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Ask yourself this, “If I double my expenditure on IT, will it double my profit?” If the answer is “no”, then there are alternatives to bearing the brunt of purchasing new technologies. Managed IT services are an increasingly attractive means for enterprises to achieve their IT initiatives. But how can an enterprise identify services to outsource, what can they expect from managed service providers (MSPs) and how should they evaluate the services offered?

Stepping Down to Services

Finding any supporting services in your business processes that can be placed with MSPs may seem counter intuitive. However, if you ask yourself what are the fundamental activities or technologies at work in each one of those processes, you can see where individual and separable services exist.

Each process that you are trying to manage will encompass several steps – each with their underlying or enabling services. Those that differentiate your product or service and add to its value proposition will be strategic to your company. All others will be supporting services - although important to completing the business process, they are not strategically important to the end value of the product. Funding an MSP for these supporting services can provide operational and financial benefit.

Other categories to consider when identifying services for an MSP are those that are highly specialised or require high levels of expertise for a short time. For many specialised IT services, utilising specialists on a short-term contract is a fraction of the cost of developing and maintaining it in-house. Likewise, many MSPs can deploy the appropriate experts for each phase of an IT initiative as needs change, therefore keeping implementations on time and within budget.

The Right Service for Your Service

It is important to recognise that implementing and delivering a service is not a single event, but several steps that are constantly evolving. Noting what you need for successful service delivery at each stage: Plan, Deploy, Operate, Improve, and End of Life, will help you select suitable providers.

Plan

It’s important to get a full understanding of where you are starting from a resource standpoint and what other business services might be sharing the same resources. You need an MSP experienced not just in supplying new technology, but also in assessing the overall burden current business systems are placing on your infrastructure. They should be able to provide an assessment of the startup costs, level of effort required to establish the new service and a breakdown of the time required to setup any new technologies, as well as advise you on realistic expectations of service levels and pricing. The MSP should be able to give you an accurate inventory of your current infrastructure, its connectivity and performance levels, highlighting areas of concern with a clear action plan on how to address them as well as document current levels of service in order to properly set expectations.

Deploy

This phase takes the service from concept to reality. A suitable MSP will provision the hardware, software, and processes – configuring and putting them under management. Initially, this should be in a limited environment to validate assumptions made in the planning phase, ensure the infrastructure is sufficient, that an acceptable level of service can be delivered and to document that there are no adverse impacts on existing services.

Documentation is vital. An MSP that can provide real-time and historical reports of service performance and trending reports to show how the service will scale is critical. An MSP that can prove contingency plans based on data rather than “gut feel” is more likely to be successful even if unforeseen issues arise.

Operate

This phase is about getting value for money. A good MSP will provide regular communication so that you remain confident in service levels being received. Many MSPs mistakenly think that no news is good news. This is precisely when a report of bandwidth saved or network latency reductions can have you seeing them as a trusted resource rather than a monthly expense. Your customers will perceive and relay anecdotes of service outages or slow downs. An MSP that can meet those anecdotal claims with factual, data-driven reports helps you maintain your credibility and validates your decision to outsource.

A range of customisable, easily configured reports are vital for smooth service delivery. A good MSP will utilise web-based reporting dashboards to help you pull the precise data, on the fly that you need to satisfy your business units.

The capability of MSPs to provide alerting and proactive maintenance based on business-level impact analysis of outages or performance threshold threatening behaviour is critical to successfully sustaining your business process.

Improve

This is about forecasting trends to improve business processes and prevent degradation before it adversely impacts business profitability. MSPs should be able to provide historical and trending data about service operation - business-level metrics over time and in a format that’s relevant for your customers.

End of Life

The End of Life phase is merely the beginning of a new and improved way of conducting business. When it’s time to move along, you should be able to do it fast with minimal negative impact on your business. An MSP that can accurately assess the decommissioning of hardware and services – mapping their utilisation to impacted users and groups – will enable you to make better business decisions in the Planning Phase of the next BPM cycle.

Conclusion

After quantifying your IT processes into services, you can easily identify what services will be appropriate to outsource. A range of business services and MSPs are available to cost-effectively handle non-strategic services, freeing you to concentrate on differentiating your company. The right MSP should assess new technologies, reduce operational costs and improve profitability. A knowledgeable MSP should become an extension of the IT department. If you can rely on their continued communication and analytics, then you will be well on your way to successfully achieving even the most complex IT initiatives.

Transcom Worldwide, the European Customer Relationship Management and debt collection specialist will provide Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Collections services over the next three years for Tiscali UK

Legal firm Addleshaw Goddard’s technology and outsourcing team has today announced its role in advising Tiscali UK on the key outsourcing deal between Transcom Worldwide S.A. and Tiscali UK. Transcom Worldwide. Transcom, the European Customer Relationship Management and debt collection specialist, will provide Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Collections services over the next three years for Tiscali UK, part of Tiscali S.p.A, one of Europe’s leading independent telecommunications providers.

Addleshaw Goddard, who worked with Tiscali on its acquisition of Pipex earlier this year, has ensured the swift completion of the deal under demanding time constraints. Three members of Addleshaw Goddard’s team played crucial roles in the completion of this deal; James Dawson, Damon Rosamond-Lanzetta and Eva Wong.

Damon Rosamond-Lanzetta, managing associate at Addleshaw Goddard’s technology and outsourcing team, commented: “With around 4.2 million active users in Italy and the UK, customer relationships are absolutely central to the way that Tiscali runs its business. Getting the people and technology right to manage these relationships is vital. Ensuring that the deal was up-and-running as quickly as possible was what everyone wanted - to complete within a short and demanding timeframe is testament to the hard work that all parties have put in.”

Scott Marshall, General Counsel & Company Secretary for Tiscali's UK operations said: "Addleshaw Goddard delivered this transaction within a demanding and challenging timeframe while still maintaining their usual high standards of support and advice."

easyJet has signed a three year deal to outsource its IT helpdesk support to utility support group Alfred McAlpine.

The main driver of the deal is to migrate IT support from business hours to a 24-hour, seven days per week, (24/7) operation.

The budget airline refused to divulge the value of the deal but speaking to silicon.com, IT service delivery manager Bill Codd said the deal would cost 50 per cent of the level of investment needed to bring helpdesk support up to 24/7 in-house.

The scope of the deal includes first and second-line service, providing two levels of technical expertise for easyJet's 650 PC users, and a support team based at the airline's Luton Airport HQ.

The deal builds on an existing relationship with Alfred McAlpine, which has also been contracted to manage a converged voice and data network for the HQ.

Codd said: "We have a relatively small IT department and the growth of the company has meant that providing a 24/7 service for staff had become unattainable. The only way to provide that level of service was through outsourcing."

Codd explained the level of support from Alfred McAlpine is built into the contract to expand as the airline grows. This is projected to be at a rate of 15 per cent over the next three years.

PA Consulting Group – the leading international management, systems and technology consultancy – has recently won a major contract from the UK Ministry of Defence’s Research Acquisition Organisation to research, define, develop and de-risk advanced logistics concepts, which will have important implications for the transportation and management of materiel throughout the future defence supply chain.

Working as Prime Contractor, PA Consulting Group is leading a joint industry and academic team to assess and develop the inter-modal and asset/consignment tracking concepts and technologies that are required to meet current and future logistics requirements. PA and the team will also ensure that the integration of these concepts and technologies is de-risked effectively in support of future logistic related acquisitions.

The complete programme of work is scheduled to be completed by May 2009, and its output will be used to inform decisions to progress with full development, procurement and fielding of an integrated inter-modal transport and tracking system.

Lessons learnt in Iraq and other theatres demonstrate the need to be able to transport materiel efficiently through the supply chain, while at the same time identifying and tracking materiel being shipped to and within theatre. The programme of work will identify opportunities to address these needs and to de-risk the technologies necessary to realise them.

The team, led by PA, comprises BMT Defence Services Ltd, Consillium (part of the Wincanton Group), Cranfield University, Lotus Engineering, and the Marshall Group’s Aerospace and Specialist Vehicle Divisions. It brings together the best of defence and civil logistics expertise and will draw upon recent developments in commercial logistics (including the exploitation of new technologies (RFID, GPS etc) and working practices. PA combines its scientific and engineering capability (based in its dedicated technology centres in Cambridge, UK, and Princeton, US) with its in-depth experience and understanding of UK Defence and logistics challenges.

CGI Group Inc. in collaboration with two of the largest insurers in the UK market, Norwich Union and Allianz Insurance, today announced the launch of an Account Reconciliation Centre (ARC), a flexible web-based tool that is set to make paper-based insurance account settlement a thing of the past.

Provided as a managed service hosted by CGI and accessed via imarket, the e-commerce portal, ARC has already proven itself during a six month business pilot involving Allianz Insurance, Norwich Union and a range of their brokers. Today, ARC is being made available to the wider broker community, facilitating a transition from manual, paper based processes to an efficient, fast flow of electronic information.

“ARC is an accounts settlement system that has been developed in consultation with the industry, for the industry – one that brings efficiency to the back office and tangible benefits to both sides involved in the business process: insurers and brokers,” said Tim Gregory, Vice-President, Insurance Sector, CGI.

ARC is being launched at a time when insurers and brokers are under an ever increasing pressure to reduce their operating costs. It is designed to transform the settlement of insurance accounts between insurers and brokers – a process that has, until now, been expensive and largely paper-based. By enabling automatic matching of all but the exceptional items, ARC brings savings in both time and effort, dramatically reducing the administrative burden associated with the traditional account settlement process and allowing brokers to view all outstanding debt in real time.

Donna Lovewell, Head of Collections, Norwich Union said: “Throughout ARC’s development and pilot programme stages, CGI has incorporated feedback from both insurers and brokers to ensure that the system does exactly what we need it to – make our work easier and more effective.”

Corporate reseller Computacenter is all smiles after securing a £19m managed service win with Marks & Spencer. The five-year contract, building on an existing outsourcing partnership between the pair, covers more than 4,000 head office staff across six sites.

Computacenter will deliver IT services across 7,000 servers and PCs throughout the retailer, as well as disposing of its electronic equipment.

ITC Infotech, a global IT services company, has successfully implemented a new-generation CRM based loyalty solution for Finnair, Finland`s largest airline. Finnair is the first airline in the world to move away from a legacy based frequent flyer program to an analytical CRM solution. This is the first of it’s kind CRM based loyalty solution in the world for airlines and Finnair launched this solution recently.

The new loyalty system for automating Finnair Plus, the loyalty program for Finnair customers, is expected to improve the effectiveness and usage of Finnair’s loyalty program. This implementation will also improve reporting, analysis and decision support for operations and management.

Mr. Tom Källström, Vice President, eBusiness Development, Commercial Division, Finnair said “We congratulate ITC Infotech on the successful deployment of the new Finnair loyalty application. The loyalty program has gone live and now we can be more innovative in offering new services to our most valued customers

He further added, “ITC Infotech’s excellent CRM capabilities, exemplary customer focus and flexibility makes them an ideal partner for us.

Commenting on the implementation, Mr. Sanjiv Puri, Managing Director, ITC Infotech said, “The successful delivery of the loyalty solution to Finnair demonstrates our capability to bring domain knowledge and technology expertise together to create a business friendly solution.”

ITC Infotech had signed a five-year multi-million dollar contract with Finnair in 2006. ITC Infotech is involved in implementing Finnair’s frequent flyer loyalty program, e-ticketing and other operational application systems.

Accenture has opened a Management Consulting Center of Excellence in Gurgaon, in the National Capital Region of Delhi, as the company continues to broaden its base of functional- and industry-specific skills to provide clients with its full range of consulting services. The company also plans to open management consulting centers in Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai to serve the needs of both Accenture’s growing domestic business in India and the company’s global clients.

Accenture will staff the centers with professionals with a wide range of backgrounds — including engineers, economists, analysts and statisticians — as well as experts in such industries as banking, utilities and travel and business disciplines including shared services and risk management. “The opening of the centers will give clients access to our full range of consulting services across a broad spectrum of business functions and industries to help them achieve high performance,” said Mark Foster, Accenture’s group chief executive–Management Consulting & Integrated Markets. “We are also very focused on innovative talent management and recruitment in India, and we are on track to meet our goal of having as many as 2,000 consultants in our centers across India by the end of our fiscal year next August. We look to India as a wonderful source of talent that we can tap into, providing our clients with access to the best and the brightest consulting professionals.” The rapid growth of emerging economies, closer economic integration across geographies and unparalleled advances in information and communications technologies are converging to create what Accenture calls a “multi-polar” world, and the company believes India will play an increasingly important role in this environment. Accenture has a strong presence in India, with management consultants serving domestic and international and working across each of the company’s five consulting service lines: Strategy; Customer Relationship Management; Supply Chain Management; Finance & Performance Management; and Human Performance. In the domestic Indian market, Accenture is recognized as an industry leader in many aspects of management consulting, including post-merger integration consulting. “We are very focused on growing our rich and diverse group of talented people whose skills and knowledge are in great demand by businesses domestically in India and abroad,” said Sanjay Jain, managing director of Management Consulting for Accenture in India. “India has a significant number of business school graduates and experienced professionals who can fill a major need for consultants with strong analytical, operational, industry and strategic skills. We are very eager to tap into this vast talent pool.” Jain said consultants in India are working on a wide variety of assignments, from customer analytics and media audits in the customer relationship management area to low-cost country sourcing strategy in supply chain management, to workforce optimization in the human performance area and shared services in finance and performance management. Management consultants in the current analytics center in Delhi will be integrated into the new Management Consulting Center of Excellence, where they will continue to provide Accenture’s local and global client base with access to such consulting skills as customer, marketing and data analytics; marketing automation and campaign management; and enterprise performance management. Harsh Manglik, Accenture’s country managing director for India, said India is a vital strategic market for Accenture, both for its unparalleled access to talent and the business opportunities that the Indian market presents. “We established ourselves as the first global consulting firm in India in 1987, and we believe the opportunities for continued growth are endless,” Manglik said. “The opening of our new management consulting centers will significantly enhance our consulting capabilities here to complement the capabilities we have in technology and outsourcing.”

Budget cutbacks have forced local councils to outsource large parts of their HR service. There are fears that transactional HR could suffer as a result.

Under the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007, the Treasury informed local governments that budgets would rise only incrementally, resulting in a real term -0.01% increase in 2010 is one of five two-tier local authorities to be chosen as 'pathfinders' - councils that must find new ways of working more closely with the district councils in their locality, in the hope savings can be made.

The outsourcing agenda will be "massive over the next few years" as local authorities try to cut costs. Changes being considered include merging county and district councils back offices.

The Resourcelink self-service product will provide Body Shop with HR, allowing staff to fill in time sheets and holiday or training request forms online - which are then managed entirely by Northgate HR.

The Body Shop first outsourced its head office payroll to Northgate HR in 2003. The company then extended the service to include retail units in 2005. The contract now lasts a further four years and provides additional online services for HQ-based staff.