Multisupplier Governance and Service Integration
Benefits of the Multisupplier Governance and Service Integration Framework
EDS clients using the Enterprise Service Management (ESM) Multisupplier Governance Framework have achieved substantial cost savings through improved visibility, tracking and control over suppliers. Clients have also reported these benefits:
- Improved management practices
- Lower costs through better pricing
- Greater first-time delivery accuracy
- Enhanced end-user service levels
- Better IT asset utilization and portfolio management
- Compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and other regulations
CIOs have more choices to accomplish their objectives, including out-tasking, outsourcing, offshoring and insourcing strategic information technology (IT) functions. However, having more options means managing more suppliers. Multisupplier governance helps companies achieve their business objectives through better management of complex outsourcing arrangements and improved IT transparency across the enterprise. Regardless of how IT services are delivered, a governance framework helps a company integrate multiple suppliers, better manage outcomes and assess effectiveness.
Why Strong Governance is Critical to Multisupplier Outsourcing
More and more companies are turning to multisourcing as a way to drive down pricing, obtain best-of-breed services, minimize delivery risk and increase their capacity to scale. CIOs are using new outsourcing models to develop IT operations that foster growth, innovation and competitive advantage.
Multisourcing Perspectives
Hear additional perspectives on the multisourcing trend from Jeff Kelly, executive vice president of EDS' Americas region.
- Download Jeff Kelly discussing multisourcing (1min 48sec) MP3, 318K
Major organizations are increasingly turning to multiple outsourcing providers to meet their growing IT needs. Instead of relying on a single source to address every aspect of the construction and maintenance of their vast IT systems, they break up the work and enlist a group of vendors to tackle the job piece by piece.
Managing more suppliers – including in-house IT groups, hardware vendors, global IT service providers, niche firms, offshore pure plays, software firms and a host of others – often results in a fragmented view of the IT enterprise and a tangled web of contracts. Inconsistency across various IT environments, processes, support tools and reporting mechanisms can actually lead to higher costs and greater risk than outsourcing to a single organization.
The practice of using best of breed supplier also presents the real possibility of an erosion of focus and accountability in delivering a business service due to a shift in attention to optimizing the supplier centric contract as opposed to the received business value.
How EDS Helps Manage Multiple Outsourcing Suppliers
Well-defined and well-implemented governance is critical to mitigating the complexities of multisupplier IT management. The basic challenges in multisupplier management are no different than those presented in integrating the different IT capabilities into a valued business service, it's just that a multisource environment mandates a level of structure be applied to ensure all parties stay coordinated. EDS has developed a multisupplier governance framework based on Enterprise Service Management (ESM) concepts, processes and tool sets to help companies define and implement standardized business processes and enabling technologies. ESM aligns the entire IT organization to the same objectives, business goals and operating rules. A standard operating environment ensures work is done in a consistent manner across multiple IT towers, business units and services suppliers.
The ESM governance framework helps companies better oversee their IT environments by:
- Integrating multiple suppliers to better manage outcomes and assess effectiveness
- Leveraging supplier capabilities to ensure business objectives are met
- Enabling competitive advantage by enhancing alignment to the business strategy
- Optimizing the potential for business growth by increasing responsiveness to business change
- Transforming the IT cost structure by taking full advantage of economies of scale and standardized services
Driving Efficiencies Using a Standard Governance Framework
EDS has created a rigorous governance framework – using ESM – to ensure consistent service delivery from all providers. ESM creates an enterprise-level framework that accelerates IT response times to business needs through these four pillars:
- IT operations: Helps companies improve asset utilization, end-to-end availability and reliability of the IT environment
- IT business management: Creates a single process for IT business operations, IT request rules, service catalogs and request systems
- Architecture and development: Creates consistent standards for product life cycle management, documentation, release planning and program management
- Security: Enables companies to proactively address security-related issues such as threat vulnerability, identity theft, security administration and compliance