Farrell & Associates - Outsourcing Services

Outsourcing Services

Farrell & Associates have been providing independent advice on outsourcing since the early 1990s. We have worked with numerous organisations assisting them with their outsourcing planning, as well as providing advice to IT vendors about outsourcing.

Outsourcing
– customer focused work

Customer-focused work includes:

	Strategic and IT planning and the linkage of those plans,
	Identification of optimum sourcing strategies (which may be a mix of a number of sourcing strategies including outsourcing)
	Identification, definition and costing of services – we like to identify and cost existing services and then do a gap analysis showing additional services required, areas where costs can be reduced and/or quality increased through different sourcing options,
	Preparation of tender documents
	Working with the vendors in a facilitation role
	Development of evaluation criteria for tenders
	Contract and SLA negotiation – often initially working with the customer’s legal representative in order to arrive at a fair contract as a starting point for negotiation with the vendor
	Audit of incumbent suppliers service delivery against contractual requirements

Outsourcing
– work for vendors

We have worked with both customers and vendors to facilitate and/or broker successful outsourcing deals. Many vendors we have worked with find our small size and guaranteed discretion makes it easier for them (and their staff) to work with us. Our work for vendors has included:

	Strategic planning – market positioning, costing of strategic options, risks
	Service determination and definition, development of SLAs
	Evaluation of service delivery capability, weaknesses, strengths, resourcing issues, processes and technology used.
	Design and implementation of support centres
	Customer satisfaction – usually in the form of detailed qualitative analysis
	Trouble-shooting and problem solving – for complex or troubled projects
	Project definition – usually for complex projects
	Evaluation of legal contracts (usually outsourcing contracts with associated SLAs but we have also been asked to assist with the development of design and build contracts) with recommendations for changes (based upon competitive positioning and known market preferences).

Outsourcing
– work with vendors

In addition to the above, our work with customers has resulted in Farrell & Associates working with vendors in the following areas:

	Tender response evaluation – includes assisting vendors with presentations to prospective clients
	Due diligence
	Contract negotiation – including costing
	Service definition and SLA negotiation
	Transition in activities

Usually our work in this area has required us to evaluate a vendors true service capability against stated capability. Often we have worked with a preferred vendor to design improvements to satisfy a customer’s requirements and achieve a win-win solution for both vendor and customer.