Outsourced Services
The renewal of a long term Outsource contract was causing our client considerable concern, their lack of visibility of the managed estate and more importantly the translation of business requirement into IT requirement, had been outsourced along with the technology.
The ADaM Framework captured the entire Business IT landscape providing the client with not only the ability to challenge the renewal assumptions but also a way of qualifying the actual business requirement for the scope of services.
There are four fundamentals that need to be considered when outsourcing -
- Saving Money should not be the primary goal
- Only outsource what you understand and can control
- All T&C’s should be agreed before any outsource takes place
- The Golden Rule is “KPC” – Know, Plan & Control
There is always a fear within an organization when they consider the outsourcing of key services and functions. The main fear is the lack of ongoing control over the outsourcing partner. By employing the ADaM Framework prior to outsourcing any infrastructure or services the organization can continue to know, plan and control the dependencies and risks inherent in outsourcing critical business functions.
The first step to outsourcing is to define the landscape under consideration and agree the demarcation point. The second stage is to put in place the procedures and protocols for the ongoing outsourcing contract to remain under the control of the organization for which it is accountable.
Using the ADaM 4A's Principle to define the business landscape and demarcation point and populating the ADaM Framework with the knowledge base allows for a smooth handover to the outsourcer whilst the organization retains control.
Ongoing, any changes to the outsourced infrastructure or services can be initiated using the Project Request functions within the ADaM Framework. The multiple changes that result from the project request can then be listed, documented, time lined, costed and authorized from both a financial perspective and based on the business impact analysis.