Reading: The Hudson River Park Trust to Construction ASP

When Not To outsource:
3. An in-house application development team working on any information-technology initiative will have greater insight into the internal workings of the company and the franchise system; what has worked or failed in the past, and how the individual franchise operates etc…This familiarity with the inner workings of a system enables those involved to avoid many of the pitfalls in the project that can grind work to a halt, as the project progresses. Speed of the overall development schedule can be increased because the internal key players are known, along with the informal network that exists in every organization. Credibility of the final product can be enhanced, as the insights into the inner workings of the franchise system are built into the solution.

Moreover, one reason that some companies don't outsource is that their systems are absolutely mission-critical. A serious problem with their software could leave thousands of employees stranded. So they're very conscious of the quality and reliability of their systems and the best way to guarantee that is to keep a close eye on what they build. In addition, some companies also want to capitalize on the speed and flexibility of a local workforce. One important factor here is always trying to speed up their responses to customer feedback and that can be done more quickly and accurately at home/in-house than at the hands of vendors.

In summary, it leads to: (Advantages of not Outsourcing)
§    Reduced costs and enhanced cost transparency derived from per-application prices
§    Standardized, fine-tuned processes for applications of the same archetype
§    Dramatically higher resource utilization
§    Increased manageability of service levels
§    Concentration of skills around fewer technologies, leading to better training and development
§    Full value for companies that consolidate applications in shared services
§    Control Over Development
§    Retention of corporate Knowledge and protecting intellectual property rights
 


When To Outsource: (Few IT personnel).
4. The responsibilities of the four-person IT staff of HRPT are to focus on core IT aspects and its effective management. For example, employee-based service requests are dispatched to the outsourced team to handle the problem, freeing the IT staff to focus on more critical company issues; and the soft costs such as retention/hiring and benefits that you'd need to pay a full-time employee are eliminated.

Other roles and responsibilities the four-person IT staff of HRPT will include, but are not limited to:
§    Training staff on new technologies: Ensures that each user receives 1 - 2 hours of training using WebEx software to access the constructware training modules.
§    Researching and implementing new technologies
§    Running queries from the database system
§    Updating the corporate web site
§    Maintaining the corporate network and server
§    Adding upgrades where necessary in the in-house system
§    Ensuring daily backups are completed
§    Improving security of the IT department.

Reference:

The Future of Online Project Management and Collaboration
https://www.constructware.com/Common/Downloads/Tipping_Point_Owner_Collaboration_03-03.pdf

http://constructware.com/Company/MarketingMedia/CaseStudies.asp

Turban, E., & Aronson J. E. (2005). "Decision Support Systems and Intelligent Systems 6th Ed". Prentice Hall. USA.

Shelly, Cashman, & Rosenblatt, “System Analysis and Design, 4th Ed” Massachusetts: Course Technology

Stair R., Reynolds, G. (2006). “Principles of Information Systems, 7th Ed.”
Massachusetts: Course Technology