Concept
 | |
In many cases the complete outsourcing of IS services will not be cheaper than a combination of internal employees and external suppliers. In this situation, the question turns upside down: What kind of support can be done by the "communication interface?" What knowledge is necessary to support the business processes?
Communication FlowAs a result of the situation described above, we chose an approach of organizing the IT / IS department in the company as a "communication interface" with additional technical functions. The experiences made in the support tasks are the base for training and for improving business tasks, software, and technical infrastructure. Besides these experiences, the observation of new technological innovations and organizational trends is another source of new ideas. In this approach the communication with the IS users, with the management, and of course within the internal group, is an essential factor in the design and reengineering of the IS support jobs. To be able to communicate with the users and the management, the IS employees need knowledge about the business to reduce the knowledge gap. But they will need also a more general view than the employees in the business departments. So the culture gap (Leonard, 2002) between IS and business departments will not be bridged. On the contrary, this gap can be a progressing force in re-engineering and changing processes. Even if the business departments have the responsibility for the project management, the IS employees can have the function of a project moderator.
Fundamental ObjectivesThe fundamental objectives of the IT service group are orientated on the following four aspects, which have individual characteristics regarding the cooperation with the various divisions and with the executive board:
Make or Buy? Make and Buy!The aim of sustainability influences the make-or-buy decision: Projects which are supporting the business of the company in an organization's specific way demand the development of in-house skills. The less crucial the project, the more the decision tends to buying. But this simple idea has to be modified by the influence of time. Normally, the implementation of a new application cannot be adjourned until the employees have built up their skills. New applications and technical innovations normally are bought as standard applications or they are developed by externals. They will be introduced in a smooth way: The training of the internal staff is part of almost all contracts with externals. The aim of this training is to enable the internal staff to improve existing applications and develop new applications. This corresponds to an incremental software development processes, in which communication between the users and the developers is crucial in some aspects similar to the concept of extreme programming (XP). The typical implementation process can be divided into the following phases:
With the exception of the first phase (defining a problem), external specialists and internal employees are working together. Typically, for each new technology or new application at least two employees will be trained. Ordinarily the training is a combination of on-the-job and off-the-job training. After the start of production, the internal employees will take over an increasing part of all tasks, but with the possibility to refer to the external specialists. The further development will be done by the internal staff if possible. In this sense, the project is the centre piece for the organizational developments of the IS service group.
Technical Infrastructure and SupportThe technical infrastrucure is selected with regard to high standardization, high availability and lean administration. New demands from the divisions are analysed concerning to costs and complexity of IT services. If necessary, the demands are modified or refused. Software updates are installed only if absolutely necessary (end of life of older releases, serious bugs). Hardware, especially servers and storage systems, but also printers, are selected with special regard to guarantee and on-site service. A service contract with suppliers and / or technical specialists for crucial systems is important. The concentration on standard products simplifies the work and reduces the dependence on manufacturers or specialized service companies. In most cases there is, especially for SMEs, no need to use non-standard products or non-standard installations. Intentionally and in contrast to some "philosophies of outsourcing" the 1st level support is done by internal employees. In this way, the enterprise maintains the possibility to detect potential for improvements in technology and processes. So the 1st level support has a "seismographic function." The 2nd level support is done both by internal staff and by external service companies; 3rd level support is mostly done by external service companies. In a longer space of time the essential knowledge will diffuse to the internal employees, so that an increasing number of the 2nd and 3rd level problems can be solved by internal staff too.
SkillsThe employees need a general knowledge(with the ability to further specialization, if needed) which encloses a general IT knowledge, product skills, and knowledge about the processes of the enterprise and project management. People are not hired for some special technical skills, but for their wide experiences and interests. The employees have to handle a lot of complexity in their jobs (Lally and Garbushian, 2002) and have to track several tasks at the same time. The employees will be trained in technical aspects, in communication skills, and in business and organizational skills. The aim is that the employees of the IT department will be able to discuss concepts of business processes with the business departments. Because of the combination of technical and organizational skills, the IT service group is also an internal consultant to the divisions and to the executive board. Experience shows that younger professionals are less interested in such jobs than older professionals. The younger professionals prefer employments in software companies and / or international companies. This corresponds to the situation that at least in Germany the typical career path runs in the direction of specialization. On the other side, there is no typical way in education to get the skills for IT management jobs, especially in SMEs. Every system can be administrated by two or three employees of the building society. In case of absence, no direct substitution by another employee is necessary. Rather, the organization exploits a certain overlap. Specific knowledge is documented in a Lotus Notes database, which the employees are filling after solving a non-standard problem. With this tool, most of the trouble can be solved by all employees in the IT service group, not only by the specially trained staff.
A Case Study: A Building SocietyThe stated concept was worked out in a building society with about 100 employees. In Germany about 20 building societies are existing. The products of the building societies are very complex compared to other financial products, but the business processes are relatively stable. A contract normally lives for 7 to 20 years; therefore, long-term planning is important. So on the one side, there exists no standard application for the business processes of a building society on the market; on the other side, the complexity of the product and the amount of legal changes makes it impossible for a small company to develop such a core application on its own. At the building society an old self-developed mainframe-based application was the core application for the savings contracts and building loan contracts until 1997. Then this application was replaced by another mainframe-based application, which was developed by a cooperation with other building societies and which is externally hosted. But besides this core application there are a lot of applications with increasing relevance for lean and customer-guided business processes, like a document management system, office software, messaging software (Lotus Notes), software for product simulations, software for cost management, and so on. In the building society, the organizational support for all applications (except for the mainframe application) and the technical responsibility for all the locally-sited systems are concentrated in an IT service group with five full-time and two part-time employees. The concept has led to the following situation: The current technical service (operating, system administration, troubleshooting) offers a high quality. It requires about 1.1 employees per 100 users, scattered over five locations in one town. The average availability of the applications is > 99% (where scheduled maintenance is rated as "not available"). The typical time to identify and to fix a problem is less than 1 hour; most of the problems are solved immediately (in a few minutes). Nevertheless the costs are less than 75% of the costs calculated by outsourcing service providers for a 10-year-contract. The other resources (4.9 employees) are engaged in business-related tasks:
The skills of the employees are increasing permanently. So in the last years five years knowledge about the following items was built up: JAVA programming, shell script programming, development of Lotus Notes applications, administration of NT, UNIX and communication servers, and firewall administration. The IT service group is highly accepted and integrated within the whole enterprise.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 188