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Pressure to Reduce Operating Costs Primary Driver to Outsource for Irish Organisations
22 September 2010
Pressure to reduce operating costs is the primary driver to outsource finds a new survey of Senior Executives conducted by IT Consulting and Outsourcing firm Version 1. Irish organisations are achieving cost savings compared to the cost of delivering the same service in-house the survey indicated. Improved responsiveness and reliability of service, access to expert skills and the ability to leverage industry best practice were highlighted as additional benefits enjoyed by organisations that outsource some, or all, of their IT function or business processes to a third-party service provider.
-Data Security Issues a Major Impediment to Greater Outsourcing
Irish organisations have mostly increased their levels of IT Outsourcing in the last 18 months; a trend that seems set to continue for the coming 18 months. The deterioration in Ireland’s economic environment has forced businesses to look at cost restructuring. The survey indicated that Business Applications, Databases and Hosting were the most popular area to outsource, while other categories such as Business Processes and IT Management were not being outsourced to the same extent.
Issues regarding Data Security were high on executives list of potential barriers to outsourcing, with regulatory compliance and data loss being the main concerns. Version 1 Managing Director Justin Keatinge advises executives to ensure that their outsourcing provider has a clearly defined security policy in place which adheres to recognised best practice and has provisions for good information security awareness programmes for staff. Making sure that a vendor’s actions can be audited and that there is transparency around their actions is very important. Discuss your security policy with the vendor, and ask them if there are any areas where they are not compliant. Even when a vendor can not comply immediately, there are normally actions that can be taken to eliminate the risks,” says Keatinge.
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About the Survey
This survey was conducted as part of an Executive Roundtable attended by a group of senior executives from Irish organisations in the Public and Private sectors. This was the first in a programme of Executive Roundtables to give senior executives a forum to discuss important topics effecting Irish business today. The CIOs and CFOs surveyed represented companies ranging in size from medium (500+ employees) to large (2,000+ employees). The survey was conducted to give insight into current and future IT Outsourcing trends and the associated benefits and challenges that Irish organisations face.
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