TL;DR: This article includes a description of our managed services provision structure from the perspective of our own achievements. It also goes over the diverse benefits we’re able to offer our worldwide talent as much as our entire client base.

A few months back, we tried to sort the debate from our company’s perspective on inhouse development vs outsourcing by clarifying the main differences between the two. Today, we’re diving a bit more specifically into the topic to quickly draw the line between outsourcing and a managed service provision.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are gaining much traction worldwide, but they’re not so well-known for instance in Bulgaria, a traditional hub for outsourcing. And there are differences in each to consider.

For us, companies that are successful are the ones that find a balance between profitable business solutions and building a culture that promotes career growth and long-lasting relationships. So let’s check a bit of the business format that’s shaping our path.. 

Business formats: managed service provision vs outsourcing

To start, both formats involve a company getting services from a third-party source. Yet, using the service of a managed service provider offers access to more specialized, systematic, and continuous support than an outsourcing one. 

MSPs are based on a longer term engagement that’s more a form of partnership than a one-off exchange. They’re more of a permanent solution to developing and maintaining projects in their entirety than the shorter-term outsourcing opportunity. Outsourcing firms tend to offer services for narrowly defined processes. Payroll or customer service handling are a few examples.  

The integrated and ongoing format of a managed service provision also ensures costs are agreed upon at the start of the business relationship. Outsourcing can be more unpredictable in this financial sense. In that scenario, deals depend on other relations with other companies and providers per project or desired solution. 

Going for a managed service provision has more to do with an integral approach of the right set of talent. It includes processes, and technologies or tools versus the common goal of efficient deliverables that comes with traditional outsourcing. 

Rather than delivering a finalized service per occasion, MSPs work with your company to let teams interact and be part of processes. MPSs’ expert advice and support comes through with accessible consultations and tune-ins. Those easily propel businesses to new heights, helping not only with large internal projects but offering new strategies to develop powerful and secure new IT approaches. 

In this sense, Blankfactor is set out to innovate the best of the MSP world. We’re proudly doing so with great focus on our internal culture. We’re building talent up and empowering our teams to all extent possible. 

Benefits for employees working for a managed services provider vs an outsourcing company

As a managed service provider, our talent gets to be on the cutting edge of tech. They’re exposed to the latest technologies and learn more about them. So we take pride in the demands of the industry for our global talent to perennially improve in their learning paths.

To be in this field, developers, scientists, engineers, and architects, just to mention a few roles within our talent pool, need to thrive on continuous learning. 

We furthermore foster friendly relations at our workplaces through our Friend Referral program. That’s how we ensure a continued working relationship between peers. It’s also how we cultivate a product-based, more secure, and stable work environment that promotes meaningful employee foundations. 

As a plus side to the combination above, our teams are developed alongside people they trust and know well. 

Read here on a leadership through friendship note from last month. 

The benefit of stepping away from overspecialization

Far from forcing our talent to overspecialization, where most members engage in the same tasks over and over, we’ve managed to put our valuable talent at the very forefront of the most cutting-edge technology. And they’re doing wonders with the latest tools at the service of unified teams worldwide. 

We therefore also value how the MSP model cuts out the common practice of shipping out talent to outside teams. This is a familiar feature of client project handling in outsourcing companies. Moving away from that structure has allowed us to also remove how uncomfortable a conflict of any sort can be within teams where responsibilities and reports lines might be less defined. Conflicts of interest are a perfect example. 

Removing dependency from management on external clients, the managed service provision model also allows us to better protect our talent at all times. They, in turn, get to always grow alongside steady business partners and colleagues. They’re learning and creating culture, side-by-side, on the job, every workday. 

We’re reaping the benefits together

At Blankfactor, we’re set on engineering the future – and we know we’re doing so together. What started as a US-based business out of Miami, Florida, has now expanded into a profitable technology MSP. We specialize in the financial services, fintech, payments, banking, and insurance industries worldwide. 

Reaping great and focused team efforts, our company has grown to a well-known status. And our reputation has only been progressively accrued with every successful iteration. 

The above achievements have meant quickly and simultaneously expanding in offices in San José, Costa Rica; Medellín and Bogotá, Colombia, as well as our perfect-view, window-filled location in the heart of Bulgaria’s well-renowned tech hub in Sofia. How did we get there? 

More importantly, the MSP model bears client benefits

We most certainly have clients to thank for our successes! Because our business partners trust us, we’re successfully turning analog businesses into 21st Century companies. 

It’s with great pride and responsibility that we work with our partners to meet any of their unique business needs. And we do so with outstanding talent we’ve brought onboard at a worldwide level. We gladly get to combine these with the latest and the most advanced solutions that technologies have to offer. 

Seeing our client companies grow and scale through projects that excel their expectations has been a great reap from our growing global structure. 

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