26 mai 2008

Of justification versus outsourcing support...

Recently, I have been surprised during an interview :
"please describe in few words why your physical presence is needed for the affiliate, if the headquarter can do the support remotely ?"


My answer was based obviously first on the fact that this French affiliate needs a french speaking support available on daytime in France. Moreover, I thought about response time for support, quality of feed back to end users, local management toward French providers of internet and wan, localisation of trainings , localisation of micro project; I'm also the best ears that IT Team in Headquarter could have to get feed back on application they're deploying over affiliate.. At the end , in conterpart, I suggested that I am also the best link to convince end users in this affiliate to apply group policies (at least in terms of IT)

This question was in fact to test my english level both in technical and professional speaking...
The answers were more than ok on both level : english level (ok, my spoken english may be better than my written English) and quality of answers in term of company needs point of view.

But this question is reflecting the most common question about ROI, outsourcing and all these kind of questions that a IT Manager (or even IT Director or CEO !) have daily in mind these years, I'm sure.

So what do you think ? How would you defend your local presence versus outsourcing ? In order to convince the managment that you (or even your complete team !) need to be physically here ?

Or may be , would you help headquarter to hire you (or your team !) to do remote support on this affiliate you so well anderstand and know ?