Today’s information technology (IT) organizations face a dilemma. On the one hand, the digital economy is accelerating the pace of change in IT. The adoption of emerging technologies, the development of new business models and the consumerization of IT require that it evolve rapidly. On the other hand, IT faces a constant cost pressure and an increasing commoditization of services, which enable new sourcing approaches.…
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Transform Your IT and Get in Shape for the Digital Economy
Smart IT Governance Boosts Financial Performance and Business Alignment
Do you have persistent challenges aligning business and IT strategy? Do projects get bogged down in constant consensus-building and lose momentum? Do decisions continually get unnecessarily elevated to higher executive levels, slowing time-to-market? Many companies have well-established governance mechanisms for finance and other corporate functions, but these same companies often have immature IT governance mechanisms despite significant IT assets, capital investments and operating budgets.…
Setting the Table for Many … Service Providers, That Is
The sourcing environment has become intensely complex with every type of operational service potentially being outsourced, shared sourced, or retained and squeezed in every direction to increase productivity and profit line contribution. And all of this is complicated by multiple providers who must somehow work effectively together.
Managing business requirements (demand) and service providers (supply) in an integrated fashion is one of the greatest management challenges facing today’s executives.…
End-User Computing Levers Can Help You Manage Costs
Now that you’ve signed the contract, is your organization experiencing higher than anticipated end-user computing (EUC) and device growth? How is your service provider reacting to your demand? Have you been surprised by a different charging model to manage the growth? Are the business case benefits beginning to erode? If you answer yes to any of these questions, the following Top 5 ideas will help you get your EUC under control.…
Is Your Mega-Outsourcing Contract Renewal Closer Than You Think?
The renewal of a major second generation outsourcing contract presents an interesting dilemma. Changing service providers, especially one that manages a large part of your operations, is never easy, even in the best of circumstances. The incumbency factor, shrinkage in your retained organization, the limited internal capability depth and the need to devote management bandwidth to a huge transition, all while keeping the lights on, would give pause to most organizations.…
Beef Up Your Data Protection Strategy to Match Business Needs
Events such as the 9/11 attacks and the tsunami in Japan have caused many organizations to reassess their overall data protection strategies for data backup and recovery, disaster recovery and business continuity, as well as long-term retention and security of their data. However, most business downtime is caused not by catastrophic events or major natural disasters but by hardware failures, data loss, power outages or UPS failures, network outages, security breaches, human error and application failures.…
Reimagining Your Outsourcing to Drive Productivity
Productivity is the ratio of inputs to outputs. Doing more for less is good. While outsourcing has aspired to do more for less, we have typically seen what has been called “the same mess for less.” Tightly controlled outsourcing contracts that have reduced risk and cost have also limited creativity and reengineering that could lead to improved labor productivity.…
Service Providers Tell All: How to Improve Innovation in Services Relationships
Clients often complain that they don’t get enough innovation from their service providers, so we asked a group of providers at our recent Sourcing Industry Conference about why this might be. They defined innovation as a two-way street and said their clients don’t understand the collaborative process needed to foster innovation.…
I’ll Have Another! Why Demand Management is Critical
You will recognize “I’ll Have Another” as the 2012 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, but it is also a typical refrain from clients who consistently ask for more. While clients need to understand the implications of their requests, the sourcing governance group also needs to be able to manage the requests and the service provider with a clear process.…
The “Crying Game” — Ending the Tears in Outsourcing Relationships
Tolstoy wrote that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. Similarly, the dynamics of dysfunctional outsourcing relationships run the gamut from heated and confrontational to stony and passive/aggressive. But while the symptoms of discontent may vary, the underlying source of unhappiness can typically be traced to one essential root cause: ineffective governance.…
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