The current economic climate is making
businesses and individuals alike look to ways to reduce
expenditure, and ensure their survival. Within most modern
business environments we are all reliant on computer systems for
the day to day operations and communications, so when these systems
fail downtime can be very expensive and it becomes critical to get
these systems back up quickly.
A lot of larger organisations generally
have in-house teams on stand-by to sort out any technical/software
issues that may occur. But having a large team of highly
technical individuals waiting for a phone call could be said to be
a luxury for a company facing a downturn. Yes they may work on
other smaller projects when they are not dealing with bugs, but by
in large they are a very expensive helpdesk that are not utilised
to their full potential, and so this is not an efficient resourcing
model.
One common solution to the problem is
to outsource the infrastructure support (covering the hardware of
desktop computers and servers, simple software packages such as MS
Office, network, Internet connection and so on) to a 3rd
party specialist, who can achieve economies of scale by servicing
many customers. A much less common practice is to outsource
support of the business critical applications to a 3rd
party specialist support company who will enable you to continue to
enjoy a high level service and response time but also reduce the
overheads and make your business or IT Department more
efficient.
As already stated the main reason for
outsourcing the support of business critical applications is to
reduce the overall operational costs. Therefore in the first
instance and first step in this process will be to reduce the total
cost of ownership: there isn't the outlay of salaries to consider
as retainers for the contracts are generally a lot lower than a
qualified programmer.
In addition to the overall cost benefits of contracting
3rd party support there is also the benefits of
utilising a pool of experts in the field of application maintenance
and support. These teams are trained specifically to respond to a
wide range of issues, to a guaranteed quality of service plus
ensuring the Service Level Agreements (SLA) are met. And it
is a lot easier to enforce adherence to an SLA in a contract with a
supplier than in an employment contract!
Specialist support teams might also allow you to reduce the risk
of relying on key personnel or small suppliers to respond to
problems. For instance if the in-house team only contains 1
developer that is skilled in a particular technology, but they are
on holiday when a problem occurs, obtaining a fix could take days
losing the business money each hour or day the problem persists.
I've actually heard of situations where the sole programmer was on
a plane to Egypt when a critical system went down, and the poor
programmer had to get on the first plane back once he'd been
contacted. This issue is removed from outsourcing as the suppliers
ensure their teams contain an array of support developers who will
all have been trained up on the software, so if the main contact is
off there would always be another member of staff on hand to meet
the SLAs.
Making In-house teams more productive
In these times of sometimes over the top application of health
& safety regulations and with ever more demanding employment
law, reducing stress on individuals is an imperative for most
businesses. Relying on too few people to support business
critical systems stresses them and may leave them feeling unable to
take holidays.
In-house teams can perceive support to be "boring" and so
deploying them away from support and on to new initiatives can help
bolster motivation and team morale, so taking away the notion that
they are just help desk operatives. Like any skilled professional
they are happier and gain more satisfaction if they are being
challenged and asked to come up with new ideas to aid business
performance. This can also improve return on investment (ROI) as it
allows the teams to concentrate on strategic change which adds
value to the company.
Enterprises that move the support to an external suppler find
that costs are also reduced because the teams are familiar with
code which reduces the business impact arising from downtime, due
to a wealth of knowledge and expertise to deal with any aspect of
the systems.
Outsourcing to an offshore supplier will probably offer you the
lowest possible headline price and is gaining widespread acceptance
on IT projects. However offshoring increases the risks of
cultural and other differences affecting quality of service, and in
my experience many businesses are now bringing services back on
shore.
Are you already outsourcing?
If you already outsource application software development then
the quality and experience of ongoing support contracts should be
an essential part of the business's decision making process to
select a supplier, as the quality of support you receive can have a
direct impact on the longevity, stability and reliability of the
solution. Support of bespoke software should not be
approached like support of a package. A traditional support
contract which offers free upgrades and technical support is not
appropriate to bespoke software which will not
inherently receive any updates unless you specify what you
want. Instead, it is recommended a specialist contract is
drawn up and your supplier should be as flexible as the business
situation demands.
In summary, outsourcing of infrastructure or application support can save
you money and give better quality of service than an in house team
or small supplier. There's no reason not to have done it
already, but it's an easy opportunity to report a saving to the
Board or Shareholders during these difficult times.
If you're going to go ahead and do it,
don't forget to take appropriate legal advice before cutting
headcount.