I may well have found the answer to all England’s World Cup problems. For next time around, I mean. Outsource the whole lot to the Germans. Now that would work!

They’ve a well defined infrastructure and a very well defined objective – win the World Cup!

Back to reality. The company I was with had such a diverse set of business requirements across a number of business units it always seemed at the very outset of one of the many desktop outsourcing projects that the chances of success seemed very slim.

But is every outsourcing exercise doomed to fail?

Can outsourcing really work?

On paper, outsourcing seems such a good idea. Reduced hardware & software costs through standardisation and greater leverage, a one stop shop for users no matter which part of the business they’re in, cradle to grave service with a completely outsourced desktop lifecycle.

So why does it go wrong?

Putting politics and turf wars aside flexibility seems to be the main show stopper. “I want it and I want it now!” Heard that one before?

Some users have little respect for SLA’s. That’s a very low priority if they need something and need it now to complete a deadline on a project or get a communication out.

But unless you’ve an SLA, the supplier doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be delivering in what time scales and at what cost. And you can’t measure performance objectives.

Adding some stretch

I think you can have flexibility in the service by having an in-house management team bridging the business and the supplier. They can provide guidance to the supplier about business priorities and at the same time manage user expectations.

Having flexibility does give some bottom line challenges for the supplier especially at the early stages of the contract. Again this is where an in-house team can help with direction and monitoring with regular financial meetings discussing the “open book” bottom line.

The type of operation we’re talking about here is general desktop support covering office tools, email, Internet, business applications and business processes. Environments like these must be flexible because of the components that need to be supported.

Outsourcing’s easy fix

Where outsourcing does work is where you have a specific business application such as a customer loan application. With this type of environment you’re dealing with known quantities, a fixed infrastructure and specific business applications.

The discovery phase for suppliers is much easier as the service is ring fenced. They know what needs to be delivered, leading to a greater understanding of the costs involved for providing the service.

Outsourcing can work in both scenarios it’s just that one needs to be more flexible and more of a hands on approach from within the company to help manage the service.

The self-supporting power user

Final thought – with so many users becoming more and more computer literate do you need a desktop support team any more? Sure, you need a team to look after the network infrastructure and servers, but the desktop and office tools?

I’m not so sure.

Written by David Stanley