The other day, we were introduced to a new Enterprise IT prospect. In our first meeting, they were very upset at their outsourcing service provider, accusing them of willful misconduct. As it turns out, the potential customer was exposed to risk due to a lack of operational coverage – systems that weren’t backed up, no anti-virus on certain machines, etc. Their compliance requirements mandated that these things happen, and they discovered they hadn’t been happening.
Willful Misconduct? Unlikely.
In our experience, we have never witnessed willful misconduct on the part of a service provider. In fact, outsourcing service providers usually want to do a good job and have a positive relationship with their client, just as much as the client does. It’s just good business. In almost all cases, there is no intentional misrepresentation of information.
The Need For Visibility
We have however seen a lack of visibility and trusted information lead to the kinds of operational risks that this prospect had discussed. For example, using the anti-virus product to report on anti-virus coverage is a common practice that is not accurate. If the anti-virus agent is not installed on a machine, the system doesn’t know it exists, so it doesn’t know that there is no coverage.
To avoid these issues, both sides of the outsourcing relationship need the kind of accurate and trusted data that is provided by the Blazent Golden Record.
Getting Outsourcing Relationships Back on Track
In the vast majority of outsourcing relationships, both sides are honest. Both sides just want to do business. It’s the tedious outsourcing governance tasks that get in the way and create a lack of transparency, which results in mistrust. Using Blazent helps both sides avoid these issues, focus on their business goals rather than on outsourcing management, and as a result, enables outsourcing relationships to flourish.
