Research & Insight

Cloud

Big Data/Analytics

From Hamstrung to Power

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Italy — its name brings to mind the pungent parmesan and garlic odors, magnificent golden treasures in the cathedrals and palaces, crowded canals of Venice and mysteries of Pompeii. The nation holds many charms for tourists. Part of the culture of this historic land is endurance and pride. Those characteristics carry over into the business arena. There are people who created their businesses from nothing, and they have worked all their lives in those businesses. They are not open to change, says Stefano Valentini, an outsourcing consultant in Rome. He explains that Italy has a lot of small (under 50 employees) and medium (under 250) companies and that 80% of production comes from these companies. Although many executives even in the United States are just coming to grips with it, the fact is that a company can’t be good at doing everything. An attitude of mistrust and not wanting to let go of control of business processes only results in being hamstrung — as crippling as cutting the tendons at the ham

Wireless Billing Complexities Crave Outsourcing

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Current communication providers will need to revamp their system to handle billing processes for wireless services. Thomas Tunstall, Ph.D., at KPMG Consulting LLC, explains that the revenue streams that have come from voice will increasingly shift to data. Traffic from applications data traveling through the Internet will be usage based, rather than minutes based.

SLAs That Work

Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer

Service level agreements (SLA) are crucial to ASP buyers. SLAs create structure for the relationship and help both parties measure performance. But how do you write an SLA? How do you monitor them? Who is responsible for managing the SLAs?

Strategic Defense

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

With technology requirements aimed squarely at their weakest point, yet with a goal to be the government’s choice to build 21st-century destroyers, BIW made the strategic decision to outsource all of its IT operations to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). We felt CSC would be able to support us in our effort to achieve our goal of being a technology leader and could do it at the rate at which our customer would like to see it done. Bowie admits that BIW had blinders on when it outsourced in November 1996, not realizing the extent of technological advancement that would be required. The original contract spend was about $27 million, and it has now grown to include new services and a value of nearly $50 million over four years. Because its customer was driving certain initiatives, BIW found it needed new PCs for all employees so that they could do design work more efficiently and win more government contracts.

Cultivating a High Yield in Outsourcing

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

The fourth largest steel company in the U.S., National Steel manufactures steel for the automotive, construction and tin container industries and has annual shipments of almost six million tons of flat rolled products. The company outsourced the housing and operation of its mainframe and data center services to IBM in November 1998 with a seven-year contract worth nearly $60 million. John Davis, CIO of National Steel, explains that they wanted to reallocate its human resources to solve National Steel problems, rather than technology problems. I wanted them working on solutions that would differentiate National Steel from other steel competitors, he says. The company has accomplished that and other goals, and their agreement has yielded far more than they asked for. But, after all, National Steel is no novice to outsourcing. In the 1980s, National Steel spun off its data center (which then became a part of ACS).

Magnificent Medicaid Management

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Medicaid is one of the most controversial, complicated and expensive programs in U.S. government. It’s very political, so there is a high level of interest, and there is also a lot of change going on in it all the time, says Peggy Bartels, Administrator of the State of Wisconsin’s Division of Health Care Financing. So any entity that provides outsourcing for Medicaid is going to be in a fishbowl environment. It’s very difficult. She explains that the process of reviewing and making determinations about whether or not Medicaid will fund services is all done under the very close supervision and administration of the State. Decisions are controversial. By being our business partner, the outsourcer invites the same criticism we receive, she adds. They’re in the bull’s eye, and it is a big challenge to do that kind of work and maintain a positive presence. Nevertheless, EDS took the challenge and has been the Medicaid fiscal agent in the State of Wisconsin since their outsourcing agreement began in 1977.

Zeal for the Zone

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

BMC Software could not be more enthusiastic about its new and effective outsourcing relationship with ReleaseNow Corporation. As one of the world’s largest independent software vendors, BMC delivers the comprehensive eBusiness systems management software. It guarantees the fastest implementation so, naturally, that was a primary concern when the company decided last year to launch a new eBusiness Web site.

CRM Becomes A Star At ENSTAR

Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer

The I Love You virus did very unloving things to the computers of email readers who couldn’t resist opening the infected note. The malicious message did billions of dollars of damage. And an avalanche of email messages brought down Yahoo in a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack. These high profile events made companies realize the Internet is full of lurkers and some of them are evil people.

Outsourcing is Taking Three Forks

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Traditionally, outsourcing has been IT oriented. Today, however, outsourcing is taking three different paths. I see outsourcing falling into three distinct categories: the traditional IT suppliers,† the application service providers (ASP), and the business process outsourcing (BPO) suppliers. Different currents are buffeting each sector. Historically, IBM, EDS and CSCformed the top tier of the IT …

Sorting Through the Rubble

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

New vendors around every corner. Mega deals. Dead dotcoms. And even some fallout from Y2K. They littered the year 2000 battlegrounds in the outsourcing arena. Gartner Dataquest’s Bruce Caldwell, senior analyst-outsourcing, recently completed reports and forecasts from his company’s surveys of end user wants and needs in the world of IT. He says the turmoil in the IT services marketplace this past year was a factor in a dip in the IT services revenue that had been forecasted for 2000.

Connect with a Sourcing Advisor at Outsourcing Center

"*" indicates required fields

Let’s talk more

Consult Form

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.