Making Outsourcing a Safer Option

Outsourcing is a viable strategy to manage the requirement to control and reduce costs and create a more flexible and reactive resourcing platform; however too many times we have heard the horror stories of when it goes wrong. Successful outsourced relationships are more likely to be achieved when both the customer and the service provider make the effort to ensure that the control mechanisms are in place to provide independent measurement and visibility of service levels and status.


Unfortunately in a significant number of cases when working with an outsourced service delivery partner the management of the contract seems to be performing in accordance with the terms of the SLA’s agreed but the user experience does not reflect acceptable levels of satisfaction. Typically calls raised are not acted upon in sufficient time, response times are poor, access to particular applications or information is not consistent. In experiencing these problems it is not uncommon for the reasons for the delays and issues to be pushed back at the service users with excuses such as the SLA was put on hold because no one was available to provide the information needed.

I’m convinced that one of the major challenges with outsourced contracts is that the visibility, reporting and responsibility for ensuring that the SLA statistics are available lie with the outsourcer.

It’s a bit like having the poachers as the game keepers.

This dichotomy can be resolved by the use of independent monitoring and reporting on the critical aspects of your systems. Tools exist that can be overlaid on your infrastructure to allow you to verify or contest the assertions of your provider, or, more equitably, be used by both parties as the benchmark for the management of the contract. These tools will allow drill down to the root cause of the problem without the need for the service user to be available and provide the information needed to analyse and correct the problem.

These systems are driven through KPI thresholds that in most cases mean that issues are anticipated and raised proactively and resolved before they become critical with the result that the service users are not impacted by performance outages or degradation.

There is hope!

If you have outsourced your services, ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you and your users confident and happy with the services being provided?
• Are your SLA’s being constantly met, yet you are concerned that performance and availability does not reflect expectation?
• Who generates the reports that you use to govern your contract and supplier?
• What can you do to resolve it?

Then contact us!