Adventures of an It Leader

IVK’s core competency is financial services so the decision to outsource some or all the IT functions is the right decision and therefore IVK does not need to maintain a high level of in-house IT technical expertise. Based on the lecture by Douglas Woodhouse1, IVK may not need IT staff for development, systems support, and helpdesk depending on which outsourcing option it chooses. The “CIO Benefits of IT Outsourcing Contracts2” catalog shows that the benefits of IT outsourcing not only result in lower costs but also require much significantly lower in-house IT staff headcount. If IVK decides to go with HiOSoft, then a high level of in-house IT technical expertise will be required since HiOSoft’s proposal demanded a much greater dependency on IVK. HiOSoft offers an open architecture with more room for customization making it a popular choice among the technical members of IVK’s IR team. But as discussed in the “standardization and enterprise architecture” module, IVK may want to move towards more standardization. The option to go with HiOSoft will require IVK to maintain a high level of technical in-house expertise and if it chooses to go with customization option for future needs. VerxaWeb’s products and services were geared for financial services industry and in my opinion this would require IVK to maintain a lower level of in house technical expertise compared to HiOSoft, especially if IVK chose to have VerxaWeb manage operations. In contrast, ServoLith had proposed a total solution model which would make in-house IT operations almost redundant at IVK.

So far the discussion supports the fact that the level of in-house technical expertise required at IVK should be diminished significantly due to outsourcing but outsourcing not only affects the internal IT headcount but also requires the IT staff to assume new roles and responsibilities. The article by Davis et.al.3 discusses key issues and pitfalls to avoid in terms of IT staffing. The article is mainly focused...