear-cut rule for separating internal staff from outsourcing roles. However, with the determinant factor being costs, executives can craft a cost saving strategy around those specific, high-skilled, non-routine business tasks.

Considering costs and quality as a priority factor, outsourcing to companies with proven experience, domain knowledge and compliance expertise is a first step in closing the resource gap while you determine your long-term needs. Costs can be significantly reduced with minimum impact to daily operations and services, if technology executives partner with specialized companies that offer data production support services, like Analytics Intell.

We offer a production support solution to embed within your operation to save you time and money.

The IT department can continue to deliver optimum services while adjusting to the current economy situation today and planning for future state.

Determining the strategic utilization of resources to optimize operations and reduce costs can be a substantial project to tackle alone. If you are interested in speaking more about data and technology support for your organization, please contact me for more information.

Analytics Intell is a full-service global data technology company that helps businesses of all sizes build intelligent analytics applications, fully integrated within your enterprise, to optimize data assets and drive business performance. We help organizations plan, design, implement and deploy complete analytics solutions to provide deeper insights and better decision making.

>>Learn more about our Data & Analytics solutions

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