Regardless of industry or size, the businesses that operate globally today rely on commercial application systems to stimulate production chains, manage markets, maintain connections with partners and customers, and drive operations in the short and medium-term.
Therefore, many companies need to outsource application management, but they have no idea how much they need it, or how soon they should have it. If you consider that your company may require this process and need more information, in the next section we will tell you how to determine it and how to carry it out successfully.
Determine the scope and need of your company
We often find companies where their comparative advantage and focus of their business rely heavily on technology, but not only in-house for a single department, but also for processes that support the entire company.
Therefore, it turns out to be more efficient and even profitable to opt for Outsourced Application Management. To determine if this is one of the needs of your company, answer the following basic questions:
Do we have identified which technological activities and processes will be of great support to manage my business more efficiently? Do we have difficulty finding, hiring, and retaining technology-savvy professionals? Do we have sufficient command of technological platforms and applications by ourselves? Can we keep them updated without a problem? Do we want to manage a trained in-house team to face all the challenges that the company’s technological management requires?
By answering these questions, you will quickly and easily determine the needs of your company against AMO.
Types of outsorcing and their strategies
Total subcontracting:
In this sense, the provider will be in charge of comprehensively managing all the activities related to the support, improvement, and optimization of the applications belonging to the company. This type of outsourcing should provide technological services, and in turn, provide ideas and recommendations to economize, improve and evolve applications, taking into account new business requirements. In addition, it will be responsible for implementing appropriate digital innovation initiatives and business continuity plans in the event of unexpected situations (such as the COVID-19 pandemic).
Selective subcontracting:
This type of OAM consists of entrusting the provider with only a very specific part of the management of the company’s applications. Their responsibility may be related to troubleshooting or updating and improving resources, or they may also encompass a group of objectives such as monitoring, management, troubleshooting, and application maintenance. This type of outsourcing is recommended for those areas that are more complex than individual tasks but do not interfere with any more complete process.
Some tips to get the right partner for your project
To choose the right partner for your company, the first thing we must take into account will be some fundamental details of its preparation and technological mastery. For example:
- Must possess sufficient technical knowledge of various technologies and be able to provide feasible solutions.
- You must have experience in agile service delivery methodologies that allows you to understand which is the most efficient way in which you can divide a project into several phases.
- The partner must be scalable, that is, there must be the possibility of adding more members to the team if necessary to meet the times of a project.
- The cost-benefit ratio is another important point for outsourcing. The number of hours to allocate and the seniority of the team are some of the elements that should be examined calmly before closing a contract.
- Consider looking for a partner that can align in terms of time zone, this way communication will be much more fluid.
Once we have found the professional who adapts to all our needs, it is time to create a favorable work dynamic whose organization is key to achieving the proposed objectives in the expected time. Some of the actions that as a company you should take into account are the following:
Define your expectations with this process
It is important that the partner knows exactly what is expected of their work and why they were selected, this will help to lay the foundations for a good business relationship, as well as a better performance of the project. From this, the service measurement indicators can be identified.
Provide your partner with all the necessary knowledge about the industry
A checklist of the activities or processes required is not the best option, it is necessary for your partner to internalize the needs of the business, what are the final customers and what do they need, what are the expectations of the industry, among others. Involve this professional as part of the work team, as another member of the company, and it is very likely that you will get better results. In Huenei, the first phase of the AMO service execution is the training and knowledge transfer of those who are currently responsible for the applications.
Don’t forget to measure and compare
To understand what you can improve and how the overall performance of your project has been, it is important to keep the correct and updated metrics. In this way it will be possible to implement the corrections that the area requires instead of having setbacks or continuing with inefficient strategies. At Huenei we issue monthly metrics to our clients to measure the quality of the service (some graph can be included).
Define your company’s strategy
It is extremely important that your partner understands the path they must follow, what are the phases and objectives to be met in the short, medium and long term without needing to come to a standstill and ask “now what next?”. The annual planning of the service allows us to have a roadmap to assign the requirements of the business needs backlog.
Determine clear delivery dates
Maintaining an updated roadmap that indicates which processes or platforms will be outsourced and in what time, will be decisive in obtaining the expected results and without delays. This allows your partner to identify the demand for resources.
Never stop asking yourself “how can we improve”
Continual improvement is undoubtedly the key to successful work when it comes to outsourcing. Keep the entire team motivated and informed about every relevant aspect of the business and always ask how they can continue to add value to the work they do.
Conclusion
We are in an increasingly competitive world, so it is important that companies can implement more efficient systems to meet the needs of their customers and continue to improve within the industry.
In this sense, spending time and money optimizing your own resources and systems with the help of technology experts, as outsourcing is, is undoubtedly one of the smartest and most profitable ways to grow your business.