The last ten years has seen the trend to out-source IT services and development continue to increase. This should not be a surprise when we consider the risk and cost of getting it wrong. Out-source companies come with the allure of having solved all problems previously and having a large pool of experienced staff and many organisations have significantly reduced the cost and risk of running their IT systems as a result.
Central to a successful out-source contract is a contract and a service description and underpinning set of requirements that are well defined. Good example candidates for out-sourcing are Payroll or Desktop management. In both cases, an organisation can describe what it is that it wants and the amount of change required going into the future can be estimated accurately.
It's in the nature of our-sourced contracts that you describe to the supplier what you want but refrain from telling them how to do it.
If your IT application is the core of what your organisation does (such as the learndirect LMS) and you know you are going to undergo an annual cycle of change then in-sourcing your operations should be considered.
Having in-sourced the learndirect operations, we have seen a significant reduction in cost and have increased our service availability to > 99.9%
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