Outsourcing

Articles

Life After Outsourcing by Meredith Levinson

May 15, 2004 Issue of CIO Magazine

How to Outsource-Proof Your IT Department

A New Game Plan by Christopher Koch

Oct. 15, 2004 Issue of CIO Magazine

The Inner Cost of Outsourcing,

Sticking with the Home Team, and

One Outsources, The Other Doesn't by Stephanie Overby

Nov. 1, 2004 Issue of CIO Magazine

You Can't Outsource Everything by Goeff Smith

Nov. 1, 2004 Issue of CIO Magazine

Summary

Outsourcing is getting a lot of attention lately in the news and in corporate boardrooms. More and more companies are exploring outsourcing as a way to reduce costs, increase productivity and maintain competitive advantage. On the human side, IT professionals are concerned about the trend to offshore help desk and programming jobs especially when the financial headlines boast of record corporate profits and a jobless recovery. I chose two articles that take a different approach toward outsourcing and I reference a series of supporting articles from an issue of CIO pretty much dedicated to the subject from November 2004.

English: Business Process Reengineering Cycle

Outsourcing

Outsourcing-offshoring-resized

The first article "Life After Outsourcing" by Meredith Levinson explores the effect of outsourcing at Nextel Communication. Nextel had posted a $1.8 billion loss in 1998 and management felt it had to take some decisive steps to improve its sagging bottom line. Dick LaFave was brought in as the new senior vice president and CIO to help make the transition. He knew exactly what he was getting into since he had led outsourcing deals with his two previous employers, Southern New England Telephone and The Boston Co.

Over the next two years (2000 - 2002) Nextel outsourced approximately 290 of its 700 IT employees to Amdocs to run its billing system; EDS to take over desktop and help desk support, network management, and data center...