Tips for negotiating a managed services contract - where are you and where do you want to go?

IT is not the first business of a manufacturing company. Nor is it very high on the list. Having said that, a lot of manufacturing (and other organizations) use various managed IT services. I will be writing a short series on how to negotiate managed IT services for your organization.

This first posting starts with two questions.

Where are you?

Where do you want to go?

Under the topic Where are you? you should be considering:

• Skills - know how - how much know how does your team have?
• Knowledge - know what - what does your team know and understand?
• Attributes - know why - why does your organization need this service - what does it offer?
• Budget - know how much - what can your organization spend for this service?

Under the Where do you want to go? consideration, think about what the end goal of managed services are for your organization:

• Are you reducing technology risk?
• Are you improving responsiveness to business requirements?
• Would this provide access to emerging technologies and best of breed resources?
• Are you reducing infrastructure or operating costs?
• Is this supporting standardization?

These items will help you begin to layout the strategy for either keeping some services in-house or looking for assistance through managed services. Stay tuned - more to come!

Thanks for reading! Let’s continue to be good network citizens.