The question
We have outsourced our IT helpdesk to India, and our end-users
constantly complain at town-hall meetings to executives. How should
I position this when I next present to our UK board? The IT
director responsible for the project now has an executive position
in the company in another region.
The solution
Focus on your SLAs and take ownership
Roger Rawlinson, director of consultancy, NCC Group
It really comes down to the service-level agreements (SLAs) that
are in place between you and your customer. Is it that you are not
meeting the SLAs - in which case you have to sort it - or are the
users' expectations unreasonable? Even in the latter case, you
still need to address the problem as this is all about
perceptions.
I am interested that you specifically mentioned the outsourcing
of the helpdesk to India. I assume in mentioning it that this is
the basis for the complaints, in which case you need to get to the
bottom of the nature of those complaints. Is your outsourced
supplier in turn meeting your SLAs? Remember that in contracting
out the business process to India you have not passed on the
accountability. It is your problem, you need to understand it and,
if your supplier is not providing the required level of service,
then you need to own the problem and resolve it.
Focus on the issues and not the personalities, remind people of
the decision-making process that led to the outsourcing and the
business decisions made at the time so that the context is
understood and appreciated. It may be that a "lessons-learnt"
approach needs to be adopted, so that the company can build and
grow on what it has learnt. Give the board members options for
improvement, rather than leaving them with issues and problems.
Finally, on a personal level, when presenting this to your
board, make a virtue of it. People like to hear, "We have a
problem. I have analysed and understood it, and this is what I am
doing about it." What they hate to hear is discussions about blame
or, even worse, an abdication from owning the problem.
Use metrics to assess the situation
Ben Booth, Global chief technology officer, Ipsos
Before taking this forward you need to find out the realities of
the current situation. Hopefully, you will have some measures to
show how well calls are being responded to, both before and after
the outsourcing, and also you will know the costs before and after.
Perhaps you also do regular user surveys, which can help tell
whether these complaints are universal or just from a vociferous
minority. Once you have a basis of fact you can present to the
board on what happened before, the current situation, and options
going forward. You can then speak authoritatively, and present the
board with a range of options, which might include living with the
present situation, a change in outsourcing parameters, or bringing
the helpdesk back in-house.
Use diplomacy to get a review of processes
Robin Laidlaw, director of consultancy, NCC Group
Many years ago, when I studied in the USA, I attended a superb
series of lectures at Stanford about decision analysis. The
enduring thing I remember from those lectures was the phrase "you
can have good outcomes from bad decisions and bad outcomes from
good decisions, so always remember the circumstances when the
decision was made - it could save you your job."
So at the time, the decision you write about may well have been
good the outcome, apparently, is bad. I think this gives you the
platform to approach the need to change, diplomatically proclaiming
that although the decision was good, the outcome has not been, so a
review is needed. Some embellishment of this basic approach ought
to give you the means to get a review without exposing the former
IT to any criticism.
Make your firm an "expert customer" of IT
services
Chris Potts, director, Dominic Barrow
What are your people complaining about - the fact that you have
outsourced to India, or the levels of service they are
experiencing? If it is the former, then you need to be robust in
tackling people's feelings about the decision and get them to focus
on the actual service they are getting. If the service experience
has deteriorated since the helpdesk changed hands, then the people
who are complaining have a valid point.
You will need to decide whether this shows the original sourcing
decision to have been a mistake, or that it is was the right
decision but is being poorly executed - and to what extent the root
cause of poor execution is about you, the customer, or the
supplier.
One of the strategic benefits of outsourcing is that a company
learns - sometimes the hard way - how good it is as a customer of
IT services and what it will need to do better to get the service
experiences it wants for the price it is prepared to pay. A company
can also discover that it has unwittingly outsourced a core
competency and must therefore bring it back in-house. For most
companies, that is unlikely to be the case with an IT helpdesk.
Take a two-pronged approach: review and resolve the specific
service issues that people have with the outsourced helpdesk use
this process to explore, highlight and then execute what the
company may need to do better to become more of an "expert
customer" of IT services.
Perform an in-depth analysis of the outsourced IT
helpdesk
Aswin Nagarajan, manager, Ernst & Young Technology
Security & Risk Services
IT helpdesk outsourcing is maturing among the outsourced classes
of IT services and represents a lower risk-reward ratio, and the
board should be in agreement of its value.
In addressing the complaints from end-users, it is important to
diagnose the underlying issues causing dissatisfaction. Carrying
out a proper diagnosis can help strengthen the case for outsourcing
the function, and help to highlight the necessary actions needed to
solve the customer dissatisfaction. I would suggest two possible
ways of achieving this. If there is budget available, conduct a
performance diagnostic for the outsourced function.
Do this by conducting a performance review that includes a
review of the SLA and key performance indicators - both historic
and current - to determine service levels and compare this with
internal baselines and industry benchmarks. Then review governance
arrangements in the retained organisation and managing of the
outsourced relationships to drive service levels. In some cases, it
may also be worthwhile to conduct a supplier risk assessment,
including process, technology and people risks of the service
provider that impacts service delivery.
Following the review, ensure that the root-cause analysis
addresses the concerns reported by the end-users. Present to the
board your findings and recommendations, which may involve changing
suppliers or renegotiating the contract and the underlying SLA or
initiating a joint performance-improvement programme with the
current provider to deliver better service levels.
Leverage your internal IT capabilities to handle this form of
rapid assessment or find the right IT advisor or partner that can
help you with this activity.
If budget is not available, instead prepare a business case
outlining the need, potential costs and benefits of conducting a
performance diagnostic for the outsourced IT helpdesk function. Use
the board meeting to get an approval and go ahead to execute a
diagnostic and implement ensuing recommendations.
Improve communication channels to boost service
levels
Joe Peppard, professor of Information Systems, Cranfield
School of Management
You could, of course, land your predecessor in the mire and
claim that this is a situation you have inherited, say that it
really has nothing to do with you, that service levels were not
adequately specified and that the consequences of the outsourcing
deal were not fully thought through. And that you, of course, would
have done things quite differently. Although this may be true, the
fact is it is now your responsibility.
This is a situation for you to shine. It is also a situation
where you have to navigate the political landscape. From my
research, IT leaders struggle here, but politics are a fact of
organisational life and do not always have to be negative. My
advice would be to look for the win-win outcome.
When you present to the UK board, acknowledge the problem. The
board will know the background, so there is no need to dwell on
history. Instead, come up with a solution. Do your homework.
I am assuming that this is indeed a problem, given that
end-users seem to be constantly complaining. You need to check this
out. What is the nature of their complaints? Often, not all
end-users feel the same way but just a segment. Making some
tactical adjustments with service delivery may address many of the
end-users' concerns. A big contributor to end-user frustration can
be lack of communication, which can be fixed relatively easily and
generally has a quick payback. If the problem is more significant,
perhaps talk through some of the issues with the IT director
responsible for the outsourcing decision. Elicit his views. Perhaps
some of the helpdesk should now be brought back in-house.
Cost-value implications should be factored into any recommendations
that you propose.
Try to focus on the positives, and talk with higher
management
Sharm Manwani, head of information management, Henley
Management College
You are right to carefully consider the positioning. In my first
role as UK head of IT, I had to present the status to an
international IT audience that included my predecessor. It was a
challenge to explain the full range of issues without it coming
across as a personal attack.
It is advisable in these cases to separate facts from opinion
and to start with the positives. Presumably there was a business
case for the outsourcing of the helpdesk. Is the cost-reduction
target being met? If so, you could show the numbers on this.
On the service side, there is no point trying to hide the
issues. Do you have some statistical data to support or balance the
negative stories? How long has the outsourcing of the operation
been going and are there any trends that you can highlight? Are
there some areas of the service that are working well? You should
be able to identify these through your key performance
indicators.
This analysis of the data should help you position your
recommendations so that you are not seen as having a knee-jerk
reaction. At the same time, you need to avoid coming across as
someone who says that the service is 99% positive so we can ignore
the 1%.
The final bit of advice is to talk to the IT director who led
this project and share your findings. You might be pleasantly
surprised at the reaction and receive some constructive advice. If
not, you will at least be forewarned.
More advice from the strategy clinic
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