Beyond Delivery

Is Outsourcing Dead - or Just Getting Started?

• Holisticon Connect

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Outsourcing is no longer only about cost savings. As companies face pressure to scale faster and adopt new technologies, outsourcing models are evolving beyond traditional time-and-material contracts. In this episode, Sebastian Dzieniak speaks with Maciej Reutt, Managing Director of Holisticon Connect, about how outsourcing is changing, why it continues to grow instead of fading away, and what this shift means for business leaders navigating delivery, risk, and AI adoption.

Key topics include: 

  • Why is outsourcing growing towards 600 billion dollars by 2030 instead of fading away 
  • How companies are moving beyond time-and-material contracts toward more outcome- and value-oriented delivery models
  • What benefits businesses gain from outsourcing, including faster scaling, reduced overhead, shared risk, and higher efficiency
  • What are the main challenges leaders face when starting an outsourcing journey and how to avoid common pitfalls
  • How AI-first approaches are changing delivery models and why smaller organisations often struggle to adopt them
  • What differentiates Holisticon Connect by combining an entrepreneurial culture with the scale of the Nexer Group

⏱ Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
01:40 – The idea behind the podcast
08:50 – From effort to value in software services
18:10 – AI challenges for non tech companies
24:00 – How Holisticon Connect supports clients
30:45 – What to consider before outsourcing 

🎙 Guest:
Maciej Reutt, CEO at Holisticon Connect and Vicepresident at Nexer Group
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mreutt/


🎙Host:
Sebastian Dzieniak, Client Relationship Manager
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-dzieniak/ 

 To actually succeed, you need to switch your mindset from this kind of effort-based mindset, where you talk about consultants, headcount, FTEs, and hours, etc to actually a service value mindset. As a client, you need to be able to evaluate what your product or feature that you want to be able to deliver is actually worth. There is lots of challenges, but I think the most common always have been how to start. 

 Welcome to Beyond Delivery by Holisticon Connect, where tech meets true business values. 

 Hello and welcome to the very first episode of our podcast. I'm Sebastian, Client Relationship Manager at Holistic. And with me is Maciej Reut, the Managing Director of Holisticon Connect, part of the Nexer Group. 

Hi, Sebastian. Good to be with you here. Thanks for the idea of inviting me as the first one. It's kind of an interesting experience for me as a first-time guest in a podcast. I guess also for you as a first-time podcaster or interviewer. 

It's the first time for me as well. So it's going to be interesting. We're open for feedback to the viewers. So let us know. 

The idea for today's podcast is: we want to tell you what the podcast is about, what the whole strategy or the idea is for the whole series. Then we want to talk a little bit about the industry, various industries, a little bit about outsourcing. And we're also here to show you the human side of our company and ourselves, and how we portray what's going on. So in this series, we aim to bring practical, strategic insights to the leaders, especially in those in innovation, product, and IT and operations. So if you're a VP, C-level, or a senior manager, you're thinking about tech strategy. Cloud migration, AI adoption, or business aspects, and would like to learn how our journey within Holistic and Connect evolved, this podcast is for you. 

We have discussed that, I would say, quite a long time that we are in a position which is, I would say, a little bit unique. For us, on one hand, working with, you know, global clients within many industries where we gain new perspectives. A lot of experience and we would like to share that with everyone just to maybe invite others to think about outsourcing and new stories. How to scale their organizations, how to find some first-hand information on those. Topics and on the other hand, we are also you know, a company that is on one hand very standalone based here in Poland, very entrepreneurial with you know our own strategy and on offering, but we are also part of a larger group which gives us you know the the scale and access to global brands. 

 So all that basically created lots of experience, a big network. And we would like to invite those guests to our podcast. I would like to share their perspective, their experience in general on the outsourcing business, especially the B2B outsourcing, because that's where we are focused on. And I think that, from building the company for last eight years and a decent growth on average 50% year over year, most of the time, we have something to share and we would like to give it to the audience that maybe will be listening to it. So we are open to feedback. We are open to. 

As you said, Sebastian, if someone is interested in the B2B software services outsourcing, that's the podcast for them. I think, if I have researched correctly, then there is no specific podcast like that in this format that we want to actually have with guests. All around the world and our own experience and different focus topics that we want to share throughout all the series, all the episodes that we will have planned for the upcoming months and quarters. 

Yes, thank you for for that perspective and, like, as you mentioned, there isn't really so much content out there about the outsourcing or nearshoring services. So it's a great opportunity to learn that first hand. And you also mentioned that you have a very entrepreneurial approach. And I think that's what kind of has attracted me to join. work with you. So yeah, I really like that aspect. And on top of like the business aspects, we aim to invite know people that are professionals that are in the technology space across different industries and the goal here is to share knowledge. We have a lot of expertise, but it's always great to hear that from the industry professionals as well, from specific companies. 

 So yeah, that's what's coming up in this podcast. 

 We can share you know some value and some deep insights from various topics like from domain expertise from how we solve problems, especially in the you know, currently rapidly changing market for IT companies or outsourcing companies, you know, looking at the technology changes, models in which we deliver. So I hope that's going to be very interesting for many people to learn from and to also participate with us in that journey. 

 Why do you think we should be sharing this knowledge? You already mentioned some, but maybe you would like to fill that in as well. 

 The main reason, from our perspective, is that, when we talk to our clients or potential clients, or, you know, even a competition, then usually there is one outstanding challenge that people are actually wondering if they should outsource when they think about efficiency, when they think about scaling their business, when they think about some expertise, domain expertise. So I think what we want to do with this podcast is to share those learnings, give some tips, show various perspectives from our colleagues, our clients, even our competition, how they have been overcoming that challenge with their clients, with their partners, to take on this challenge. And we want to guide people. We want to help them to make the decision and to see that there is. 

 There's lots of good or even great companies that they can go to when they consider scaling their software services. Is it R&D? Is it IT? Is it digitalization of their products. So I think that's the main reason why we want to share this knowledge and also gain. A lot from them, those that will invite and learn and ourselves, basically, for the future and to become even better in what we are doing. 

 Because you've been working with various clients on really interesting projects. There are different approaches on how the projects are delivered. Do you see any specific trend coming up in this space? 

 Also, one of the reasons that we have been discussing this podcast and that we have been discussing our approach to offering and to services is that we can see that right now. 

 There is a quite big shift in the uh in the market so The way how the clients are starting to buy is changing. 

 And it's changing more rapidly than ever. So I think the rise of, you know, modern technologies, just like automation, artificial intelligence, you know, the ideas about digitalization of lots of the services that exist in the world, but also I believe that the customers are looking for yet another step up in how efficient they can work, how optimized their deliveries can be. And it's not only about, you know, low-cost solutions. It's more about the efficiency. It's more about the value that they can expect. And I think that one interesting trend right now is also what we can see from our clients and from the competition is that more and more customers are looking into value-based services. So they are wondering how they can stop paying for the typical time material services. So pay per hour, the effort-based services. 

And switch to something that is more related to the outcome that they expect to have for the money that they could pay for it. 

 We observe and we, we are working with such services such clients as well. We have come, you know, a journey with uh some of them as well from, from, as we mentioned this time material too, to the value-based services. And it's not an easy thing when you try to switch, especially. Your mindset from being someone that has been buying consultants pay per hour or something similar to that. And instead, look at the outcome, the value that you get from the work of the team that you want to hire and how to define that value. How to define how much you can pay for that value. So that's a journey that those clients need to take. And we can help with that. And we can see that. There's actually many in the market that are looking into this right now. So I would say that this is an interesting trend where customers take more risk. 

 Responsibility for, you know, the scope and the requirements and priorities which they want to outsource. And then they expect, you know, an output which is very well defined in deliverables, often packaged within some deployment services. 

 And somewhere in between, they expect that the partner will implement, you know, everything under certain KPIs and SLAs so they can expect a proper quality, proper timely delivery. And actually, the features that they have been defining in the scope. So that's something that is now very much on the agenda. Clients and potential clients, and I think it's it's very interesting in today's world to the market. Uh, because the clients have you know clear benefits from that, like they pay for the result, the actual value of the product, and they value the product. Yeah, so they know how much they can they can pay for that. They don't pay for the effort you know the long hours that the consultancy companies could you know charge and they also in such models they offload their organizations so there's less overhead, there's less risk on their side, you know that's something that partner takes when they take more responsibility. 

 So in the end, they have more efficient deliveries, they have a more efficient way to scale their organization at the same time, keeping the the quality and timely delivery.  And I think for companies like ours or our competition. It is basically an opportunity because, you know. 

You take more responsibility, but you have more flexibility in how you want to deliver that. And if you look at the service companies and the product companies, usually the the challenge is that—and— and I don't have anything against product companies, but you can be a little bit sometimes laid back in the product company, and the service companies are like focused on the optimization. So we want to deliver as much as we can to our customers. So they are happy. So thanks to that, we have more flexibility in how we will deliver, how we set up the way of working. 

 Basically, there is a better span of control in those delivers. 

 And you take the risk management from the customer. So that makes, you know. I think a win-win situation for both. 

So that's one key trend that I see right now. We are looking very much into and so are our clients. 

 That's very interesting. And also, as you were telling about that, I was thinking that, from a perspective, of a manager or a strategic professional, it's probably easier to plan ahead, take strategic decisions, knowing that certain partners like us for example can deliver a finished product or a finished project with in a certain timeframe. Yeah, it's just something that I thought of while you were explaining. And yeah, another. Interesting insight or fact is that there is an estimation of the growth of the outsourcing to be between 500 to 600 billion by 2030 billion dollars. So I personally thought it's going to be sort of like a dying industry, however, it's completely opposite. 

 There are many benefits to outsourcing which you mentioned. Yeah, so to summarize the ones that you mentioned, if I got them right, so they get the results that they pay for within this specific time frame, they sort of offload the risk and the overhead, and they have more efficient delivery and scaling. Yeah. Did I get that right? 

 Yeah, I think that that's basically the takeaways from it. And what I can add to that is, you know, it it may may sound you know great as an idea right you you basically expect something and you get it and you pay for it but you know the key here is to actually succeed. Sid, something that I said in the beginning, you need to switch your mindset from this kind of effort-based mindset where you talk about consultants, headcount, FTEs and hours, et cetera, to actually a service value mindset. So you need to be able, as a client, you need to be able to. 

 Evaluate what your product or feature that you want to have delivered is actually worth. And then, under that, we will implement or your partner will implement how this can be delivered without increasing your risks or cost. So, that's something that I would take as a very important part of it. And then, the key to succeed you know in that is to actually when you switch from them, that mindset you need to be much better both as a client and also as a partner. In you know, ensuring that the requirements are well understood and well elaborated. So, on one hand, the client needs to elaborate the requirements very well, and then the partner needs to understand the client. So the definition of 'ready' is crucial here. And then, at the end, when you have the outcome that you expect, you need to have a very good definition of 'done'. When will you accept the delivery, you know, where the value is actually reached for what you are paying. 

 And here, you know, especially feedback loops with users, with stakeholders is crucial to succeed in that. 

 I think it can be. Actually, it can be a little bit tricky with the agile approach, right? Because you have a certain expectation at the beginning of the project and then it changes over time. While the project is being done, basically so, yeah, do you see any other challenges or pitfalls when it comes to these projects? Perhaps you can tell a little bit about the AI-first solutions. I think that's a hot topic now, so we could touch on that. 

 Definitely, no.  and there is lots of challenges, but I think the most common always have been— you know, how to start if you are thinking about outsourcing. Is it offshoring, you know, locally from Scandinavia to Poland, just like we have started back in the years, or is it offshoring, you know, from United States or Asia to Europe? Then many companies, many stakeholders in those companies, they are actually questioning themselves how they can do that, you know, because especially in the mid-sized companies or small companies, they are not you know within it or technology domain, they have their minds on their product, usually their product or their service, something else. And they don't have big IT departments that can take responsibility for that. So I think that's one big challenge, where the companies need guidance, where this podcast could actually suit their needs and their question marks. 

So then we can. Help them is it? You know, discover workshops or is it like this? In a podcast, to actually enable other perspectives to think about how you can approach that, you know, to answer the questions? It's still worth it, uh, when the costs are going up, for example, in Europe, so that's that's a big big challenge. But if you look at that from the value perspective and return of investment perspective, then I definitely mentioned the outsourcing market and outsourcing model is still very relevant for the future, because the clients are looking not only for a volume-based outsourcing but they are looking more and more for expertise, they are looking more and more for safe ways to scale, especially if they are not a technology company. So then they need technology partners to help them. Grow to have them solve their R&D or IT bottlenecks. So definitely that's one big topic that has been with us for many years. 

 Many, many years. And we'll try to address that in this podcast and the upcoming episodes, definitely. And you mentioned AI. So I think this is also a quite a big big challenge. If you look at the AI first solutions or actually the need to implement artificial intelligence, you know, products or services, because the large corporations they they have done it, yeah, or they are doing it on a daily basis, and they have the means, they have the the the competences, they have the budgets too, uh, to actually do that, and they also create their offerings that they want to target for other large players, because that's the benefit that they can get from working with those. So very innovative, very speed head projects, large projects, global projects. And if you look at the smaller corporations or mid-sized companies, or even the smaller companies, or those that are, as I said, outside of the IT domain. 

 They often have a challenge with that you know how to even start with this fancy AI solutions. Yeah, because it's not that trivial to, say, take one of Amazon Bedrock LLM solutions, models, and just put that you know as your own instance or on premise, and connect that with your databases to be the local knowledge base, and then implement all the interfaces or visualization, the output, an easy way for the users or employees to interact with it. Yeah, it's not that trivial, say, for a financial or audit company, or even someone that is, I don't know, in the food industry, let's say. Uh, you need to have a competence, you need to have a knowledge, you need to know which models to choose, and then usually those are quite generic, so they need to fit your purpose. 

 So the challenge is to actually customize that, to implement that according to your needs and to your needs of your organization. 

 And that's usually where such companies lack the knowledge or lack the competence, or they don't have the proper partner to actually do that. I think that's. That's why also the statistic that you mentioned is also causing the outsourcing market to grow, basically. 

 That's my takeaway from it. There is another aspect to implementing the AI solutions, which I hear quite often is that Once you have the solution ready, it's great. There is the wow moment and then there is the scaling of the solution. Within the organization, as well as the quality of output that those solutions deliver, basically. It's something I hear quite often when I speak to professionals from the industry. 

 Okay. So, yeah, you mentioned outsourcing and working with clients, and I'd like to take a little step back. And perhaps you could tell a little bit about what does Holistic Connect does? Because we jumped straight into it. 

 I think that, you know, the idea about this podcast is to actually talk about, you know, some valuable topics. 

 Of course, we don't want to be anonymous because it's quite a big project that we want to roll out and it's quite many people behind it from our company. Company, you, myself, and the others from our growth team—um, so uh, yeah, holistic plays quite a lot of uh part in this in this idea in this um podcast and I think what uh we are doing as a company is something that we have been actually talking about. So we have originated as a custom software house based here in Poland and we have evolved into a specialized you know software services partner uh for clients within you know biotech, telecom, automotive, and entertainment industries. And that's only few that I mentioned. That's why I was talking about this unique position that we can bring a lot of expertise from and perspective from different domains. 

 

 And what we specialize in is embedded and connectivity solutions for automotive. 

 For IoT, for smart home solutions, and other industries as well. And then our main part is actually a digital product. Is it building cloud-based solutions? Is it building AI-first solutions? Or more, I would say, old-school? You know, back-end, front-end solutions. That's where we fit the purpose. That's where we help our clients to scale their operations within R&D or IT and help them. To build either internal tools, internal infrastructure, or actually external products that then they sell in a B2B or B2C manner. and you ask what we do and and i can quote one one customer that we work with for for many many years is that when i ask him you know how he how he sees our collaboration then he said I think it's one of the best because basically guys you solve our problems without annoying us so uh that's you know also shows uh the part of our culture and and that we try to focus on the partnership and and actually solving uh the the problems of our customers is it by challenging them is it by consulting isn't by you know implementing what exactly they wish, if it's right, but without being this annoying, you know, outsourcing company that just wants more and more and more and more. So it's the other way around. We want to give back, actually, quite a lot. 

 That is also one of the reasons why I joined. 

  That's the proof, actually. 

  Looking back, it's been five or six months and I still enjoy working here and I think it's consistent with what I how I portrayed the company and I still think the same. So from the inside person info, I can say it is as it is. As it seems. So yeah, maybe briefly, you could say a few words about what inspired you to fund the company. 

 

 I think, as usual, it was, you know, personal ambition in the beginning when I finished. I think, now, it's more like 10 years ago when I finished my easy job. I didn't want to, like, jump on another, you know, corporate, uh, um, role. And I have been been working for many, many years with Scandinavian clients, especially with Sweden. And I wanted to connect the business approach that Scandinavian countries have. 

 Sweden is famous for the unicorns and for the global brands that they have. And then I wanted to connect that with, you know, our Polish ambition. Uh, entrepreneurial approach and, and you know, the work ethics that we have, and create an environment where we can actually bring more, you know, interesting, cool projects to Poland and show how good the Polish engineers actually are on a global scale. And I think that was the initial ambition. And I was always a builder, so to build a new company was very ambitious for me. So at some point I have run into a colleague of mine that was actually looking for someone to help him establish a new project in Poland. And that was a quite large investment from a Swedish. 

 Client and, unfortunately, we have ended up only as a second in that request and my previous employer actually won. So that kind of even sparked more ambition within me and, after a couple of months, I just gave them, you know, a call back to actually challenge them, if we should turn all the ideas that we have had and all the work that we have done from being only on paper to reality. 

 And they agreed to that. So a couple of weeks later, we have met in a Copenhagen airport to start drafting, you know, like initial business plans and so on. And that turned out to be also an interview for me, if I'm the right guy to help them out. 

 And a few months later, we have signed the papers in Wroclaw just a few days after my 35th birthday. So that's the story how the company. Nice present. Yeah. And we are building it since then for the last eight years. 

 And it's going quite good from what I can tell. So yeah, thank you for this. insightful story. 

 Perhaps we can wrap up a little bit here. So the things we talked about today were: why we're doing this podcast, what benefits or what value we want to deliver through this channel. Also, we discussed some trends and tips for businesses considering outsourcing. 

 Yeah, anything else that we should add here, if I haven't missed anything? 

 Outsourcing. 

 Model you know is still very relevant, depending how you look at it. If you take it as a you know a strategic decision and you look at the return on investment from that, then that's how I think the companies, potential clients, are looking into. Scaling their businesses should actually think about outsourcing because then the return is much greater than the cost itself. 

  Basically, so I think that's something that I would say to the audience: if you are considering it, don't Don't just say no because it's difficult because you have never done it. Just reach out to a colleague that has done it to reach out to a potential. Partner or a couple of partners, just to benchmark them, and do not ask only for you know the solution, but ask also for the guidance how to start. You know, outsourcing, how to build remote team, how to define, you know, value-based service. And that's what you can actually succeed because. Our stars or our competitions, they are, they are happy to help with with that part of the journey as well. So I would say that, yeah, challenge yourself and ask for guidance. That's how you can evaluate the model properly. 

 Another interesting stat that I saw came across recently is that nearly 40% of mid-sized companies outsource to stay competitive. 

 Yeah, which is quite interesting. 

 Exactly, yes, that's that's very much true. It speed ups the development definitely when you are a kind of a scale-up phase company. 

 Right, so Maciej, this has been very insightful. Thank you very much for joining me today. 

 And thank you everyone who's listening. We'll share this podcast on all the platforms that we think are relevant. And coming up in this series, we'll feature conversations with some of our clients and other professionals from the industry. We'll be looking at the biotech, telecom, automotive, entertainment industries, and the idea is to provide you with knowledge and share it with you. So we also are thinking to divide it into mini series. So that's something you'll see coming up. And if you'd like to take part of the conversation, either as a guest or via a recommendation, feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn or through our website. And we'll be happy to chat. 

Yeah, definitely. We will have many interesting guests, so it doesn't end with both of us being here constantly. 

 I think give us feedback, you know, subscribe to the platforms. And then if you have ideas that are within outsourcing for a topic or episode, then of course, reach out to us and we'll consider, for example, inviting you as well as a guest. So yeah, give us the feedback, subscribe and help us grow this channel so that we can spread the knowledge and show the various perspectives on outsourcing. 

 Right. Thanks again for your time today. And I look forward to our next episode. 

  Yeah, thank you very much. It was great talking to you. Take care. Bye bye. 

  Thanks for listening. What's one thing from the episode that made you think? Let us know in the comments and subscribe to the show. It really helps more people discover it. See you next time.