The cost of the IT hardware and expertise involved in operating an in-house infrastructure, a full suite of applications and multiple business-critical processes is significant. Many companies have turned to outsourcing for cost saving, but every penny will be scrutinised for the value it provides and to ensure it is justified in terms of business need.

The difficulty that many CIOs face is that these assessments are not simple to make. They may be in control of very sophisticated IT strategies, but be in a position where they do not have suitably innovative service providers to deliver on them. The reason for this is that many outsourcers built their businesses by being effective in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Infrastructure or applications – but not in all of them.

However, this single-service approach does not easily allow CIOs to tailor an outsourcing strategy to their specific needs. Many CIOs have been forced to work with a range of different suppliers: one for application development, one for Infrastructure Outsourcing (ITO) and another for BPO.

While this represented the best approach at the time, it also led to a heavily siloed operation. With no data sharing or consistent management between these suppliers, inconsistencies and inefficiencies werecommonplace and cost effectiveness was low.

There are four areas in which an integrated approach tooutsourcing can enhance the business case for a CIO.

Speed and Agility

An integrated outsourcing offering enables an organisation to be quicker and more flexible in reacting to changes in the business environment. This means that opportunities are not missed because of failing systems and the company has the tools it needs to do its job at its disposal, at all times.

Business Oriented

Because everything is under one roof, there is greater coordination to steer the whole IT outsourcing project towards the CIO’s business goals. When functions are separate it’s a greater administrative burden to align resources in the same way.

SLA flexibility

With everything in the same place resources can be coordinated to meet more functional operational targets. With visibility and consistency of contracts the CIO can have a far easier path to navigate through operational responsibilities.

Common Governance

All employees are integrated and have a common governance process. Applications developers spend time with the BPO specialists to understand the systems and go back and improve them. If a call centre agent gets any application or server complaints thisimmediately reaches their colleagues in Applications or ITO and is fixed far more rapidly. This cuts turn around time and ensures minimal disruption for the client.

Cost efficiency

There are, of course, some economies of scale by working with a single provider, but the real cost benefits come through the efficiency savings that an integrated outsourcer will provide as standard.

It vital to success that CIOs in any industry have the ability to tailor IT services to the needs of their business. This is the case whether they own or outsource the hardware and services or not. However, the Total Cost of Ownership benefits of outsourcing – together with the fact that an integrated services offering and highly skilled offshore workforce can create a highlyeffective IT department – means that the difficult decision making just got a little easier.