InfoWorld interviewed five outsourcing industry experts and summed up their stories into 13 outsourcing best practices. Here’s a shortened list:
1. Establish clear objectives.
2. Get a compatible provider.
3. Don’t go in shortsighted.
4. Never confuse sales and delivery.
5. Change your attitude toward IT. Don’t think of IT as a cost center; instead, consider it a value center.
6. Get the communications right. Make sure the service provider understands the project specifications.
7. Expect to get what you pay for.
8. Stay on-site. If possible, budget to keep on-site presence at the service provider.
9. Retain responsibility.
10. Get C-level sign-offs. Make sure you have senior-level stakeholders such as the CIO on the client side and CEO on the vendor side.
11. Pick the right projects to outsource. In many cases, the outsourcing decision is made for the wrong reasons. IT tends to unload the stuff it doesn’t want, as opposed to figuring out what makes sense to outsource. What to outsource depends on the company’s objectives. If the primary goal is to save money, then start with the applications that cost you the most money.
12. Clean up before you outsource. Companies tend to dump their problems on outsourcers, then are surprised a bad result ensues.
13. Get the SLA metrics right.
To see this list extended, go to the .
