We know from Econsultancy’s Insourcing and Outsourcing Report that functions focused on customer communications that require deep understanding of the business along with the ability to move fast and adapt brand messaging are increasingly being insourced. 

These include capabilities for content, social media, email marketing and community management. Similarly, the trend is to increasingly outsource more technical functions such as web design & build and app development.

Q: Which areas do you carry out in-house and which do you outsource?

Q: Which areas are you most likely to do more in-house over the next couple of years?

There needs to be a decision about availability of human resource as one of the highest considerations for insourcing/outsourcing. 

It’s likely that skills in some areas will be harder to come by due to the growth of the number of service providers in the digital domain along with the demand in other industry verticals, which is creating that lack of skilled resource. 

We can see from the below that capability and resource availability are key considerations in the insource/outsource question.

Q: Which of the following are the most significant criteria when judging whether a project, function or other work should be done in-house or outsourced?

There is already massive growth and increasing competition for skills and resource in the customer experience and content marketing spaces as was highlighted in the Econsultancy Future of Agencies report. 

So potentially there’s a need for more generalist knowledge in areas that are out-sourced or in-sourced, where agency management is key, versus deeper specialist knowledge in areas that are purely in-sourced by the organisation.

With digital marketing budgets projected to reach an all-time high, it’s becoming even more important to find out exactly where your current capabilities as a business are today and where they need to be in the future in order to achieve your strategic objectives.

Knowing where to start, how much to budget and how you cut through the clutter to make sure you’re planning ahead of the competition and investing in the right channels is something we’re well equipped to assist you with… get in touch.