By Cheryl Watson
Have you ever considered that outsourcing—letting someone else take care of your data processing—is rather like a marriage or, at the very least, a partnership?
If marriage is on your mind, and if you want it to be a happy one, then to avoid unpleasant surprises you’ll want to put in place certain rules of disclosure and fair play. Obviously, there are many considerations, precautions, pitfalls and procedures, you need to be aware of to construct a good contract that enables a successful, ongoing relationship. For instance, service level agreements, baseline measurement, benchmarks, and reporting techniques are just a few of the topics you need to consider.
A good outsourcing business relationship can resemble a good marriage. But like any good marriage, or any contract for that matter, it works best when you spell things out in advance, when you minimize assumptions, and when you ensure ongoing open and continuous disclosure and communications.
For twenty-five years, I was involved in both the customer and vendor sides of these contracts. In one case, I was able to save a customer over $200,000 a month in charges over (expected) baseline by pointing out errors made during the original measurement; by proving that CPU increases and, therefore, CPU charges, were due to the outsourcer’s changes; and by resolving a conflict about service levels.
With a better outsourcing contract, you too can avoid all these pitfalls. Incorporating the following ten agreements into your outsourcing contract, will give you a much better chance of enjoying a successful marriage. They will help you build a successful, non-antagonistic, relationship.
Ensuring you incorporate these items into your agreements, before converting to a vendor-run installation, can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars by avoiding misunderstandings later in the contract.
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