Getting Innovation from an Outsourcer
by
Charlie Bess
I was reading an article in CIO titled What Does It Take to Get IT Outsourcers to Innovate? and it resonated well with my experience. One of the quotes pointing out an overlooked opportunity was:
“Give the outsourcer a position in your organization so that they can understand what’s going on in your business and give them the opportunity to earn that $4 million by coming up with innovative project ideas” from Ed Hansen, partner in law firm Morgan Lewis.
Many times relationships are commoditized to the point where this kind of discussion never takes place and very operationally focused people manage the relationship on both sides and real business value can be difficult to generate.
Another item discussed is the SLA trap. There needs to be some balance between innovation and operations. Granted everyone “wants it all”, but as organizations innovate there will be disruption. Operations focused personnel are reluctant to do anything that disrupts service levels. That’s where ITIL processes around change management can be used to make the implications of those changes active decisions and not passive ones. Having the outsourcer more aware and involved in the business means they’ll understand issues like: retailers don’t like to make changes between Halloween and New Years… these change window issues differ by industry and organization and the support team needs to be close enough to the problem to understand the risks.
After all, it’s what happens after the ink dries that really matters on both sides of the table. The relationship should develop into a partnership where ideas and concerns flow freely. Once it hits the slippery slope of a “vendor” relationship, it will be difficult to gain that ground back for both parties.
I’ve written about outsourcing and innovation in the past, and still thought the CIO article as useful addition. There was also some analysis from Cutter on Multisourcing that missed some of the points made in the CIO article. Hopefully, those will be included in their future analysis.
