OUTSOURCING often gets a bad name. Many of you may have had mixed experiences dealing with outsourced call centres, particularly those overseas.

However, these perceptions don’t necessarily transfer to IT service outsourcing. Certainly they do not correspond well with my experience of delivering this service.

Outsourcing doesn’t have to mean moving all your IT functions out to a supplier. It should be about identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your business in delivering quality technology functions and choosing the extent to which a supplier can add value.

If managed well, working with a third party IT supplier can bring benefits in a number of ways in addition to the often-cited cost savings. I would argue that the benefit of outsourcing lies more with the value that a third party can add rather than simply cost efficiencies.

The specialist provider has a natural advantage in being able to recruit and retain the best talent.

It can offer its people a steady stream of interesting work, career progression opportunities and good rewards.

By comparison, even the largest internal IT function has a hard time retaining its most capable talent and staff turnover can be relatively high.

Being able to draw in expertise and capacity as and when needed is a very attractive option for an organisation. As well as flexibility, an outsourced provider can offer continuity.

You might need a particular expertise every now and again. It can be hugely advantageous to be able to draw on the same team with whom investment has been made in building relationships. A good outsourced provider should provide this sort of flexibility as an implicit part of their contract.

Yes, quality can be variable, and we do come across providers with poor service standards (certain network providers are notorious).

However, there are providers with good service values and the inevitable competition between the best helps to ensure constant focus on service quality.

As an outsourced service provider, delivering consistently high standards of service is critical to survival – otherwise we risk losing clients. Watch out for providers that demand long periods of contractual lock-in. This is rarely to the advantage of the contracting party.

Producing excellent IT requires constant hard work and determination, but with the right team you have at least a chance.

:: Andrew Kershaw is technical director at Durham City business and IT consultancy Waterstons