subject: Leveraging It Services Management With In Your Firm [print this page] As your company grows, it is natural to look at different types of applications that can scale along with the growth of your workforce and with the scope of your project sets. It is in fact, common for many organizations to find themselves in this mode soon after bringing their first IT people onboard. For it is after IT people have been working within your company for a while that most managers start to realize the potential for IT services management.
IT services management is a model that is used by companies large and small to separate applications and functionality into different programs, appointing business managers overall ownership and specific IT teams technical ownership. The IT staff that performs any work from development to test to deployment to support can be sourced in-house from existing teams or hired full or part-time to work specifically on the project at hand. There is some evidence that shows that outsourcing services management is more effective when the project work is less complex. In short, the less value that needed to be added by in-house staff, the more likely it will be more cost-effective for you to outsource the technical work.
This theory has led several large firms to create in-house teams that focus on reducing the complexities inherent within projects or programs so that the work can be outsourced without having to worry about key decisions being blown. Once a process has been satisfactorily vetted and is in line with best practices for whatever discipline one is working in, it can then be put out for bid. In looking at CRM application development, it is fairly obvious to many business and technological development managers that it is a strong candidate for outsourced IT services management support for creation, deployment, and support.
This is largely because CRM applications have been around for a few decades now and with the advent of internet services, there aren't a lot of eligible companies that haven't had a go at implementing variously-priced CRM applications in-house. It used to be the case that following the industry leaders was tantamount to watching your project succeed by bringing a highly paid consultant in to ensure that you did not deviate from the way. Today, it is quite possible to implement open source CRMs that do not cost anything beyond the hardware to serve them and the personnel to support them.
One caveat that has bounced CRM application development into the back burner from a small firm perspective has been the realization that many of the online CRM firms that promised free web services until your organization was ready to grow, ended up going under or losing a lot of money waiting for their market to materialize. To make ends meet while they were waiting, they therefore unfortunately sold much of the client information that was stored on their servers, wreaking havoc for more than one organization. Companies that managed to avoid this type of problem tend to be more likely to favor traditional firms that charge up front and guarantee security in their processes.
