Added to that – in my experience – in 90% of organisations there is a gaping void between the executive management team and the IT department. For most organisations, IT is an expensive necessity. You can’t run a business today without it, even if you don’t really understand it and the costs and timelines are big.
That lack of perceived control can lead to creeping distrust if left unchecked. Distrust between the outsource supplier, in-house IT and the board. Not exactly the formula for a winning project.
I have worked in the IT sector for 40 years, since the early days of building state of the art operating systems at The University of Edinburgh where I was part of the team which developed the first networks.
I have worked as a trouble shooter for multi-national brands and taken companies from zero to a turnover of £50 million as well as delivering projects for the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government. Every project I have led has been built around the core values of openness, honesty and transparency. Those three key elements work together to foster trust. And all those projects were delivered on budget and to deadline.
The only thing you need to know about the company you are outsourcing to is that you can trust them not to make false promises. And on their side, they need to be able to say, look at my track record. It’s true. You can believe me.
Until the advent of Advanced Performance Management (APM) and automation of IT monitoring this could only be done through open and honest communication between people and businesses. Now there is no place to hide – APM creates absolute transparency, delivering output that can be understood by experts as well as non-technical business people.
I recently advised a company where the software to handle the operation of over 200 sites had been bought in and supported by a third party. The software had never worked to specification and for seven years the supplier had blamed the network and infrastructure.
Within two weeks of running a forensic analysis on the software, we were able to pinpoint the exact point at which there was a problem. The outsource company could clearly see the issue was with the software and put in place a plan to resolve this long-standing frustration. It took APM two weeks to solve a seven-year problem.
Our technology automates the role of troubleshooting within an organisation and generates IT efficiencies that will help increase business productivity. It measures peaks and troughs of user activity, pinpoints potential trouble spots and highlights dependencies.
By identifying issues across the IT environment – including cloud and web services – it alerts the in-house team to take action immediately so minimising any slowdown or disruption to operations.
The service measures actual performance against key performance indicators and business metrics with real-time statistics for ultra-quick problem identification. It also provides executive management with a clear overview of the performance of IT operations.
The technology is transparent, auditable and will change outsourcing forever by generating trust and transparency.