Sourcing governance

There is a frequent misunderstanding of the definition of governance, particularly in a sourcing context. Companies have used the word interchangeably with ‘vendor management,’ ‘retained staff,’ and ‘sourcing management organization’. Governance is none of these.

Management and governance are different disciplines. Management deals with making decisions and executing processes. Governance only deals with making sound decisions. It is the framework of decision rights that encourage desired behaviours in the sourcing and the sourced organization. When companies confuse management and governance, they inevitably focus on execution at the expense of strategic decision making. Both are vitally important. Further complicating matters is the requirement of sharing decision rights with the service provider s. When a company places itself in a position to make operational decisions on behalf of an outsourcer, the outcomes are inevitably poor service level s and contentious relationship management.

Governance is invariably the weakest link in a service sourcing strategy. A few simple constructs have been shown to be effective at improving that weakness:

1. A governance body. By forming a manageably sized governance body with a clear understanding of the Service Sourcing strategy, decisions can be made without escalating to the highest levels of senior management. By including representation from each service provider, stronger decisions can be made.
2. Governance domains. Domains can cover decision making for a specific area of the Service Sourcing strategy. Domains can cover, for example, Service Delivery, Communication, Sourcing Strategy or Contract Management. Remember, a governance domain does not include the responsibility for its execution, only its strategic decision making.
3. Creation of a decision- rights matrix. This ties all three recommendations together. RACI or RASIC charts are common forms of a decision-rights matrix.

Partnering with providers who are ISO/IEC 20000 compliant is an important element is reducing the risk of Service Sourcing. Organization s who have achieved this certification are more likely to meet service level s on a sustained basis. This credential is particularly important in multi-sourced environment s where a common framework promotes better integration. Multi-sourced environments require common language, integrated processes and a management structure between internal and external providers. ISO/IEC 20000 does not provide all of this but it provides a foundation on which it can be built.

Published in 2005, ISO/IEC 20000 is the first formal international standard specific to IT service management. An organization comfortable with ITIL will find no difficulty in interpreting ISO/IEC 20000.

Service providers should also consider the eSourcing Capability Model for Service Providers Version 2.0 (eSCM-SP v2) developed by a consortium of service providers led by Carnegie Mellon University. Guidance in this model is specific to sourcing of IT-enabled services. The eSCM-SP provides a framework for organizations to develop their service management capabilities from a sourcing perspective. Organizations can have their sourcing capabilities certified by Carnegie Mellon to be one of four capability levels, based on the publicly available eSCM-SP Reference Model and related Capability Determination Methods. The requirement s of eSCM-SP v2 are complementary to ISO/IEC 20000.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14