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JOY OF OUTSOURCING
[Update: I forgot to link to my current InfoWorld column in my
original post! ] My current InfoWorld column deals with an
outsourcing arrangement that is proving to be increasingly
compelling as time goes on. (Note that my column is not a
general pro-outsourcing argument, as one sentence makes clear:
"Although I don�t think outsourcing is inherently beneficial, a
good outsourcing relationship can deliver amazing benefits.")
Right now, my key internal systems are being monitored by a
24-hour NOC (network operations center) using integrated
monitoring solutions that I would never be able to buy or
integrate into my environment. Our employees benefit from
around-the-clock support. A seamlessly automated, proactive
patching solution keeps our systems up-to-date and every desktop
or laptop is backed up every day regardless of location. I don�t
manage these nuts-and-bolts, but I am able to track them via a
convenient Web-based dashboard that gives me an instant read on
the health of my IT environment, and I receive monthly reports
on end-user satisfaction that are audited by a third party. The
array of services offered to me has broadened in the past year,
but I will actually be paying less for them as my provider
continues to achieve economies of scale with a growing customer
base.
Lest this arrangement sound a little too utopian, the employees
at InfoWorld do the usual complaining about IT support (when
you're dealing with Microsoft products, nothing is perfect), but
through my outsourcer, I actually have third-party audited
satisfaction scores to cut through the din and lots of traps and
mechanisms to deal with the inevitable instances of
dissatisfaction. Having run relatively small in-house desktop
support teams, I know that the work itself is demanding and it's
often difficult to carve out the management time to put
objective mechanisms in place to measure how well your employee
population is being served. Typically, you end up relying on
anecdotal evidence too much and if one person has a bad
experience, it's difficult to point to any reasonably objective
trends in the rest of your body of service to make it clear that
one bad experience is an anomaly (and maybe it isn't!) In any
case, the old adage that you can't manage what you can't measure
holds true in desktop support as well, it's just difficult for a
small organization to put together systems that deliver
consistent and regular performance metrics. A carefully
considered outsourcing arrangement with clear built-in
performance metrics can get you there (and, of course, a poor
outsourcing arrangement with unclear performance metrics can
kill you).
A final thought occurred to me while I was writing this column
-- while many IT folks still attack outsourcing as a "bad
thing," there's another side to the story. The outsourcers I
currently deal with are all local IT professionals like me.
Outsourcing isn't fundamentally a job-destroying concept. For
example, the guys who manage our web hosting infrastructure work
just down the street. I wouldn't be surprised to see them out at
lunch, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy them a beer if I saw them
in the local pub after work.
--Chad Dickerson at June 7, 2004 10:43 AM
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