5 Ways Digital Partners Can Work Alongside In-House Teams

“We Are Star sounds great, but we have an internal team!” This is one of the most frequent things we hear from potential agency clients as most do indeed have state-of-the-art internal teams that don’t find it necessary to outsource. 

In fact though, most, if not all agencies outsource to some degree. So the slightly outdated view on the concept of ‘outsourcing’ might sound off-putting to many agencies but in reality, if you’re using freelancers or contractors, you’re already outsourcing and it works really well or else you wouldn’t do it. The key difference between outsourcing and finding a long-standing digital partner is all in the quality of service and most importantly, trust.

Here are five useful ways a digital partner can work alongside your awesome existing digital team.

Use them instead of freelancers

The single biggest advantage of using a digital partner is the convenience of using them over freelancers. Flexible resourcing, usually filled by freelancers or contractors to augment internal teams, is what most agencies do.

However, it’s the most frustrating thing to have used a contractor, called them again for another project, only to find they are booked to another client and unavailable for the next three months. Turning to a freelancer will be the next best thing but having to train them and hope they’re good wastes time, money and resources. Each individual has different strengths, make different mistakes and will have to learn your internal processes from scratch.

Working alongside a digital partner such as We Are Star provides consistency. Our digital consultants are responsible for understanding your internal processes. Even if the individual moves on, our processes mean you’ll get a level of consistency you can’t get with freelancers. When you start a new project, we pick up where we left off, and we continually improve, meaning a lot of our clients tell us our projects get better and better.

Use them as an overflow service

Digital demand is constantly fluctuating. All of a sudden you can find yourself with two huge builds – enough to justify bringing on permanent staff, then a few months later, nothing at all. Partnering with an outsourcer provides a flexible and immediately available solution to help manage your digital demand and give your existing team an extra pair of hands. 

Use them do the less glamorous work

Every agency has its flagship clients and high-profile projects. With that comes a whole load of not-so-fun work that needs to get done. Handing over your less glamorous, lower profile work means you can keep your core team focused on the large projects, whilst ensuring you’re delivering the nuts and bolts that keep all of your clients happy.

Benefit from their extra expertise

The breadth of technology available today means that even the biggest agencies can have limitations in their skill set. Partnering for certain projects gives your agency access to every skill set, including the niche ones you might need. From WordPress sites to AI solutions, whether you work with PHP, NodeJS or .NET, partnering with a digital solutions company like We Are Star will help you deliver everything from simple sites to complex solutions.

Use them to plug a particular skill

There are skill gaps somewhere in every agency. With We Are Star, some of our agency clients will see us as the UX and UI experts, where others will see us as technical experts. For some, it’s the quality of our QA that makes us valuable to them. For many, it’s the requirements and scoping they simply can’t do in house for whatever reason. Using a digital partner to fill in gaps unique to your team will give you a whole and well-oiled team to deliver your digital solutions that you can be proud of. 

So, if you have an internal team, need an extra pair of hands and outsourcing puts you off, it’s most likely that a digital partner is the way forward instead. Rather than faffing around with freelancers and stabbing in the dark with contractors, a reliable and safe partner like We Are Star to work alongside with, is the solution.

Especially if you have an internal team, we would love to know how we can partner with you.