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Shared Services: The Next Step

White Paper | Category:   Strategy & Business Case  Transition & Governance  IT Infrastructure & Applications...

Shared services organizations (SSOs) are measured based on the perceived or derived value from the output of their operations. SSOs believed to be on the forefront of providing maximum value to their customers exhibit many common characteristics during their evolution to maturity that others seeking to improve their current organizations can learn and use to their benefit.

This white paper will discuss the typical evolutionary path seen in these valuable organizations, review the techniques and best practices they are employing, describe some of the organizational models being used and offer tips for your SSO regardless of where it stands.

Tap the Full Potential of Outsourcing with Advanced Vendor Management

eNews | Category:   Transition & Governance  IT Infrastructure & Applications  Outsourcing

Advancing your organization's vendor management practice is essential to tapping the full strategic potential of your outsourcing investment and leveraging continuous improvements in your vendor's process and technology capabilities.

CIOs today are depending on vendors to deliver a larger portion of their IT service portfolio and play a pivotal role in improving corporate IT practices. Because critical business processes are now more tightly coupled with IT services than ever, it's imperative for CIOs to create a core competency for managing vendors and maintaining a productive vendor relationship. An advanced vendor management capability can help an IT organization avoid the risk of being held captive or reliant on any one provider or by paying rates that are not in line with the market.

Today's outsourcing deals are of shorter duration than in years past. At present, deals are typically signed for 3-5 year terms whereas 10-15 year terms were common in the not-so-distant past. Given the need to rapidly and efficiently integrate and leverage a vendor's services into an IT organization, it's important to develop an advanced vendor management capability. Otherwise, an outsourcing buyer never realizes the true value of their investment and is ill-prepared to monitor the market (price, service levels, etc.), renegotiate, or efficiently migrate services to another outsourcing provider without taking a step backwards.

The new directive on outsourcing for CIOs is to look beyond the traditional advantages of labor arbitrage to ensure they leverage their vendors for innovation and sustainable transformational efficiencies. The internal IT organization must become more effective at integrating vendor capabilities and continually aligning them to reinforce changes that enable the business to adjust to dynamics in their economic environment. For CIOs to be successful in this endeavor, it requires advancements in vendor management capabilities, both in terms of leadership and structure.

Multi-Vendor IT Sourcing, Avoid Management Pitfalls

eNews | Category:   Strategy & Business Case  Provider Selection  Transition & Governance...

Decision making on a company’s IT sourcing comes down to the respective strengths exhibited by responding providers.  While a total outsource of IT operations involves core and non-core infrastructure, applications maintenance and development, customers discover that one provider’s strength is another’s weakness and vice versa. 

Further, applications are often awarded to more than one provider to leverage experience, business and regional strengths.  Desktop maintenance may even be sourced by the outsourcing provider to a partner to expand its breadth of delivery capability, or the provider may manage the company’s agreements only to replace them if they acquire better pricing and service delivery. In today’s environment, cloud services do not have to reside with a company’s current outsourcing partner.
Procurement departments are challenged to negotiate lower prices and therefore may attempt to achieve price savings through multi-vendor sourcing. However, the cost may be greater in the long run taking into consideration risk, complexity and greater internal cost to manage the agreements. Still, many companies source their IT operations to more than one provider and successfully execute. The key is to avoid the common pitfalls of vendor management.

This article lists some of the reasons for successful multi-vendor IT sourcing.

Vendor Relationship Management: The Next Wave in Strategic Sourcing

eSeminar | Category:   Transition & Governance  IT Infrastructure & Applications  Finance & Accounting Services...

As sourcing consultants we are often asked, "What is the next wave of strategies for sustaining cost reductions and driving efficiencies in an intensifying and competitive business environment?" The answer is in how companies are addressing vendor relationship management and creating incentives that better leverage the capabilities of their current providers.

This webinar will discuss new vendor relationship management and service management environments, the challenges of improving vendor relations already under duress, and tools and methods for putting troubled vendor relationships back on track. We will also discuss processes for extracting increased value from vendors, as well as best practices in vendor relationship management that leading edge companies are already applying in order to deliver maximum value from their multi-sourcing provider base.

Attendees will gain ideas for effective vendor relationship management including:

• Creating fact-based discussions between clients and providers that address performance issues
• Defining joint innovation opportunities
• Creating incentives for improved provider performance

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