Technology continues to infuse our homes, businesses, and places of employment. For example, the “Internet of Things” – as it is sometimes called – brings a lot of promise to a wide variety of industries and sectors, including farming, government, natural resources, and manufacturing. The list goes on. Even though…
Quantitative measures of supplier performance in the form of service levels are critical in any outsourcing relationship. However, they provide an incomplete picture of how well the supplier is performing and meeting the client’s business and IT objectives. A common complaint is that the service levels are green each month,…
We recently completed a major renegotiation of a very large, longstanding infrastructure outsourcing contract. As is typical with renegotiations, there were areas of the contract that required changes and areas the client wanted to leave alone. In this case, scope (and the presumed current solution) was to be left alone…
In Part 1 of this blog post Time to Mind Your Ps and Qs we made the case that there is limited additional opportunity in continuing to pound on “P” in the P x Q = Total Price equation and that to achieve the next breakthrough the supplier community has…
In Part 1 of this blog post (Time To Mind Your Ps and Qs), we made the case that there is limited additional opportunity in continuing to pound on “P” in the P x Q = Total Price equation, and that to achieve the next breakthrough the supplier community has…
Traditionally, the mechanism for creating value in an IT Infrastructure sourcing has been to push down hard, real hard, on price — the “P” lever. The notion is that a sourcing will result in a lower unit cost for the labor needed to manage a device or deliver a service.…
Industry research firm Horses for Sources reported recently that 49% of the companies it surveyed were planning to outsource call center services for the first time, or expand the scope of their existing call center outsourcing, over the next year. With call center outsourcing on the rise, we wanted to…
There is an inherent “right brain / left brain” tension in procuring outsourced services. The right side of the brain seeks innovative service delivery solutions and emphasizes relationship building with the supplier. The left brain seeks a high level of supplier accountability for performance, competitive pricing and favorable contractual terms.…
Like most everything in life, the making of an outsourcing transaction is a process of taking amorphous ideas and concepts (fuzziness) to a point where there is sufficient clarity for all involved to move forward in a coordinated and desired manner (crispness). While true for all transactional components of an…
In part one of this post, we examined the challenge of discussing IT demand in terms meaningful to our internal customers. That accomplished, the CIO’s organization must next fulfill that demand by acquiring, integrating and delivering the appropriate service(s), whether sourced internally or from the marketplace. Imagine for a moment…