While some organizations strive to internalize all aspects of a digital transformation, others are best suited to leverage external resources in order to advance either the capacity and/or the capability of their team. From our experience, this decision on the balance of insourcing versus outsourcing isn’t constrained to organizations of a specific size or industry but is entirely dependent upon the mission and vision of each enterprise. 

As a result, it is often not a black or white decision for internalization versus externalization. There are a number of possible configurations of how the collaboration model can work for an organization. In order to simplify, support can fall under one of two operating models: 

•  Staff Augmentation – An outside party provides support as a member of the internal team for either bandwidth or subject matter expertise
• Managed services – Comprehensive program where a third party executes a certain set of responsibilities and tasks on behalf of an organization   

Just as any digital solution needs to be customized to fully unlock the opportunity for a specific use case, the team also needs to be purposefully built-in order to ensure the sustainability and survivability of the solution. Thus, it is critical to have a people solution for each and every digital solve which is developed.

• Do we have the subject matter expertise to ensure the sustainability and survivability of the digital solution?
•  Is this capability that needs to be internalized or is it best to leverage focused expertise?
• What is the effort and cost to train, hire, or create this capability or capacity versus leveraging existing external resources? 

As a customer centric organization, Miebach has developed programs where we have completely handed over digital solutions for our clients, developed staff augmentation arrangements, or developed managed services relationships. This flexibility and agility allow for a myriad of solutions which enable clients to move to the forefront of digital transformation.