Choosing the Right SI
The following is a developed from real life outsourcing incidents at a variety of organisations of all sizes.
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"Let me tell you a story about how we chose the wrong systems integrator. It applies to Salesforce, D365, S4/HANA, Oracle or any system/service.
This is the list of what we did wrong to chose the wrong systems integrator:
Strategic
We did not properly define the scope of the outsourcing programme
We chose the platform / services to use via internal research and analysis
We did not share the platform findings with Technology Leads in business areas for validation
We did not properly set out why we were going down this platform path
We did not set C-level As Is and To Be expectations, including RoI
We did not get C-level agreement to business outcomes
We did not have realistic budget expectation for the programme
We did not have RoI projections nor scenario assumptions
We did not have the right decision-making governance mechanisms in place for different stages of the programme
Sourcing - Start
We were not consistent in collecting pain/points and requirements across the business.
We spend too much time and money on external consultants doing a fix/gap analysis
We selected the wrong sourcing partner whose methodology led to a protracted (expensive) sourcing plan
We did not understand the criteria for supplier choice for the long-list
We did not see the long-list responses, nor analysis thereof. The supplier short-list appeared as if by magic
Sourcing - Middle
We had several meetings / workshops with four suppliers
We did not have adequate 'eyeball' time with them on a wide range of topics in scope
The supplier shortlist was scored by the sourcing firm and a recommendation was put forward and accepted by us (they are the expert)
Sourcing - End
A preferred partner was selected (best score) and the supplier was notified
We used the supplier standard contract and SLAs with input from our legal function
The BAFO was agreed and contract signed
Transition
The supplier found that they did not have appropriate resource available
We did not have our vendor management nor governance framework in place
We had no retained organisation design and rumours were rife
Two months drifted by until both sides were ready to begin transition
Five months into Transition and we realised that this firm did not have resources / knowledge to cover all aspects of our scope
The initial Discovery work highlighted that some of their assumptions were wrong and Commercials need to be re-opened
We forgot to include Business Change Management and we needed to this at additional cost
Our Technical SMEs have lost confidence in the supplier
Our Board is unhappy about the escalating costs
The project has gone sour before ever leaving Transition
Help.... "
Choosing the right sourcing advisor is the key to success
Our ethos at ICT-Sourcing is "Traditional and Trusted gets Tremendous Results".
Sourcing your Enterprise Service Management Solution
To improve operational resilience and to combat the high risk of cyber-attacks many organisations (lead by Financial Services) are investigating Line of Business Enterprise Service Management (ESM). Once you ignore all the software hype and AI sales material online you will see the proven and adapted IT Service Management underpinnings.
A well architected ESM will form part of business 'Segregation of Duties', expected by resilience regulations such as DORA and NIS.
As organisations seek positive alignment with resilience directed regulations, forward thinking Lines of Business (LoB) directors and managers are seeking to architect their own ESM to reliably align their customer facing services and their underpinning SaaS platforms (which many select and operate themselves).
They will not wait for their Risk/Compliance or IT team to catch-up with ESM thinking. In fact, to some LoB directors, the internal IT function is simply another supplier (along with external third-party providers) who provides mainly IT operations of non-cloud services, applications data integration and project services.
Our 30 years of experience in implementing and auditing IT service management practices gives forward thinking LoB directors and managers a jump start on ESM leading to business advantage over competitors and helping to proactively meet regulator audit inspections.
applied.
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