Consulting in information technology

practices or help develop new ones. There is a wide range of ways in which consultants can help in this field; typical assignments include:

●audit of IT management practices and processes;

●benchmarking and setting of service standards for the IT function;

●assistance with project planning and management;

●providing specialist expertise such as database design;

●providing contract managers to cope with peaks in a company’s workload;

●advising on systems integration and compatibility;

●staff training and helping clients to develop and maintain functional IT literacy.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing provides one possible answer to the question of how to manage the technology, although it does not absolve management from the need to ask why the business needs technology and what aspects of technology are appropriate. Some managers who signed long-term outsourcing contracts have regretted that they also delegated the issue of which technology to use to their outsourcing suppliers. The latter are sometimes reluctant to keep the technology up to date while the contract still has some years to run.

Companies often consider outsourcing the functions where they have relatively little expertise or interest. In this case, independent consultants will be needed to supply the expertise to choose a supplier and write the outsourcing contract. The alternative of accepting a standard contract from the outsourcing supplier can lead to extra costs or restrictions on the business that are not always apparent at the time the contract is signed.2

Ten years ago, outsourcing was an all-or-nothing affair and contracts were for five years or longer. Now it is much more selective and contracts are typically shorter, perhaps as short as two years.3 This is happening partly because of increasing competition among the outsourcing suppliers and partly because companies are finding it harder to look ahead and decide what may or may not be strategic IT in five years’ time. This added complexity in the outsourcing decision offers further opportunities for consultants to add value by advising on what to outsource, how to do it, and for how long.

13.4 Quality of information systems

The traditional measures of success in any business project are time, cost and quality; but what does “quality” mean in the context of information systems and how can consultants help with quality assurance?

A prerequisite for quality is a strategic and business analysis, as described in the previous section; but this is not enough. C. K. Prahalad and M. S. Krishnan4 distinguish three aspects of quality:

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