It is no secret companies of all sizes have outsourced parts of
their service delivery for information technology and business
support services, with varying degrees of success. Anyone who has
been involved in a sourcing initiative of any scale knows firsthand
how document-intensive and logistically complex they are. The
methodologies used during these projects have been supplied by the
service providers, third-party advisors or by the in-house
procurement function or project management office. Version control,
workflow, and final document sets have typically been managed
manually via email, file naming conventions, or using some form of
generic document repository or collaborative tool.
An additional layer of complexity is added by the fact that the
teams delivering sourcing initiatives are necessarily virtual,
operating out of multiple locations and often in several time
zones. This kind of work context can be frustrating and chaotic, as
team members struggle to communicate effectively and optimize the
distribution, performance and management of the thousands of tasks
involved in sourcing initiatives. When you add considerations of
multiple languages, currencies and legal systems, customs and
practices, successfully steering an information technology or
business support services sourcing initiative across the finish
line presents huge operational, logistical and human resources
challenges.
EquaSiis Workbench is an
enterprise application designed specifically for sourcing team
members to overcome the issues presented by virtual teams and a
document-intensive work environment. It provides sourcing teams
with an easily configured, secure, role-based environment featuring
document version control, workflow, project planning and web 2.0
collaboration tools, and is pre-populated with with best-practice
templates and tools.
Ensuring Successful Outcomes
As organizations finalize their sourcing projects, they are
faced with a set of new challenges. They must manage through the
transition to a new service delivery model. Meanwhile, they are
establishing processes and staffing a governance team to supervise
the delivery of services, maintain alignment between the business
needs and the services provided, and oversee the relationship with
the service provider. Further complicating the already difficult
management challenge of actually securing the anticipated financial
and operational benefits from sourcing, many organizations
undertake a program of sourcing initiatives over time, and many
sourcing initiatives result in multiple service providers for
geographic or work content coverage, creating a complex portfolio
of contracts, services and relationships.
Today, most governance teams are drowning in paperwork, wasting
precious hours auditing invoices and aggregating provider data. Few
can provide end-to-end performance, consumption and chargeback
reports to their internal customers, or provide definitive insights
into the implications of changing demand or the status of their
service provider relationships. Where they have tools to support
their efforts, they are home-grown spreadsheets or adaptations of
generic products. Even organizations that have shown they are
highly effective in transition management and service governance
agree that they would benefit greatly from an enterprise platform
that provided an integrated collaborative framework and rich
toolset for automating, monitoring, managing, measuring and
reporting on sourced services and sourcing relationships.
EquaSiis Enterprise is a
unique solution developed specifically to support the governance
teams managing sourced services and service provider relationships.
It provides a rich and highly configurable set of tools and
services that liberate governance professionals from much of the
drudgery of routine service and relationship management. Linking
directly to source data, EquaSiis Enterprise provides the financial
reporting, operational management and analytical tools needed to
gain and maintain effective control over sourced services and lock
down promised benefits, as well as institutionalizing governance by
integrating the workflow and documents used for key governance
processes. The payoff is outstanding - customers typically report
improvements of 2 - 5% of the total spend on sourced services
through improved operational efficiency and reduced value
leakage.
"Finally, an all-encompassing governance solution
that automates outsourcing management best practices and decisions.
And we already have existing licenses for the solution's underlying
technologies. It's exactly what we've been looking
for."