Historically, the critical interfaces for IT have existed with the functional departments. Key business processes such as finance, human resources, and marketing weren’t standard between companies and, in many cases, weren’t even standardized within an enterprise. In such an operational environment, business-process automation software was often custom-built to bridge the gap between the IT infrastructure and the rigid business-process architecture. It made sense to keep the IT function in-house so the interfaces between functional departments and their supporting systems could be tightly integrated.
This historical fact is perhaps the most compelling argument against using core competency to make outsourcing decisions. When it made sense to keep IT functions in-house, IT was no more a core competency of most companies than it is today. The reason outsourcing didn’t offer a compelling value proposition is that it violated the principles of Value-Chain Analysis: The interfaces that linked critical business processes weren’t standardized.
Source: Optimize Magazine
Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Outsourcing / BPO
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