Should You Build a Data Team or Borrow One?

Many companies assume the best way to build a data capability is to hire an internal team. But is that always the right move?

In this episode of The Dashboard Effect, Brick and Landon break down one of the most common questions they hear from prospective clients: Why outsource your data work instead of hiring in-house?

They talk through the real tradeoffs companies face when building a data team, from the challenge of finding a single person who can do everything (the “Batman” hire), to the hidden costs of recruiting, training, and managing multiple specialists. 

They also discuss why outsourced teams can sometimes deliver more value than a single internal hire, thanks to a broader bench of expertise and the ability to scale resources up or down as business needs change.

Whether you're considering building your own data team or looking for ways to get more out of your data infrastructure, this conversation offers a practical look at the pros and cons of each approach.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Dashboard Effect Podcast. I'm Brick Thompson. And I'm Landon Oaks. Hey Landon, how's it going?

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Good. How about you?

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Good. So today we wanted to start by talking about what we do at the company where we work for Blue Margin. We actually provide outsourced data teams and data services. And one of the questions we get sometimes as we're talking to prospective customers is why would you outsource your data work as opposed to just hiring an internal team? And we thought it would just be interesting to talk about since it comes up a lot. That's probably the most common objection is so I can hire someone and get more hours for the same dollars as it would be to outsource to someone. And that's definitely true, but it doesn't necessarily break down to getting you more value for the dollars. So when you're when you're buying hours, you're or when you're buying hours from us, you're buying a bench. When you're hiring someone, you're hoping that you've hired that person that can do everything that you need them to do. Sometimes I refer to it as hiring Batman. If you're you know we we help our clients actually build internal teams. And one of the challenges can be when they say, all right, we want to do it with one person. So you've got to find that person who knows how to deal with a data lakehouse or a data warehouse, knows how to build pipelines and maintain those, knows how to do data modeling for reporting, knows how to build nice reports. Those people do exist, but they're very few and far between. And so uh by hiring an outsource company that has a bench of people that have those skills, you can swap in the skills as you need them. And so you instead of having someone come to a specific problem that they've maybe never seen before, hopefully your outsource partner has people with the skill set where they've done these, you know, taken care of these problems 40 times in the past. And so they can do it ten times faster than someone who's having to figure it out the first time. That's one of the primary things I see. And I know in the part of the business that you run, which is our platform team that takes care of uh our pipelines and our data lake houses and so on, um, you definitely see that. Like uh the team that you have has learned so much over the years that they can manage those types of unusual things that come up. They've probably seen them before.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, yeah. It's not not often that the team gets stumped. Um, you know, of course, if we hire new employees, they'll get stumped here and there. But the benefit is, is we have several, you know, people that they can go talk to who have seen so much over the years, um, which is actually one of the things that that uh some of my employees will say they they appreciate about working here is they don't they don't feel like they're on an island, you know, if they always have somebody to go to to get help, bounce ideas off of who's in the same wavelength as they are.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yeah, I think that's right. I think one of the other challenges is uh I sort of alluded to it, is that you often really can't just hire one person. So if you want to bring a team in-house, which again, we've we've helped companies do that, um, you're usually hiring at least two, often three, sometimes four people to cover all of the skill sets that you need. And so your total cost is is often significantly more for the same amount of work output because you're having to bring all of these employees on. And employees have additional overhead costs in addition to the salaries that you're paying them.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Aaron Powell Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the biggest gaps really is the um business-oriented side versus the very very deeply technical side, which you do need both.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Um and finding a person who excels at both of those areas, like you said, is essentially Batman. Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

And not only that, you need someone to do the project management and o oversee them and so on. So it can add up to quite an effort. That's not to say don't do it, and companies obviously do it uh very effectively. The bigger the company, often the more uh easily they can do that because they can spread that cost across uh more business units or or more areas of the business, that type of thing. I also think when you're hiring a team, there's a hidden cost. I mean, if you've ever been an executive or a manager and uh had to hire uh a small team, you've got all the cost of the recruiting and the finding the right person and the training and getting them the context on your business and then you know replacing them uh if they leave, you know, which happens in business. People don't stay forever. There's a lot of context that goes out the door with them. If you have the right outsource partner, uh, if they're doing it right, they're maintaining a wiki, they've got notes, they've got uh a database on you as the client, they've got more than one person working on your account. They have an account manager or client success manager who knows your account. If someone leaves them, they're responsible for backfilling and making sure to get that person the context and to train them and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Aaron Powell Yeah. Yeah. And even drilling into your point of recruiting, it's it's uh it's tough, um, even for us here, where especially with AI becoming as good as it is today, it's very easy to flip things, right? Um, you can put all kinds of stuff on your resume, get memorized quite memorized questions of of your typical, you know, tell me what this does, right? So it does actually have you know, it's a big advantage to have people that know this stuff inside and out to actually recruit.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Because they can they can you know tell if somebody actually knows this or if maybe they just got some AI help on the side.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: That's true. And and we can sniff that out quickly. So we've helped clients do that recruiting and do that interviewing and so on, and also help to onboard someone. So if we've been managing someone's uh data environment and building the reports and managing the pipelines and so on, if they bring someone in, we can get them up to speed much more quickly, and also be there as a backstop if if they ever need us to come back and help with it. I think another big advantage to having an outsource partner is just the ability to flex the amount of capacity. So very often our uh our our uh uh customers are owned by PE firms, and it's not uncommon for them to be doing acquisitions and having changes in their business and needing to move really quickly. And so there are times where it makes sense for them to scale up our team, maybe double size or triple size uh for a short period of time to get them through a slug of work. And when you're relying just on an internal team, that can be tough to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Yeah, very tough. Um, and then the other to add to that is you want to expand with people who can be autonomous and know what they're doing, right? And fold in and learn it quickly, which again is hard, hard to find.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah, it definitely is. So I I guess the bottom line is I uh I just wanted to cover that because it it does come up. Why would we do that? You know, the dollars per hour, it's cheaper for me to hire someone. It's often actually not, depending on the setup. It can be, though. I mean, to be perfectly honest, there are situations where it just makes a lot more sense to bring a team in-house. Um you still may want a partner that you can lean on every now and then if you've got a hard technical problem you want some extra help with, or you need to flex capacity a little bit. Uh but if that makes sense, of course, hire them, train them, you know, manage them and have that team. Uh uh. But if that doesn't sound like something that is sort of a core skill that you're going to be able to do and and manage and take on that overhead, then it can make a lot of sense to outsource it.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

So that's it sounds pretty self-serving. This explanation. It is what we do, but I thought it might be helpful to some of our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

All right. Well, I'll talk to you soon. All right. Thank you. Thanks.