I was hired around 4 years ago as a sourced computing help desk agent and gradually my contract has expanded to include hundreds of agents and a leadership team at a major global company.
The company we work for has only gradually let go of control of the organization and for the last couple of years all knowledge management, strategic planning, scheduling and general high level decision making stays in the hands of the company we work for. What I run into is that there is almost zero accountability with those folks that stayed on to intelligently handle knowledge, strategic planning, scheduling and other things and it makes it very difficult to be successful at improving the quality of support.
My question is... is this a smart way to outsource an IT function? It seems to me that leaving important functions in-house that affect the success of your contracting company like that would be unwise. The in-house employees have a vested interest in subverting the contracting company and making them unsuccessful to try and keep their own jobs overpaid positions.
Just wanted to get the thoughts and experiences of this forum because our contract leadership team is working endless hours and only now after many years gotten to the point where we can see the removal of these obstacles. In retrospect I question the wisdom of sourcing gradually in this way...
This is an interesting question. First, I think that while that client company may try to do their own knowledge management and strategic planning, there is nothing preventing you from doing those yourself. After all, the help desk agents are employed and paid by your company.
Then, for the core of the issue, who is the champion pushing the outsourcing of the help desk? Why is this person not monitoring the behavior and performance of in-house team and allowing such infighting? This issue is not only applicable to outsourced functions, but also to any cross-division co-operation within the company.
It seems to me that leaving important functions in-house that affect the success of your contracting company like that would be unwise. The in-house employees have a vested interest in subverting the contracting company and making them unsuccessful to try and keep their own jobs overpaid positions.
Interesting perspective. It seems to me that you should NOT outsource key functions of the company. The outsourcing company has a vested interest in making money - yes?
I saw it was old, but what the heck. I speak from the perspective of having BEEN the outsourced arm of the company - but never understood why the company would allow its CIO, etc, to be outsourced. Just my .02!
Over the past several decades I've seen many companies including banks, hospitals and government agencies outsource their entire IT division including the executives. It is nothing new.
From what I've seen the most common outsourcing approach is to keep IT management in-house, but to outsource technical support, programming, and other technical roles. The information technology and business coordination side is better run in-house, but technical roles can be done in India and the Philippines for a very cheap price.
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