Words of Wisdom on Infrastructure Outsourcing

Phil Sayer, Forrester Research, writes a helpful article and offers insights from their findings.    From CIO.com:

Forester found that I&O professionals should:
Retain knowledge and expertise. Consider business, technical, and governance criteria when identifying key skills and resources required for rapid response to unplanned business needs as well as control over future strategy and architecture.

Manage the outsourcing relationship. Clear, continuous communication of business needs and expectations between the internal IT staff and the external provider helps establish and manage realistic expectations all around. Regular service and contract reviews are a vital part of this process.

Monitor and manage the supplier. IT organizations need dedicated internal resources to monitor service levels, manage change, escalate late trouble tickets, and hold regular service meetings. Attention to detail is essential to obtain good service from the supplier.

Maintain the balance of control and initiative. An adequately staffed and knowledgeable internal IT organization signals independence and helps drive external providers to deliver service to the contracted quality level and to demonstrate value.

Consuming IT As A Service

More and more today, vendors are calling directly into the various departments that use technology. Examples are things like online meeting providers and CRM vendors. They’re just doing their jobs to understand how their products will be used, but they’re also going around the IT department. How do you balance the need to be responsive (probably with a smaller department than ever before) with the responsibility for all things technology?

Great article in Search CIO on this subject can be found here.

The Human Element in Outsourcing

 

People are an organization’s most valuable asset. And they are a vital part of a successful sourcing equation. Register now for The Human Element in Outsourcing.

Register for this webinar sponsored by Alsbridge

Highlights include…

* Outsourcing and the effect it has on affected employees and stakeholders
* Service transition and engaging those same employees for the transition
* A thorough communications strategy to prevent disruption, fear and uncertainty in your organization

Hello world!

Welcome to CXOSourcingRoundtable.  Here we hope to provide a space where technology and business professionals and managers can discuss how technology can and should be deployed to support business objectives and not just for the sake of cool new stuff.   Really, today you cannot seperate technolgy from business because it is so crucial to operations, service delivery, marketing, customer service, you name it.

What would you like to discuss?

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