Mergers, Acquisitions, Outsourcing? Don’t Leave the Fox Guarding the Hen House!
A very common mistake is to have an outsource or mergers & acquisition partner report directly to the CIO, but no CIO has 40 hours per week to dedicate the managing the partner. This means that an enormous amount of trust is given to the consulting partners, BUT this is like leaving the Fox Guarding the Hen House! There is a solution.
Outsourcing Tip #3
Making the most of your offshore trips. Unless you prepare carefully for your trip to the offshore vendor, you will be flooded by exciting & interesting PowerPoint presentations. These will present the capabilities of the vendor very effectively, but up to 80% of the material may be a waste of your time. Don't risk "Death by PowerPoint", but target your trip to be an effective use of your time.
Also, give some consideration to the use of Tier 1 vs. Tier 2 vendor selection.
Outsourcing Tip #2
Safeguarding your Intellectual Property and retain staffing skills longer.
Your Intellectual Property may not be a secure as you think! Not just the laws, but the practices of certain countries can override behavior that you would expect from reading your contracts. You must not just choose your partners carefully, but also the countries in which they operate.
Outsource Tip #1 - Seeing the Big Picture
The cost savings from outsourcing can often be less than originally expected as developer efficiency offshore-to-onshore is not one-to-one. However, by leveraging some simple strategies, the business returns can be powerful and long-lasting.
Contact Greg Knight to Start Your Journey to Successful Outsourcing
For over 15 years, Greg Knight, Founder and CEO of IT Done Right LLC, has performed CIO & CTO roles for international PLCs as well as small private companies. Greg holds seminars, speaking events, and individual consulting engagements, as well as serving as an embedded leader in interim CIO/CTO and IT Executive roles. He works alongside your current teams to take your company to a whole new level, assisting with strategy, innovation, best-practice and leadership, to drastically improve effectiveness, performance and cost efficiency.
He is a former IBM Consultant, author of the book "Bringing Order Out of Chaos in IT", and he has over a dozen patents on major products & technologies.