Think hard and long before going down this road
I can certainly see the temptations of outsourcing for management, but once you sign that contract and engage, you will have to work twice as hard to bring the service back in house if the company you outsourced to does not meet the seen and unseen objectives. I have worked in the IT field since this started, and it seems from my point of view that management seems to buy into the idea, and then everyone laments their decision as the quality of the outsourcing is FAR inferior to what was done before. People will compare what they had with what they have, and the past will always be better. Whether that is true or not is irrelavant, but the damage to the company and management is done, according to those that will, or do work for them.
I worked for a rather large bank at one time, and was in the first round of layoffs. They went from 2000 IT folks to 90 in a couple of years, and outsourced the rest to Unisys and IBM. Some people who lost their jobs got rehired to do the same job for less money and benefits. Sounds great so far? Well, after a year, they noticed the response times to high severity incidents were a lot lower, and there was nothing that could be done. It took them several years to bring the departments back in house. Several people that I talked to avoided said company like the plague because the company was lay off happy. My wife was lucky enough to stay and witness the whole transformation from an entraprinurial bank with the best and brightest to a bank that has average workers.
I have seen very few outsourcing contracts that work well, because once you outsource, you loose control and the time it takes to get things done gets a lot longer and far more complicated. Sure, you save money for the immediate satisfaction, but do you save money in the long run? I suspect not.
