Assess Your Outsourcing Maturity To Improve Your Outsourcing Relationships

Today, many companies see outsourcing as a strategic function and seek help from IT services providers to build and operate their IT environment. Yet the result of the outsourcing trend is the increasing complexity of IT relationships and the growing number of outsourcing relationships that must be managed. Successful management of outsourcing models like managed services, cloud-based services, near- and offshoring, or outcome-based consulting requires high maturity in key areas, like definition and implementation of the outsourcing relationship, contract statements, service management processes, and of services and their corresponding service levels. Sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals have to ensure that they understand their own outsourcing maturity so that they can align themselves and align with the appropriate providers for their current needs and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their own outsourcing operations. This maturity assessment will help you with three critical activities: 1) assessing your own outsourcing maturity; 2) identifying the gaps in your current versus desired state; and 3) defining the activities for improvement.