ERP Outsourcing for the Mid-Market discusses the nuances of outsourcing and critical success factors for mid-market companies. Specifically, how companies can effectively select a compatible outsourcing partner who understands both parts of the equation - business and technology - and how to create a governance environment that fosters a successful outsourcing relationship.
OneNeck White Paper
Forget Speeds And Feeds -
Outsourcing Today Is All About Your Business
ERP Outsourcing for the Mid-MarketBy Chuck Vermillion, CEO, OneNeck IT Services
White Paper_Outsourcing_03_23_071 1 3/23/2007 1:02:44 PM OneNeck White Paper
FOREWORD Corporate data centers began to empty. Elaborate hardware systems sat idle. And corporations were increasingly forced to look outside their Mid-market companies who've made the commitment to an walls for ways to continue operations that had become dependant on IT, Enterprise Resource Planning system have several options for without spending precious capital to acquire, manage and maintain the equipment, often through the course of a long-term lease.deployment. Each option brings with it varying levels of company involvement, ef? ciency, completeness, and cost. The ability to scale the breadth and depth of your IT infrastructure can be a corporate life-saver. This need for economical scalability caused Perhaps the most dif? cult decision on the table is whether to deploy, many outsourcing companies to position themselves as providers of a manage and maintain the system in-house, or outsource one or all of utility service. If you need more of any data center commodity, open the these key functions. In? uencing the outsourcing decision is the fact that outsourcer's faucet to receive exactly the quantity you need. When your ERP systems cast a huge footprint across an organization - consuming need diminishes, reduce the ? ow back to its normal state.as much as 90 percent of the total IT infrastructure. Consequently, a commitment to ERP requires signi? cant human, technical, and ? nancial However, "utility" really doesn't connote a deep partnership between resources that may be out of reach for companies. Utilities can be switched on and off at will without human smaller companies. intervention. As companies explored the software side of the IT equation for ways to remain competitive, tight partnerships became more Increasingly, mid-market companies are seeking out specialized important than ever. outsourcing partners to manage their complex applications such as ERP. The process of ? nding the ideal outsourcing partner is no longer a In our so-called New Economy, outsourcing has taken its rightful place cut-and-dried matter of determining how many servers are needed, or as a business strategy, not merely a cost-reduction scheme. In fact, how much bandwidth is available. ERP outsourcing partners now must the leading reasons why companies outsource point to business - not understand your business, all of your applications, and your short- and technology - advantages and metrics.long-term business goals. Only then can they create the optimum > The in-house IT staff lacks the requisite skill sets to manage solution comprising hardware, software, strategic planning, and services. and support the latest ERP applications and other complex This white paper presents an overview of ERP outsourcing models and fo- technologies.cuses on the critical success factors involved for mid-market companies. > Management recognizes the need to outsource the care and feed-ing of its ERP application, as the function is either too dif? cult to manage or out of control. If the outsourcer restores calm, man-THE EVOLUTION OF OUTSOURCING agement frequently follows their ERP decision with a desire to In the early years of the outsourcing industry, vendors of IT infrastructure outsource other applications and IT functions as well.services were selected primarily on price. Companies of all sizes and > The company needs to deploy applications and enhancements stages of maturity chose their IT outsourcing partners on how much of quickly in either start-up, transitional, or expansion modes of opera-a given speci? cation - for example, bandwidth, disk storage, or number tion.of users - they would receive for a given price. In general, outsourcing decisions were made by analyzing classic build-versus-buy scenarios, > To reduce and control recurring operating costs by eliminating with the lowest-cost solution often the winner. redundancies.> Extract greater business bene? t from the IT infrastructure by stan-In hindsight, it's safe to state that many outsourcing decisions were dardizing as much as possible on a single ERP backbone.based on corporate politics rather than on what was best for the > Improve the company's focus on core competenci... [download for more]
