Outsourcing business intelligence can be extremely beneficial but companies should put a lot of effort into understanding the process first.
This is the view of David Ellis, partner at OMC Partners, who claimed that it is a "major strategic decision" and as such companies "have to invest in the knowledge transfer".
He added: "But that investment is repaid year on year on year. So you don't just do it for a one-year payback, you do it for five or ten or forever.
"If it was easy and straightforward everybody would do it and it would be no better. But actually, it is fairly straightforward but you have to do it properly."
The comments follow research from Ovum, which found that people who have outsourced their processes rated the procedure as more efficient than in-house operations.
Indeed, on a scale of one to four, with four being 'very efficient', the average rating for outsourced processes was 3.28 compared with 3.22 for in-house procedures.