COMMENT
Thorough testing at every stage in the outsourcing cycle will be essential, and therefore you'll want to agree the process of testing with your provider upfront. The acceptable pass rate for these tests should be clear and agreed upon, and the costs of testing (which may be significant) should be fully transparent. The implications of failing a test and the costs of rework are best to be formulated in advance so commercial considerations do not derail progress.
The trend towards multi-vendor systems puts even more emphasis upon effective interoperability - the extent to which individual systems work consistently as a whole. An emerging practice of collaborative 'plug testing' helps to ensure that systems work to common standards and principles across the full spectrum of technologies.
Stability
For a system to behave predictably, it must operate effectively in everyday conditions but also perform properly when things go wrong. The 'blue screen of death' will be familiar to many end users but would be completely unacceptable behaviour for an enterprise wide system.
IT outsourcers build their reputation upon the security and stability of their services (prevention really is cheaper and more profitable than fault fixing). Therefore, if you are working with an established provider, you can usually have confidence in their potential to provide a stable platform. But it's still essential to work actively with the supplier to ensure this potential is realised in your own unique circumstances.
Working with your suppliers during the selection phase will give you greater confidence in their approach to ensuring the availability of their services. While sticking to the principle of specifying outputs and standards rather than detailed methods, you should satisfy yourself about the arrangements for fault diagnosis and fixing, planned preventive and pre-emptive maintenance, and arrangements for business continuity (including any planned redundancy in the system).
Monitoring and fine tuning
You should have a number of service-level agreements (SLAs) defined with your supplier that are relevant to the reliability of the system. Ultimately, there is no better measure of reliability than customer feedback - and this should be shared with suppliers in a constructive manner to foster a joint problem-solving approach to any issues that are revealed.
An effective IT quality management system, such as Six Sigma, may ensure that a control process is put in place so the outputs are consistent and reliable - and that any minor issues are quickly and cost-effectively resolved in collaboration between client and supplier.
Looking to the future, the good news is that systems generally become more stable and reliable over time. However, the bad news is that this general trend is matched by increasing complexity and user expectations that all systems will have 100 per cent availability under all conditions. The wave of virtualisation and cloud computing should help to create new levels of reliability - and should be factored into any upcoming outsourced IT arrangements.
Stay tuned for future columns from Alsbridge in which we'll look at other factors for outsourcing success.
William Benn is a partner with Alsbridge, the advisory firm specialising in shared services and outsourcing. Read more on IT outsourcing and beyond at Alsbridge's website.
