The ROI of IT Outsourcing
Why IT Outsourcing Makes Financial Sense
In a digital-first world, technology is the backbone of every business. Yet maintaining an in-house IT team is expensive salaries, training, software licences, and infrastructure all add up quickly. That’s why more companies are turning to IT outsourcing as a way to cut costs without cutting corners.
But outsourcing isn’t just about saving money. It’s about getting a higher return on investment (ROI) from your technology spend by accessing expertise, scalability, and efficiency that would otherwise be out of reach.
Breaking Down the Costs
Running a full internal IT department involves more than just wages. There are:
- Recruitment and onboarding costs for skilled developers and technicians.
- Ongoing training to keep up with new technologies.
- Hardware, software, and licence fees that renew every year.
- Downtime risks if your internal team is overstretched or unavailable.
When you outsource, many of these costs shift to your service provider. You pay for results, not overhead. A good IT partner absorbs the costs of tools, staff, and upgrades allowing your business to focus spending on core operations.
The Real ROI: Beyond Cost Savings
ROI isn’t just measured in what you save it’s also what you gain.
1. Access to top-tier talent
Outsourcing gives you a team of specialists, developers, cloud engineers, designers, and cybersecurity experts without the recruitment struggle.
2. Faster project delivery
External teams often have the resources to meet deadlines that would overwhelm smaller in-house teams.
3. Improved scalability
Need more capacity during peak season? An outsourced team can ramp up quickly, and scale back when things quiet down keeping your costs proportional to your workload.
4. Reduced downtime
Managed service providers (MSPs) offer proactive monitoring and maintenance, which means fewer system failures and faster issue resolution all contributing to higher productivity and better customer satisfaction.
5. Strategic focus
With routine IT operations handled externally, your internal team can focus on what matters product innovation, customer service, and business growth.
Measuring ROI in Real Terms
Calculating the ROI of IT outsourcing involves comparing your total internal IT expenditure against the outsourced cost, then factoring in performance improvements and opportunity gains.
For example:
- A mid-sized business spending USD 100,000 annually on internal IT may outsource for USD 60,000 and still get faster response times, better uptime, and stronger cybersecurity.
- That’s a direct saving of 40% before you even measure the indirect value of improved efficiency or customer retention.
Local Perspective: IT Outsourcing in Zimbabwe
In Zimbabwe, many organisations from financial services to logistics and education are finding IT outsourcing a practical way to modernise operations. Local service providers like Centric Data deliver global-standard expertise while understanding the regional business environment and infrastructure challenges.
This combination of cost efficiency and local insight makes outsourcing particularly attractive to businesses aiming to grow without heavy capital investment.
Why Partner with Centric Data
At Centric Data, we don’t just manage your IT we help you leverage it.
Whether it’s software development, managed IT services, or custom digital solutions, our approach focuses on aligning technology with measurable business outcomes. That means your investment translates into real-world returns reduced downtime, improved efficiency, and higher customer satisfaction.
Final Thoughts
IT outsourcing isn’t just an operational shortcut it’s a strategic decision that can transform your ROI. By shifting from fixed costs to flexible service models, businesses can access high-quality IT expertise, enhance performance, and maintain financial agility.
When done right, outsourcing isn’t about doing less. It’s about achieving more efficiently, intelligently, and sustainably.
Web Design Trends for 2025
As we step into 2025, the digital landscape continues to evolve, bringing forth innovative web design trends that prioritize user experience, interactivity, and personalization. Web design is one of our core competencies and we’ve taken it upon ourselves to research, summarise and share some of the most popular web design trends in 2025. Here’s a curated overview of the most impactful trends shaping web design this year.
1. Micro-Interactions and Dynamic Cursors
Micro-interactions are subtle animations that respond to user actions, enhancing engagement and providing feedback. These include hover effects, button animations, and cursor transformations. Custom cursors have become a prominent feature, with designs ranging from sparkly trails to responsive morphing shapes, adding a delightful touch to user interactions.
2. Immersive 3D and AR/VR Elements
Websites are increasingly incorporating 3D models, spatial navigation, and interactive animations to create a more engaging user journey. This trend is particularly evident in e-commerce and gaming platforms, where immersive interfaces powered by AR and VR are enhancing the digital experience.
3. Nostalgic Design Elements
Retro design elements, such as bold typography, grainy textures, and ’80s-inspired palettes, are making a comeback. This nostalgic approach allows brands to stand out in a sea of modern and minimalist sites, offering a unique and memorable user experience. While retro-inspired design is only just starting to resurface, it is gaining traction rapidly in response to the sanitised, minimalist style of today’s designs.
4. Personalized User Experiences
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a significant role in all aspects of the online experience and is now being used to personalise web interactions to a great extent. AI-powered browsers, like Opera’s Neon, are being developed to make web browsing more agentic by executing tasks and code directly within web pages. These advancements aim to create more personalized and efficient user interactions.
5. Sustainability and Ethical Design
As environmental consciousness grows, web designers are focusing on creating sustainable and ethical digital experiences. This includes optimizing websites for energy efficiency, using eco-friendly hosting services, and promoting ethical practices through design choices. These efforts not only contribute to environmental preservation but also resonate with users who value sustainability.
6. Inclusive and Accessible Design
Designing for inclusivity and accessibility remains a priority. Websites are being developed with features that cater to users with disabilities, ensuring that digital experiences are accessible to all. This includes implementing screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, and colour contrast adjustments to accommodate diverse user needs.
7. Voice User Interface (VUI) Integration
With the rise of voice-activated devices, integrating Voice User Interfaces into websites is becoming more prevalent. This allows users to interact with websites using voice commands, providing a hands-free and efficient browsing experience. VUI integration is particularly beneficial for users with mobility impairments and enhances overall accessibility.
8. AI Optimisation
As AI chatbot usage outstrips search engine usage, optimisation for discovery by AI has become essential. AIO is the new search engine optimisation and every web designer and marketing specialist is scrambling to ensure that Chat GPT and Gemini can easily find and scan their websites for information. Being at the top of a Google search is no longer the be all, end all of website optimisation.
Conclusion
The web design trends of 2025 emphasize a shift towards more interactive, personalized, and inclusive digital experiences along with extensive integration of AI. By embracing these trends, designers can create websites that not only captivate users but also provide meaningful and accessible interactions. As technology continues to advance, staying informed about these trends will be crucial for creating innovative and user-centric web designs.
Preparing Your Business IT Strategy for 2026
As 2026 approaches, business leaders must align IT planning with fast-moving trends in cloud, AI, security, and infrastructure. A reactive or piecemeal approach will leave you exposed to technological debt, cost overruns, and competitive disadvantage. In this post we’ll outline key focus areas, risks, and how a partner like Centric Data can help you build a robust, future-ready IT strategy.
1. Embrace Hybrid & Edge Architectures
Pure public cloud may no longer be the default. Many enterprises are shifting back toward hybrid models, combining local, edge, and cloud resources to balance latency, cost, compliance, and control.
A recent survey, “Navigating the Edge-Cloud Continuum” (Belcastro et al., 2025), explores how organisations are positioning workloads across edge and cloud layers to meet real-time demands and reduce latency. The survey highlights adoption challenges, architectural complexity, and the need for clear deployment strategies.
When designing for 2026, plan for a multi-layer architecture: some functions in the cloud, some at local or edge locations, especially for latency-sensitive operations (IoT, real-time analytics, on-site processing).
Also relevant: a recent study, “Hybrid Cloud Security: Balancing Performance, Cost, and Compliance” (Polinati, 2025), examines how to manage security, performance, and cost trade-offs in hybrid environments. Its framework around encryption, zero trust, and policy governance is worth reviewing.
2. Get Cost Governance (FinOps) Right
Cloud and hybrid strategies scale well but unmanaged they also spiral in cost. In the 2025 State of the Cloud Report by Flexera, 84 % of respondents named cloud cost management a top challenge.
To prepare for 2026:
- Build FinOps or cost operations processes
- Monitor resource utilisation (idle instances, overprovisioning)
- Enforce usage policies and rightsizing
- Tag and chargeback cost centres to tie spending to business units
By adopting these disciplines early, budget surprises become less frequent and cloud becomes a source of agility instead of unpredictability.
3. Make AI and Agentic Systems Part of the Plan
AI is no longer optional it’s a core enabler. According to McKinsey’s Technology Trends Outlook 2025, AI and cloud/edge computing are among the top trends shaping enterprise technology.
As you build your 2026 roadmap:
- Evaluate internal use cases for AI agents (automating workflows, decision assistance)
- Ensure your infrastructure is capable of supporting AI workloads (GPU, high throughput, data pipelines)
- Look for ways to integrate lightweight AI at the edge or in hybrid settings
The goal is to avoid retrofitting AI later design your foundation now to enable it.
4. Prioritize Security, Compliance & Patching
Security will only grow in importance. Outdated software is a known vector for breaches: in the paper “The Hidden Dangers of Outdated Software” (Thiyagarajan et al., 2025), it is noted that 32 % of cyberattacks exploit unpatched software vulnerabilities.
In your 2026 strategy:
- Enforce automated patching and update processes
- Use vulnerability scanning and continuous monitoring
- Adopt zero trust network models
- Define your compliance obligations (data privacy, industry regulation) and embed them in architecture reviews
It’s better to build security by design than bolt it on later.
5. Design for Resilience and Disaster Recovery
Disasters whether natural, hardware failure, or cyberattack will happen. The question is whether your systems bounce back or take days to recover.
In your strategy:
- Define RTO (recovery time objectives) and RPO (recovery point objectives) per application
- Use redundant infrastructure across zones or sites
- Test backups and disaster recovery regularly
- Design failover or fallback paths
Resilience is not optional in 2026 it’s a baseline expectation.
6. Plan for Talent, Governance & Culture
Technology is only as strong as the people and processes behind it. Organisational readiness, governance, and culture often derail even well-designed strategies.
You should:
- Assess your current technical skills and gaps (cloud architects, AI engineers, security experts)
- Plan training, hiring, or partnerships to fill gaps
- Establish governance committees that include IT, security, and business stakeholders
- Use pilots and incremental rollouts to validate before scaling
7. How Centric Data Can Help
Centric Data’s experience in Zimbabwe and regionally positions it well to guide businesses in their 2026 IT journey. Here’s how we can assist:
- Architecture design & deployment: We help you choose hybrid, edge, or cloud setups that suit your constraints and future goals.
- Managed operations & FinOps: We operate cost control practices, monitor usage, optimize spend, and align IT operations with business units.
- AI readiness support: We help you build pipelines, data flows, and compute infrastructure ready to host AI and agentic workloads.
- Security & compliance services: From patching, threat detection, identity management, to audit readiness, we help you bake security in.
- Resilience & DR planning: We assist in backups, failovers, site design, and recovery testing.
- Training & governance advisory: For local teams, we offer training and help establish governance structures so your strategy is sustainable.
With a partner like Centric, you can avoid over-investment, surprise costs, and architectural regrets.
Conclusion
To succeed in 2026, your IT strategy must be proactive, layered, and aligned with business goals. Adopt hybrid and edge architectures, master FinOps, embed AI readiness, secure everything from the start, and build resilience. Also invest in the people, process and governance needed to sustain progress.
Centric Data is ready to walk with you through that planning.
The Hidden Costs of Poor IT Maintenance
In a world driven by digital systems, IT is not just support, it is the backbone of operations, customer experience, and competitive edge. Yet many businesses treat IT maintenance as an optional chore. That attitude hides serious costs that only show themselves when things go wrong.
Below we explore those hidden costs, grounded in real research, and show how services such as IaaS, cloud, managed support, cybersecurity, and hybrid hosting help you avoid them.
What We Mean by Poor IT Maintenance
Poor IT maintenance covers a set of practices like:
- Delaying software updates, patches, or OS upgrades
- Letting hardware degrade or suffer from neglect
- Skipping backups or failing to test restore processes
- Having weak monitoring or no alerts
- Leaving networks, firewalls, and access controls in a lax state
Tumors grow slowly. These issues compound until a crisis forces the cost to become visible.
Hidden Cost 1: Productivity Drain
When systems slow down or glitch, staff adapt by using workarounds. A few minutes lost per person per day seems negligible. Multiply that across a team and over weeks or months, and you lose substantial output.
Research supports this. According to an IDC report, downtime in datacenter environments generates significant cost per minute (IDC 2019). Also, Gartner estimated that average IT downtime costs about USD 5,600 per minute (Gartner 2014). These numbers are of course averages and subject to change, but they highlight how even small inefficiencies scale dangerously.
Hidden Cost 2: Security Exposures and Breaches
Neglected IT systems are prime targets for cyberattacks. Unpatched software, weak firewall rules, misconfigured systems, and unreliable backups all create attack vectors.
In the “Hidden Costs of Downtime” study by Splunk and Oxford Economics, companies surveyed estimated that downtime across the Global 2000 cost USD 400 billion annually, including direct and hidden effects (Splunk & Oxford Economics 2024). The report finds that 56 % of downtime incidents are caused by cybersecurity factors, and 44 % come from application or infrastructure issues.
Lost revenue is the largest direct cost in the survey, 49 million per company, on average. But beyond that, firms see damage to market value, brand reputation, delays in innovation, and customer churn.
Also, Uptime Institute’s report shows that outages are becoming more expensive. In their 2023 analysis, a quarter of respondents said their most recent outage cost more than USD 1 million, while 45 % said it cost between USD 100,000 and USD 1 million (Uptime Institute).
Hidden Cost 3: Repair, Replacement, and Emergency Expenses
You might think that skipping maintenance saves money. In practice it often leads to hardware failures, premature replacement, and emergency support each much more expensive.
According to Unitrends, 25 % of SMBs report downtime costs between USD 20,001 and USD 40,000 per hour. Meanwhile, Trilio reports that in many organizations, hourly downtime costs now exceed USD 300,000. For large firms, the stakes are even higher.
When systems break, you are forced into reactive spending. Preventive care is almost always cheaper.
Hidden Cost 4: Blocking Growth and Innovation
As your business grows, your IT load grows too. If your infrastructure lags behind, you stall. Software integration becomes harder. New tools (analytics, AI, automation) fail to plug in. Your competitors surge ahead while you wrestle with technical debt.
Cloud and IaaS models address this. You do not buy servers you scale up or down. IBM describes IaaS as a way to rent compute, storage, and networking, letting companies focus on value instead of hardware overheads.
But cloud is not foolproof. Without governance, hidden costs become even more apparent. Underutilised resources, data transfer costs, snapshot fees, and license mismatches eat into expected savings.
Hidden Cost 5: Cost Overruns Even in the Cloud
Cloud is popular, but many adopt it without proper controls. The biggest danger is believing that once systems are in the cloud, cost and risk vanish. They don’t.
Some costs to watch:
- Idle or oversized instances
- Egress or data transfer fees
- Snapshot or backup fees
- Unmanaged scaling
- Premium support or access tiers
If usage is not monitored and optimized, cloud becomes just another cost center.
How Centric Data Helps You Avoid These Hidden Costs
Poor IT maintenance need not be your fate. Centric Data offers services designed to transform your IT from liability into a growth driver. Below are how we help:
- Infrastructure & Cloud Hosting (IaaS / Hybrid Deployments): We build scalable, resilient infrastructure. You consume exactly what you need, without owning or maintaining hardware.
- Managed IT Support & Proactive Maintenance: We run diagnostics, monitoring, health checks, patch management, and remote problem resolution. Small issues are fixed before they escalate.
- Cybersecurity & Backup Assurance: We manage patches, firewalls, intrusion detection, secure configuration, and backup validation so your environment is protected and recoverable.
- Optimization & Cost Governance: We analyze your usage, identify waste, rightsize allocations, and prevent runaway billing in cloud environments.
- Flexible Architecture: When hybrid models work better mixing local servers and cloud we design them to match performance, compliance, cost, and latency needs.
Because we view maintenance as strategic, not optional, businesses see fewer outages, lower surprise costs, and more ability to invest in value creation.
Conclusion
Neglecting IT maintenance does not save money. It hides costs in productivity, security, repair, growth potential, and even in cloud models you thought were safe.
By treating IT as foundational and investing in infrastructure, proactive support, security, and optimization, you avoid surprises and free yourself to grow.
Centric Data stands ready to help Zimbabwean businesses shift from reactive to resilient IT.
Benefits of Custom Software for SMEs
Running a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) is not for the faint-hearted. You are expected to compete with larger companies, respond quickly to customer needs, manage limited resources, and still turn a profit. For many SMEs, software is the backbone that keeps things moving. But here is the challenge: off-the-shelf software solutions are designed for mass use, not for the unique needs of your business. They may get you started, but sooner or later, you realise that they slow you down instead of helping you grow.
This is where custom software becomes a game changer. Unlike generic digital tools, custom software is designed specifically for your business, your customers, and your long-term goals. It is not about having the fanciest tools, but about having the right technology. Technology that “fits like a glove” so to speak.
Why SMEs Should Embrace Custom Software
Tailored to Your Business, Not the Other Way Around
When you use off-the-shelf software, you often have to change how your business operates to fit the system. That could mean adding extra steps, ignoring features you do not need, or struggling with limitations that do not make sense for your industry. With custom software, the process is reversed. The software is built to match your workflows, making everyday tasks easier and more natural.
For example, a retail SME might need inventory management that accounts for local supply chain delays, while a service-based business may need a system that tracks projects and client communication in detail. Instead of trying to force these needs into a generic tool, custom software adapts directly to them.
Boosting Efficiency and Productivity
One of the biggest frustrations SMEs face is wasted time. Staff spend hours duplicating tasks, entering data into multiple systems, or trying to work around software that was not made for them. Custom software streamlines these processes. Imagine having all your data in one place, automated reports at your fingertips, and tasks that once took hours reduced to minutes. That kind of productivity boost is not just convenient. It directly translates into growth.
A Cost-Effective Investment in the Long Term
It is true that custom software development comes with a higher initial cost compared to buying ready-made software. However, SMEs should view it as an investment rather than an expense. With custom software, you avoid paying monthly licensing fees for features you never use. You also escape the cycle of switching platforms every few years when your current system becomes outdated. Instead, your software grows with you, evolving as your business expands. Over time, the savings and stability easily outweigh the upfront costs.
Seamless Integration with Your Current Tools
Most SMEs rely on a mix of tools to handle different parts of the business: one for accounts, another for HR, and maybe even spreadsheets for sales. This patchwork setup often leads to errors, delays, and incomplete reporting. Custom software development allows you to bring everything together. By integrating your systems, you can create a single source of truth where information flows smoothly from one department to another. This integration not only reduces mistakes but also gives managers a clearer overview of the entire business.
Stronger Security and Control
With the rise of cybercrime, especially in sectors where sensitive customer information is involved, SMEs cannot afford to ignore security. Off-the-shelf software is used by thousands of companies, which makes it an attractive target for hackers. Custom software, on the other hand, gives you more control over your security features. Developers can build in protections that address the specific risks your business faces, ensuring that your data and your customers’ data remain safe.
Enhancing the Customer Experience
Every business owner knows that loyal customers are the key to sustainability. With custom software, you can design systems that directly improve the customer journey. This might mean a user-friendly online portal, faster response times through automated messaging, or personalised services that make your customers feel valued. The ability to shape software around customer needs can give SMEs an edge over larger competitors who are stuck using generic tools.
Why Custom Software Matters in Zimbabwe
For SMEs in Zimbabwe, the benefits of custom software go beyond efficiency. Local businesses face unique challenges that off-the-shelf international software does not always address. Connectivity issues, the need for mobile-first solutions, and compliance with local regulations all require a more thoughtful approach. Custom-built applications can be designed with these realities in mind, making them not just practical but also more reliable for the local market.
Take for example an SME that needs a mobile app for sales agents working in areas with patchy internet. A custom solution can be built to work offline and sync data later, something generic software may not offer. These are the small but critical details that make a real difference for businesses operating in Zimbabwe.
Centric Data: Your Partner in Software Development
At Centric Data, we believe that every SME deserves software that works for them, not against them. Our approach to software development is simple: we take the time to understand your business inside and out, then design custom software that supports your specific goals. Whether it is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, a web application, or an automation tool, we build solutions that are secure, scalable, and easy to use.
We also understand the realities of the Zimbabwean market. That is why our custom software solutions are designed to be affordable, resilient, and flexible enough to adapt to change. With Centric Data as your software partner, you are not just getting a product. You are gaining a long-term partner who is invested in your growth.
Final Thoughts
Custom software is no longer a luxury reserved for big corporations. For SMEs, it is a powerful tool that improves efficiency, saves costs in the long run, and helps businesses deliver better customer experiences. In a world where technology is the key to competitiveness, choosing custom software could be the smartest move your business makes.
At Centric Data, we are ready to help you make that move. If you are an SME in Zimbabwe looking for software that truly works for you, our team is here to design solutions that fit your business like a glove.