Tool

Use this tool to predict the magnitude of hidden costs for your outsourcing project.

Note

Measure, avoid, and mitigate the hidden costs of outsourcing.

Solution Set

Business and IT leaders have come under increasing pressure to cut costs, in part due to hype surrounding the cost-cutting potential of outsourcing.

Note

Avoid contract pitfalls and get a fair price on your telecom and mobility contracts.

Note

Info-Tech's buyer's advice will help you optimize spending on salesforce.com and avoid buyer's remorse.

Tool

Multi-site enterprises are commonly managing environments with different types of voice and data connectivity, often sourced from multiple service providers. Use this tool to inventory telecom services, physical assets, monthly invoices, as well...

Note

Organizations are increasingly dependent on external vendors and suppliers to enable the effective delivery of IT services. Manage the vendor portfolio to improve the relationship between your organization and its IT vendors, maximize their...

Video

Improve IT excellence by improving the performance of your vendors.

Tool

Once you decide on vendor performance metrics, you will need a tool to track ongoing vendor performance. Info-Tech's dashboard tool tracks metrics for up to 20 vendors for small and mid-sized organizations. It presents results both at a...

Tool

IT must collect and act on vendor feedback to manage and ensure high vendor performance. Conduct regular vendor satisfaction surveys to measure the IT department's management performance and to address areas where improvement is needed.

Tool

To ensure high vendor performance, IT departments must practice vendor management by recording and acting on vendor issues. Track issues to resolution and understand where improvement is needed.

Solution Set

Organizations are dependent on vendors yet spend little effort managing their performance, resulting in less than optimal results.

Job Description

The role of the Vendor Portfolio Manager is pivotal in the IT department's interactions with suppliers of services, hardware, and software. The portfolio manager provides product and service purchasing guidance for the entire IT department.

Job Description

The role of the Purchasing/Procurement Manager is to plan, execute, and finalize purchasing and procurement strategies for technology spend across the organization.

Job Description

The role of the Contract Manager is to support, manage, and administer contracts for technology spending on services and products across the organization.

Video

Application development outsourcing offers organizations potential cost benefits, an expansion of IT skills, and a higher level of flexibility with IT resourcing. However, outsourcing projects commonly run over budget, fall off-schedule, or...

Tool

Application development outsourcing initiative success depends greatly on a thorough contract. While it does not have to be overly complex and laboriously constructed to be sound, the contract must systematically cover all aspects of a project...

Template/Policy

Capturing and assembling site-by-site voice and data connectivity in a central repository will put the enterprise in the best position to review overall capacity and identify any costly exceptions. Use this template to get a start on information...

Tool

Use the Contract Management Tool to track location, status, and expiry dates of ongoing contracts. The tool provides advance warning of checkpoint dates for timely contract renewal decisions.

Template/Policy

In complex, multi-vendor data center environments, a contract management policy is an essential control tool used to minimize the risk and maximize the benefits of vendor contracts to the enterprise. Establish a data center contract management...

One way that IT professionals can attempt to cut costs is by negotiating for lower pricing from vendors. On the surface it might appear difficult to negotiate for a lower price with a vendor that is IT's top pick, however this process doesn't...

As the need for particular maintenance activities waxes and wanes, small enterprise IT managers who outsource their application maintenance often face the challenge of dealing with varying levels of resource demand. Move seamlessly through...

In the past, it was easier for enterprises to decide if a single or a multi-provider WAN solution was the best choice. However, because of today's cost and performance concerns coupled with business risks, and increased use of cellular services,...

Many IT teams approach requirements gathering for software purchasing the same way they approach custom development requirements. It is important, however, to note the differences between these scenarios from the perspective of requirements...

Video

Application maintenance outsourcing (AMO) often involves peaks and valleys in resource demand as the need for support activities waxes and wanes. This videocast highlights how several IT executives interviewed by Info-Tech manage fluctuations in...

Organizations of any size can succeed at application maintenance outsourcing (AMO) by instituting strong governance. Follow the strategies of a CIO, in a small organization in the insurance industry, who used AMO to offload non-core tasks and...

Underutilized software is not as expensive as software that sits on a shelf. Organizations need to know if they are deriving value from an application or simply storing shelfware. Learn to identify and prevent shelfware before it inflicts budget...

Tool

Organizations need to know if they are deriving value from an application or simply storing shelfware. Learn to identify and prevent shelfware before it inflicts budget pain. Use this tool to compare up to 10 applications and help determine...

Video

One effective way to cut costs is to negotiate reduced pricing with IT vendors. Recent Info-Tech research suggests that there are three key questions that IT professionals should ask themselves before entering into a contract negotiation.

IT professionals are constantly under pressure to reduce costs. However, sometimes a vendor just won't budge when asked to reduce the price during a contract negotiation. Learn from a case study showing how an IT consultant helped Company X...