seat58F
outsourcing relationships: international, inter-economic, interpersonal
September 7, 2010 ~ 03:37:35 AM * -07:00ST
just ask for it
Post # 112 by
rc on March 20th, 2009 ~ 11:08:37 AM
Posted as contracts, metrics, r&d |
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“continuous improvement” clauses continue to get people crazy. there is never agreement on what kind of progress is expected or how to measure it.
I’m amazed that clients don’t require that some level of R&D spend be directly assigned to their delivery team. R&D can happen in the local environment to do some workgroup and/or process optimization or it can happen back at HQ as long as the delivery manager has some insight into the pipeline and a plan to integrate specific deliverables as they become available.
continuous improvement won’t happen without some focused effort; given appropriate visibility, clients can easily extrapolate specific efforts into client-perspective cost or performance improvements. all they have to do is insist on being part of that conversation.
when green is not green
Post # 30 by
rc on March 11th, 2009 ~ 08:40:18 AM
Posted as contracts, incident, metrics, service request |
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Service Request Mgmt and Change Mgmt usually operate in a predictable way because the kinks are worked out very quickly or the deal goes dysfunctional. R&R and metrics gaps from the original Statement of Work are patched, and operations moves forward with a monthly review of metrics that support the contract, but not the real needs of the client.
The client wants service requests and incidents to be resolved quickly within the agreed cost envelope. They have also usually inserted some ill-defined notion of continuous improvement in the contract. This is the crowbar of disenchantment that the service provider gets whacked with every month.
Trap #1: The relationship will not evolve in a positive way if improvement efforts focus on tightening the entire portfolio of metrics. Most of them can’t be tightened because they are not statistically relevant. Most shouln’t be tightened because its way too expensive to go there. Remember the business priorities.
Trap #2: Improvements in time-to-resolve metrics are extremely fleeting and subject to manipulation by both parties.
Trap #3: Clients and Service Providers naturally gravitate to traditional End User context metrics and use them exclusively to steer the relationship. Most of these metrics really don’t reflect the success of the deal. They are usually easy to gather and to crunch, but their relevance fades as business priorities change.
An active procurement department is a candidate to act as an avocate for their portfolio of approved suppliers. Someone on the client side should modulate demands of the service manager ensuring that green metrics actually do represent client priorities and that the service provider is not being incented to compensate in other areas invisible to client operations.
force majeure
Post # 19 by
rc on March 10th, 2009 ~ 07:43:14 AM
Posted as capacity, continuity, contracts |
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french in the contract means that people are really serious about maintaining service levels and that penalties are usually on the line. The service provider wants the service levels turned off when a fishing boat breaks the fiber running to the next continent; the client doesn’t want to monitor all the relationships with contributing suppliers.
Force Majeure language ( wikipedia ) usually means that neither party is interested in using either the contract or governance programs to actively manage risk. Very infrequently, the contract will refer to a joint risk management exercise, but these programs don’t reach very deeply into the operational stack.
Confidence is justified in some cases. Service Desk operations can implement a follow-the-sun strategy more easily than a datacenter operation, but have confidence that capacity won’t be an issue. Datacenters may invest in some level of redundant services as a band-aid for weak business process engineering or weak IT architecture.
In either recovery mode, service levels (and associated penalties) are usually turned off.
best effort (?)
Post # 7 by
rc on March 10th, 2009 ~ 05:33:59 AM
Posted as contracts |
No Comments »
That phrase means that you can’t go home until the spare drive arrives, box is fixed, the app re-loaded, the data restored, and the end-users have confirmed that everything is cool. You really, really don’t want to use that phrase unless you want the client to have an easy out of the contract. By the way, its not only you, but the account manager and the delivery manager are also on the hook, everyone on the escalation team has to sweat this out. No one eats until the box is back and transactions are happening.
Some substitute the phrase \”reasonable endeavours\”. I’m not really sure if this helps under duress (talk to your attorney) but the idea is that you need to maintain some wiggle room in the face of the events beyond your control. And the client does expect you to be there waiting for the spares.
the service improvement plan gambit
Post # 494 by
admin on January 12th, 2009 ~ 04:01:15 PM
Posted as contracts, metrics |
No Comments »
given a difficult service level metric, the provider ultimately ends up proposing a service improvement plan to prevent or minimize service level misses. if the SIP has to be approved by the outsourcer, this is generally a BAD THING as it means that the outsourcer has the responsibility to run chunks of the infrastructure itself either internally or via another service provider. the outsoucer is in the position to control that quality and effectiveness of the fix, the provider is at the mercy of the outsourcer to agree that further investments are necessary.
relevant service levels should be turned off after the SIP has been approved. they should remain off during the implementation and testing of the SIP.
