Plan Lets Businesses “Get their Feet Wet” with Managed
Services
Farmington Hills, MI, June 9,
2010 – More than a quick fix for a short-term crisis,
outsourcing and managed services represent a paradigm shift for IT
departments away from the time-honored presumption that being
responsible for IT means doing everything yourself.
“To succeed, you have to realize that no one
is getting a huge IT budget increase, so the only way to keep up
with the changes in business today is to rethink how you deliver IT
to your company,” says Wayne Kiphart, Logicalis’ Vice President of
Managed Services. When organizations consider different ways
to support their IT environments and increase ROI, they must first
determine how outsourcing fits and what opportunities exist for
outsourcing selected IT tasks. Logicalis technologists
recommend IT professionals begin with Four Steps to Success
in IT Outsourcing:
1.
Start at the Pain. Define the specific IT tasks
that are candidates to be outsourced, choosing the technology areas
within your company that you already know could be working better.
Establishing a clear set of objectives at the outset, and a defined
resolution to the problems causing these “pain points,” is critical
to a successful outcome.
“The ideal approach is to have your IT
department focus on business processes that are unique to your
organization and leverage managed services for the IT tasks
necessary to support those business processes,” says Kevin Clark,
Logicalis’ Business Manager for Managed Services.
2.
Calculate Your Costs. The goal of
outsourcing, while multifaceted, always includes a desire to reduce
costs. This means conducting an assessment of the
real costs of the tasks you are considering outsourcing,
and determining how much time personnel spend on these tasks. Then
you can compare these costs to your outsourcing partner’s service
contract, determining what your savings can be.
3.
Figure Out Who’s Who. Create an action plan that
you can use to compare different providers’ offerings and service
level agreements. Be sure you compare apples to apples. Don’t
underestimate the value that services delivered on ITIL v3
standards will bring and how that affects your service levels. Also
take a close look at response times compared with resolution
times.
4.
Get Your Feet Wet. Once you’ve assessed your pain,
determined your costs and developed a plan it’s time to move. Don’t
take on too large a task for your first time out, but choose a task
that can be measured. Communication is important, so assign an
internal contact to work with the outsourcing provider. Makes sure
to select someone who can explain the company’s core objectives at
the outset and update the service provider over time, overseeing
the service provider’s work as if the outsourcing partner is an
employee.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international
provider of integrated information and communications technology
(ICT) solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of
knowledge and expertise in communications and collaboration; data
center optimization; application development and integration; and
outsourcing and managed services.
With its international headquarters in the UK,
Logicalis Group employs over 1,900 people worldwide, including
highly trained service specialists who design, specify, deploy and
manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the needs of over 6,500
corporate and public sector customers. To achieve this,
Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with technology leaders
such as Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues in
excess of $1 billion, from operations in the UK, US, Germany, Latin
America and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of
the leading IT and Communications service providers, specializing
in the areas of advanced technologies and services.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec Limited, a $4.2
billion revenue business listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM
Stock Exchanges (LSE/JSE: DTC).
For more information about Logicalis, visit
http://www.us.logicalis.com/.