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Thank you very much for your candor. Sorry about bringing up such memories after your return from such a great vacation... =) -----Original Message----- From: Gallagher, Debbie [mailto:dgallagher@deloitte.ca] Sent: Monday, August 16, 1999 12:32 PM To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com Subject: Outsourcing Late response due to vacation (was great!). I see you didn't really get any replies from those who'd had unsatisfactory experiences... so here's mine. One of my clients outsourced the data centre operations (not programming) to a company that specializes in doing this (sorry, can't be public about the company name). Outsource firm did a pretty decent job of moving the boxes to the new building, and the first little while (a few months) things went reasonably well. However, the service did go downhill and got quite bad. The strategy of the outsource firm appeared to be - bring in the big experts to impress the client and make the sale, then move the experts onto the the next potential/new client and leave the dogs to run the show. Perhaps this was just the way it looked and wasn't intended, but that's pretty much the sequence of events. Some of the problems included: - poorly trained operators (some of whom would guess the solution to problems instead of calling programmers for instructions - this led to several unhilarious and difficult to diagnose errors) - slow or no response to phone calls or faxed requests - technical support with no (not little - none) experience on the hardware or operating system - back ups not done according to agreed schedule - also backups not verified by procedure as simple as reading the job log - back up tapes lost - this was a particularly frequent and troublesome occurence I'm not suggesting that outsourcing is necessarily a bad thing, but have a few suggestions: - Have a service level agreement that outlines the penalties for bad service - be specific about what the service requirements are and the escalation procedure. Include a requirement for reqular meetings with the provider to review your service records. - Take responsibility for monitoring the agreement and ensure that the service provider is actually doing what you pay them to do. HTH, Debbie Gallagher - -----Original Message----- From: Roger Boucher [mailto:RBoucher@stanpac.com] Sent: Thursday, 5 August 1999 2:06 To: 'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com' Subject: Outsourcing (was IS Assets) . . . . Does anyone out there have any experiences with outsourcing services for IS? If so, are those experiences generally good or bad? . . . +--- | This is the Midrange System Mailing List! | To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com. | To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com. | To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com +--- +--- | This is the Midrange System Mailing List! | To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com. | To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com. | To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com +---
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