Outsourcing, Reliability, and IT: When will the Three Meet?

ECM

Outsourcing, Reliability, and IT

When the grid collapses or a hurricane wipes out power to millions of customers, how does a customer information system (CIS) information technology (IT) manager ensure his or her outsourcing partner works as an extension of the IT organization by providing system reliability? When customer privacy of a competitor is questioned, how can the company be certain that the team members of the outsourcing partner have had sufficient background security checks, and that company data is safe?

Wishful thinking is to believe such untoward events never occur. Foolish thinking is to never plan for them. Meeting the customer's expectation in servicing problems can ensure customer satisfaction. To ensure that the expectation of services is met, it is important that the outsourcing partner and the CIS stakeholders agree to mutually acceptable definitions of service levels.

Service levels can be defined in multiple ways, starting by defining an incident as an event apart from business-as-usual, with the potential to disrupt service or compromise service quality. An incident could be as simple as maintenance that goes beyond schedule, or as complex as an act of God that disables power and communications.