More projects would be completed on time and to budget if everyday
jobs were outsourced
Outsourcing has been the talk of the town recently. Often when the
"O" word is mentioned, a shiver goes down the back of those in the
IT profession.
However, outsourcing does not have to be a threat - it can be an
opportunity. In fact, if the findings of last month's CIO Connect
census - that 66% of firms expect to see growth in the innovative
use of IT within their businesses - is realised, outsourcing can be
seen as an opportunity to allow IT staff the time to drive
innovative IT projects.
IT managers should think about the parts of their job that are
mundane and time-consuming and consider whether these could be
outsourced. Jobs such as server administration or patch management
are tasks that can take a great deal of time without bringing much
reward.
You might argue that it is hard to justify outsourcing a task
simply because you do not like doing it, but that is not the only
reason why these tasks should be outsourced - cost and value should
be the driving force. There are specialists that spend their days
carrying out tasks such as server administration and hence they
have more expertise in these tasks than most IT managers.
Organisations need to think about how much it costs to have an
internal IT resource spending time on mundane tasks and consider
what they could be doing instead. Ask yourself how many IT projects
fall behind schedule or never get off the ground simply because IT
staff are bogged down in keeping the IT infrastructure up and
running. I would bet that many more IT projects would get completed
on time and to budget if IT staff had more free time.
If servers were outsourced, IT staff could work on strategic IT
projects and leave a third party to deal with the patching problem.
Any IT manager could think of a hundred other tasks that could
easily be outsourced, leaving them to work on development projects
or rolling out new IT systems to help the business gain competitive
advantage.
IT managers need to think about the tasks that do not add strategic
value and push for these to be outsourced. Those higher up the IT
food chain also need to show IT staff how outsourcing provides an
opportunity for them. They should talk to IT staff about the new
skills they could develop if mundane tasks are outsourced and
illustrate how this will help them develop in their careers.
Tarek Meliti is technical director at web
hosting company TDM Group