Whether your IT department is large or small, social networking sites demand special skill sets and specific engineering expertise. Communicate these points to your IT resources and start an objective conversation before moving forward about the possibility of using a SaaS vendor.

Know clearly what you want to accomplish

For an implementation to succeed, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish. Unless you do, a vendor will be the one to help you define your needs, and your platform will end up based on their ideas. Be certain your IT personnel know they will be involved in any dialogue with a potential vendor, start to finish.

If your goal is rapid ROI, make sure IT knows this

Whether it’s common knowledge or stated formally, every department is aware of its limitations. Hosted solutions definitely lend themselves to a more rapid deployment which will translate into more rapid ROI. Compare the implementation projections submitted by potential providers to your IT department’s projections. Stick to your goals.

Lay out the upfront costs to IT decision-makers

After consultations with prospective partners, the real-world numbers of your implementation should be clearly spelled out. After all, industry experts estimate a huge savings reward in outsourcing IT development. In fact, the reductions in capital outlay and operating costs will help drive the SaaS market to over $10 billion in revenue by 2011. A trend that powerful is difficult to argue with.

Start a dialogue about the breadth of your ITdepartment

Smaller companies, especially, should be cautious about implementing a large in-house social media project. If your IT staff has an obvious bandwidth limit, they will understand the pitfalls of onsite development and engineering. Discuss with your IT director whether his or her staff is prepared to take charge of security, management and connectivity for the long haul. An agreeable consensus should come to light sooner rather than later. If your breadth of IT resources is limited, the services of a SaaS provider really begins to make sense.

Find a balance between aggressive and realistic objectives

Ask for your IT leaders’ input on goal-setting. Empower them to do an independent analysis of a planned social media project’s demands on human resources and physical capacity, then together, compare the costs and scheduling estimates to the submissions of your top vendor prospect. Again, agreement over the comparisons should evolve.

Let your IT people know you trust them

Take a look at point number six in this article at TechRepublic.

If your IT manager(s) and staff know you have faith in their abilities, they won’t feel slighted when a large-scale implementation is outsourced for the right reasons. Communicate your belief that IT is who you rely on when problems need to be solved and deadlines have to be met. Convey the realization that their core competencies will continue to grow and contribute to your organization’s success—even without the crush of a major social media deployment.

Please comment if you have thoughts about your IT department’s involvement in