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• 5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Technology Outsourcer

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Technology Outsourcer

written on July 30, 2009 by Laura Pettit Rusick

Did you outsource your IT department so you don't have to think about technology?  Relegate IT and you could very well be losing out on opportunities to improve efficiency and enable growth in your company.  Worst case, it could mean business disruption.

Follow these 5 steps to get the most from your outsourcer:

    1. Have regular meetings with your outsourcer.  Discuss their performance, and discuss your business strategy.  Talk about  potential acquisitions.  The outsourcer may need to hire additional people and increase storage space; they will likely be impacted by the integration strategy.  Regularly check to make sure the IT strategy is aligned with and supports your business strategy. 

    2. Don't expect CIO level input from your outsourcer.  It's possible, but not common.  Most outsourcers are focused on providing a level of service to keep your users and servers up and running.  They are often not used to researching new technologies, helping with software selections or working with you on business process improvements.  In addition, they usually partner with specific vendors.  Understand their bias.

Consider hiring a CIO or IT Director.  For small to mid-size companies, consider contracting with a retained CIO.  This level of resource provides management of the outsourcer and other vendors and participates on the executive team to point out potential risks, impacts and ways to use IT to facilitate the business plan.

    3. If the outsourcer is not providing regular reports, ask them to.  Reporting should include the number of issue tickets received, relevant dates, resolution time and status.  If servers or networks are being managed, expect to see availability statistics (with downtime explanations), storage and network capacity graphs and plans for upgrading or refreshing servers.

You should also have access to a list of projects and be receiving regular reports on project-related issues, status, resource requirements and timelines.  Keep up to date on any contracts related to your account.  Make sure you are approving contract extensions or add-ons.

    4. Do expect to see documentation for your systems that the outsourcer is responsible for.  If you don't know what the outsourcer is supporting, you will be unable to transition when necessary.  By the time you are considering a move, the relationship has likely deteriorated to a point where getting documentation is very difficult.  At a minimum, use the documentation to better understand your outsourcer's responsibilities and perspective.

    5. Do know your outsourcer's disaster recovery plan for you.  Whether your systems are on your site or at the outsourcer's data center, know how your business will operate in a variety of disaster circumstances.  Be concerned if the backup data center is 5 miles down the road from the current one - it could be out of commission at the same time.

The plan should be customized to you.  Make sure it gets tested regularly.  Don't become another statistic where data backups were never verified and restores were never tested.  For many organizations (e.g. health care, financials services, public companies), regulations require disaster recovery plans and the best practices that go with them.

Outsourcing your IT department can be a great way to focus on the rest of your business, but it doesn't eliminate the need to manage technology.  Whether an in-house executive has this responsibility or you have a retained CIO, make sure you cover the five suggestions, improving communications and the business benefits IT brings.

Copyright © 2009 by Laura Pettit Rusick