Gartner recommends new 'holistic' approach to reap true outsourcing benefits

At their annual ITxpo in Sydney, Gartner Chief of Research, Linda Cohen, spoke about the changing face of IT sourcing, saying that as external suppliers become increasingly popular, there is a need for CIOs to think more strategically about sourcing arrangements. 

'We have to think about IT sourcing in a much more holistic way. Its not about the buy or the access alone', says Ms Cohen, adding that it was too easy to "press the accept button" without thinking through the decision strategically. The point Ms Cohen is making is that it is important to focus on more than price alone: 'Make your decisions based on 'why'. If we don't know the real reason, we're going to buy the wrong thing with the wrong terms for the wrong reason.'

Also at the ITxpo, Gartner analyst Christopher Ambrose spoke about the changing nature of contractual agreements, saying they were much more flexible and open to change these days. He explained that the price of a project could be determined by its scope and scale, workload volume, support environment, technical environment, service levels, terms and conditions, labour-market factors and geographical distribution. And - depending on the project's aim - payments could be fixed, or based on benefit and use deliverables or incentives. 

Manish Goklaney, Director of Client Services at Indicium said: 'We are trying to deliver ever-more flexibility to our clients in terms of how we package, price and deliver our services. More and more these days our relationships with our clients are one of strategic partnership, which is quite different to just delivering a service or 'getting a job done'. For us, it's about the business benefits our work delivers, and our work and terms of service reflect this.'

To find out more about Indicium's outsourcing services, click here. 

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