seat58F
outsourcing relationships: international, inter-economic, interpersonal
September 4, 2010 ~ 10:07:22 AM * -07:00ST
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.
