Information Services Procurement for Service Management

Businesses and organizations have, during the last twenty years, become more and more dependent on the use of IT. IT is part of all the major business processes. From this, a growing interest and need was seen, to organise and structure the service support and service delivery of IT services. Service management has evolved during the last ten years, and the needs of the customers that use the IT services is taken now as the starting point of organising all the service management processes. A methodology that is widely accepted and used for organising service management, is the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) developed by CCTA.

As IT-systems and services have become bigger and more complex, there is also a bigger need to outsource parts of the business processes to (inside or outside) suppliers. This can be for instance the development of software, maintenance of hardware, and also (parts) of Service Management.

In the Code of practice of IT Service Management' (BSI) the importance of supplier management and procurement management is stressed in the following way:
'Supplier management is probably one of the more neglected service management processes, often being delegated to a junior manager or to no one at all. Few staff have training in third party supplier management and may have reached the grade considered suitable for the role of supplier manager due to technical or line management skills. Although both skills can contribute to the success of the supplier management process, neither are sufficient. Problems arise from a number of other causes, including poor definition of what is being sourced out to the supplier and why that supplier was selected'.

The goal of this book is to improve customers’ and suppliers’ relationships during all phases of the acquisition and maintenance process. The advice and guidelines given in the following chapters help customers to clearly express their business needs and requirements. They also help suppliers to present precise solutions not overloaded with technical details that are easily understood by non-experts.

The principal target audience that this book intends to reach, consists of managers and staff of businesses and organizations who want to outsource projects (like software development, installation of hardware / software, etc.) or who want to outsource service management processes of the on-going business.