Outsourcing

Advice for anyone considering outsourcing projects, whether at home or offshore, to reduce costs and increase competitiveness.

Outsourcing Key Projects: Bringing Companies One Step Closer to Business Virtualization

The success of a company depends on providing the highest level of service to its clients. Yet when times are tough, reduced budgets and smaller staffs make it harder to deliver. Outsourcing key projects can help you to provide a higher level of customer service while lowering costs at the same time. It is an important step on the road to business virtualization, which reduces IT costs, improves availability and optimises service.

Managing Hidden Project Costs for Better ROI

The most common argument for outsourcing is cost-savings. And in the face of a challenging economic climate, cost figures largely in the decision for outsourcing IT projects and business processes. While cost-effectiveness is a huge deciding factor for offshoring, cheaper labour and service rates should not be the only measures of possible financial success of a project. In fact, long-term benefits are extracted from the industry expertise of vendors that could make up for the investments in communication, time zone overlaps, and travel.

The Most Common Sourcing RFP Mistakes

An outsourcing Request for Proposal (RFP) is different than the normal RFPs for goods and services that get produced by procurement departments on a daily basis. The outsourcing provider's proposed solution and project plan will be based on this RFP. A poorly developed RFP that does not fully understand the intricacies of the current process, the costs and the future vision that the company management wants to achieve with outsourcing leads to poorly developed provider solutions. This in turn leads to scope and cost creep, and a potentially unsustainable outsourcing relationship between the company and the provider.

How Agile Offshore Practices Can Avoid the "Real" Costs of Offshore Outsourcing

CIO.com recently published an article outlining the "real" costs of offshore outsourcing. It has compelling arguments why offshoring drives down strategic value in the long-run. They touched upon five major risks for offshore outsourcing. In this article you will learn practical tips on using agile methodologies and open offshore models to mitigate major offshore outsourcing risks.

Motivating Your Outsourced Offshore Team

The success of a business relationship between a company and an outsource vendor depends on how well the delivery team implements projects on-time and on-budget. But while these three items present only the quantitative facet of this relationship, the dedication and professionalism of the outsource team sometimes tell a different story. How do you sustain the interest of your new outsource team? Here are ways to keep the team passionate about providing you with top-quality service.

CMMI: Does Your Supplier Make the Grade?

Outsourcing work to offshore organisations has become the latest arsenal in software development over the last seven to eight years. The strongest drivers to outsourcing focus on driving down costs, increasing productivity, reducing time to market, and providing a flexible resource pool. If you're looking for a sure-fire way to find a highly-qualified outsourcing partner, learn how CMMI ratings can help you pinpoint the best candidate for the job.

Is Offshore Outsourcing Working for You?

The advent of the Internet and the continuous innovations made in information and communication technology has brought about the steady rise of a recently established business practice, offshore business development. Is your company looking or already into outsourcing? Here are five indicators that your company is on its way to outsourcing success.

Why Outsourcing Fails, Even with Good Project Management

The programming press and IT journals are full of stories about the failure of software outsourcing. The statistics are sobering. Less than 50% of outsourcing meets financial objectives. The outsourcing of many business processes besides software development also has the same less-than-stellar results.

Minimising Risk in Outsourced Projects

Outsourcing is the process of contracting a third party to do work on the behalf of a client that has neither the skills or resources to perform in-house. It is usually more cost effective to contract out work than to hire someone in to complete the project in question.

Introduction to Outsourcing for the Project Management Professional

Business globalisation, combined with the relentless change of new technology, continues to challenge our ability to adequately manage enterprise computing activities. Past efforts used to control the various aspects of system integration are no longer effective in today's diverse and complex information environments. The need for more competent project management techniques is paramount to the survival of those organisations who rely heavily on the benefits of computing technology.

Empowered Outsourcing

We've all heard how outsourcing and augmenting staff with experts is an avenue for meeting business needs where the technology, skills, knowledge, staff or time is not internally available. In theory outsourcing provides the ability to develop products and services that are not easily achieved through the organisation's existing structure, by providing operational and strategic benefit. On the surface the idea seems viable; however, depending on the type of solution and service being outsourced, these relationships may actually increase the demands on the organisation that is outsourcing its work. This article highlights six key questions you should answer before outsourcing, and eight things you should keep in mind while writing the contract.

Tips on Offshore Software Project Management

Success of a project when developed by an offshore provider is largely dependant on the way the project is remotely managed from the client's side. If you hope to make a project successful with very little input from your end as a customer, it is unlikely that the project will achieve success in the long term. The basic reason is very simple: you know your business requirements best. Software services companies working in another part of the world can only develop a solution based on the input provided by you.

Managing IT Projects Offshore

Today many organisations have decided to move their operations offshore to reduce costs and increase competitiveness. The cost savings offshore are considerable but the headline saving is only a small part of equation. Having spoken to many project managers over the past year it has become clear that the same issues are arising time and time again. Understanding these before you start an offshore project will help you to be better prepared. These are six of the key areas to consider and where most of the issues lie when offshore outsourcing.