I had very different plans for April. On a personal level I had arranged a holiday and professionally my plans for strategic growth partnerships have needed to be adjusted, as we focus on creatively meeting our clients’ changing needs and challenges.
We are immensely proud of the projects we’ve started to help companies navigate the immediate impacts of the pandemic. We are upgrading support systems to handle increased demand, and implementing Salesforce for companies who need to increase efficiency or move staff to remote working. However, on the outsourcing side of our business, we are also aware of the growing short-term issues for Systems Integrators and ISVs who are faced with reduced demand but fixed costs.
In a global economic crisis, costs have to be cut by reducing discretionary spend on projects or reducing overheads. For many companies in the UK that unfortunately means furloughing staff or more permanently reducing the wage bill. It is a fine line between staying afloat and being ready for the expected upturn.
The future of work is now. Home-working, e-learning, smaller more tactical projects delivering benefits often and rapidly, and flexible resourcing are all essential now and likely to remain in place long after the pandemic has been beaten.
GSIs, SIs and ISVs need to be more agile as they manage fluctuating client demand and realign their internal capacity. Professional services companies that scale back too aggressively may find themselves unable to meet deadlines or even take on further work if demand increases sharply.
When the market starts to pick up, a lack of capacity and a backlog of projects prevents many partners from being able to seize opportunities that present themselves. No company wants to wait on a recruitment drive nor search for a new partner when delayed projects are resumed and new deals are signed.
There is an alternative option that can help mitigate these risks, enabling businesses to scale back sufficiently while retaining capacity to deliver in-flight project work and nimbly respond to opportunities that emerge during the recovery.
Instead of keeping a complete team on the books all the time, outsourcing arrangements enable companies to have a smaller in-house team but have access to a larger pool of stable, certified Salesforce technical architects, consultants, developers and admins when they need them.
This works equally well for periods of low demand and high utilisation. Costly bench time can be reduced and burst capacity is on hand when multiple new projects close at once, allowing delivery quality to remain high.
There can, however, be issues with these arrangements.
Some outsourcing agencies require long-term contractual commitments which place an increased burden on your business. This typically comes from agencies who need to plan well in advance as they do not have inhouse capacity ready to deploy at a moments notice. Another element to consider is the breadth of experience across industries, Salesforce clouds and services.
Rather than sourcing expertise from multiple agencies, a better option is to go to a reputable, large-scale, one-stop shop. VRP Consulting has provided 100s of experts to companies on flexible, outsourcing engagements for over 10 years. GSIs, SIs, ISVs and indeed many other companies using Salesforce all come to VRP when they need to bolster their skills and resources. We offer both flexible staff augmentation and dedicated teams from our 500+ strong delivery hubs in Belarus and Poland so can provide solutions today to help companies adapt to the future of work.
As a Gold partner in our own right, our 500+ Salesforce experts work across industries and clouds, building their skills and experience so they are ready to deliver value to customers. We recognise the importance of client relationships and operate under strict non-disclosure policies to safeguard client lists, running our outsourcing business in isolation to other consulting work.
We evaluate every outsourcing need individually to match the right resources, who are then available for interview and selection.
The VRP COVID-19 Emergency Technical Team
We have recently launched our COVID-19 Emergency Technical Team. For the next three months we are reducing our professional services rates for new clients. The depth and experience of our Salesforce developers will be available at cost to us, giving the flexibility needed at this time to maintain business continuity. Here are just some areas we are already helping businesses in the midst of this crisis:
Our nimble, low cost approach enables us to quickly put the support in place required at this time. Our experts are readily available and with flexible hours & no long-term commitment required, you can have the resources and capacity you need to complete critical actions with maximum efficiency.
Next week our CEO Roman Medvedev shares his top tips on finding a good Salesforce outsourcer and the value that can bring to help maintain business continuity.
In the meantime, to start collaborating or for more details on how we can work together and overcome this difficult time, visit our Outsourcing page.
Tina has a long history of working for GSIs in the Salesforce space, leading the Retail, Consumer Goods, Travel & Hospitality sectors for Cognizant in the UK and prior to this at Tata and Appirio. During this time Tina experienced VRP’s outsourcing services first-hand and joined VRP in 2019 to enhance and grow our partnership offerings to GSI and ISV clients.
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