7 Differences between Outsourced and In-House PowerBI Teams

How important is data to your business? Do you have to deal with a massive amount of data on a daily basis, to be analyzed in real-time? In that case, it is advisable to depend on in-house experts so that you can keep your data under control, secure, malleable, and accessible.

In contrast, if your data is manageable and is not so business critical, you could also store it on the cloud with the help of an outsourced provider. It all depends on the business criticality of the data.

PowerBI, however, gives businesses the leeway to make their choice regardless of the amount of data for it lets them safely scale and distribute data to many stakeholders, thanks to its built-in security features.

The only criteria to consider then, is whether the company is comfortable working with in-house developers or outsourced teams. Both have their pros and cons. Here’s a comprehensive list of the differences.

1. Costs

When it comes to candidates you want to hire directly, you can discuss their salary range yourself. The higher the certifications and experience, the higher the salary expectation, which may or may not be in line with what the candidate can deliver.

On the other hand, you can hire PowerBI Consultants on a budget that can be negotiated depending on the type of your contract. The kind of developers they provide you will be handpicked to suit your requirements.

Beware of firms that claim to have really low fees. In most cases, the better the consultants, the higher they will charge you. Seldom do the good ones offer you their services in return for pennies.

2. Training

The training of the employee(s) will be entirely up to you. You will have to arrange for and conduct Knowledge Transfer sessions for every new project you take up and every new hire.

You will be in control of the skill-building of the developers. Given the current demand of software developers, that’s an investment of risk as you can never be too sure about their retention.

When it comes to consultants, you won’t be responsible for training the developers. That is something the firm will take care of.

All you will have to do is clearly communicate your requirements and expect regular feedback and their implementation with the desired changes.

3. Response Speed

Your in-house team will be completely in your control, while you can make sure they are working on your projects only.

You cannot say the same for PowerBI consultants where they may work on other clients’ projects too. Unless you specifically ask for a dedicated team.

This will depend on your data needs. If your business is heavily dependent on data, it would be more advantageous to hire a dedicated team, whereas, if your dependence on data is not so much, you can afford to have developers work for you part time.

4. Experience

It’s not easy to find PowerBI developers who are experienced and good at what they do. You will have to do quite a bit of searching before you find candidates that specialize in PowerBI, let alone those who are suitable for your project needs.

PowerBI consultants on the other hand, are convenient to find and delegate work to. You get a well-equipped team with experts who have a complete understanding of the strategizing and processes involved in data analytics for any organization.

5. Dedication

Dedication is a trait that can barely be learnt or inspired. It has to come from the person themselves. Similarly, while the general direction of thought would be that in-house developers tend to be more dedicated and loyal is a bit of a myth.

Disinterested employees are a part of every organization and it’s no different when it comes to PowerBI developers.

It is necessary to find people who demonstrate a genuine interest in the progress of your projects and organizations, be it in-house developers or consultants. That will be a true marker of their dedication, rather than how many projects they are working on.

6. Business Knowledge

In addition to technical knowledge, it is crucial that your PowerBI developers know your business inside out to be able to offer you critical business insights.

An advantage an in-house developer can have here is the depth with which they can study your business over a period of time.

While this may not be the case with consultants, their experience working with various industries could prove to have an up as their skills will be more diverse, giving you a range of tools to work with.

7. Flexibility

This will save a lot of money, time and nerves. But you must formulate goals, problems, determine the functionality, etc. That is, tell the partner how you see the outcome and what you want to get from it.

At the stage of adoption, technical details are worked out, and the information provided by the customer will be the basis.

Throughout the project, you will need to give timely feedback. Try to be in touch. This will help avoid delays and disruption of deadlines.

With Low-Kode’s years of experience as remote and on-site teams of organizations, we offer certified developers to firms all over the world.

If you’re getting started with the PowerBI platform and need a fully-equipped team to take care of your data analytics needs, get in touch with us.