IT outsourcing: how and why

Why would my company need IT outsourcing:

1. Release IT staff from routine or non–core tasks
2. Concentrate on the main functions and aims of your business
3. Reduce the financial burden on the company
4. Make use of highly specialized IT professionals without the need of hiring and maintaining your own staff

It is quite real to achieve all of the above with a proper approach to outsourcing. This post covers:

1. how to prepare and launch a campaign of outsourcing IT processes of your company
2. how to choose a reliable supplier
3. what can and cannot be delegated to IT outsourcing

Preparing for IT outsourcing

First you have to evaluate the readiness of your company to outsource IT processes:

1. understand the main management of processes of IT services in your company
2. specify specific and achievable performance targets
3. answer this question: Am I satisfied with the management of the IT needs of my company? What can be changed?

This analysis will help to avoid further difficulties and make the work of the contractor most productive.

Now it’s time to start calculating cost–effectiveness. Experience shows that in theory, customers know that IT outsourcing can save money, but in practice not everyone can correctly calculate the cost of maintenance of their own IT department.

Costs for the maintenance of the IT infrastructure are divided into three main groups:

1. Direct costs of salaries of IT professionals
2. Direct and indirect costs of the organization of the working process (the cost of jobs, including area, the cost of training and development of personnel)
3. Other costs (risk management, organization, communication, infrastructure)

Choosing an outsourcer

The whole business depends on IT infrastructure. Of course, one must consider the choice of the supplier of IT outsourcing with all seriousness.

Select several service providers and refer to their customers, whether they are satisfied with the work done? IT outsourcing company must have at least 3 satisfied customers who confirm that it can be dealt with.

Determined with a partner? Now we need a clear and simple contract. The key indicator of a proper contract is Service Level Agreement (SLA Service). SLA should cover:

What can and cannot be delegated to IT outsourcer?

It is not recommended to outsource the whole IT infrastructure of your company. Let’s find out what is best to outsource, and what it is necessary to leave within the company.

One should start with an extra load you can easily get rid of:

Service desk / Support

This is the standard and most popular the service of IT outsourcers. In the event of failure service desk can quickly accept and route calls in a timely manner, eliminate the technical problems and restore the lost pace of work. Satisfied users, the lack of technical problems and cost reduction in the end–users’ service — that’s what you will get delegating the service desk to outsourcing supplier. In our case, HiTech Service provides a responsive service desk based on truly human relations and high expertise.

IT Infrastructure Management. Productivity depends on the success of the IT infrastructure. It will increase the outsourcing of performance indicators, will make costs more transparent, and will save on overhead costs — licenses purchase, maintenance, lease and utility bills.

Applications and workplace management

A good outsourcer will reduce the cost of ownership for business applications and improve the efficiency of workplace maintenance. Moreover, delegating the automation of application deployment to outsourcer, you reduce the cost of an expensive software.

Infrastructure Management Services

IT outsourcer will provide suite of services to help you manage your infrastructure much more efficiently and cost–effectively.

This includes:

1. Server Management
2. Security Device Management
3. Database Management
4. Storage Management
5. Network Management
6. Managed Communications
7. Managed Messaging
8. Enterprise Monitoring Services

However, under the focus of the internal IT staff should remain all the most difficult and important things.

Critical services. This is part of the IT system, which is responsible for key business processes. The ability to quickly change the service in accordance with the market situation and development trends, specifics of the business are more visible from the inside. If critical services are managed by internal IT service, company gets a more structured service and can effectively manage it.

Properly constructed IT outsourcing provides not only a partial risk insurance in case of failures of the IT infrastructure, but also controls the level of service.

HiTech Service provides you with all the necessary services and personnel to outsource your IT.