Reviews and Reports
During the setup and pilot phases of infrastructure management at the offshore location, it is advised to have daily review at the operations level between the two shores. The daily issues, tickets, matrices, and other operational matters should be discussed. A weekly performance review should be conducted of the IT environment and the production staff. A monthly review should focus on project execution, SLOs and SLAs. Senior operations managers should be involved in monthly reviews. A quarterly business review at the management level to review the overall program, the business relationship and determine the future strategic directions is advised.
Quarterly Visits
One of the key success factors for offshoring infrastructure services is periodic visits by onsite teams to the offshore location and vice versa. The visits should not be restricted only to the senior management, but should be extended to the operations folks as well.
When the offshore operations staff visits the onsite location, they will understand the business demands and the work culture. They have the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with the onsite staff. This helps immensely in bonding between the offshore and onsite staff. Similarly, a visit from onsite team will help the enterprise to understand the culture and work environment at the offshore location and most certainly will bridge several communication and cultural gaps.
Long Term Relationship
Both client and partner should understand that the infrastructure management is a long journey and continues for years. It is important for the enterprise to take the partner into confidence and consistently educate the partner on their business, its dynamics and challenges. The enterprise should also have patience as the partner has to learn initially.
An achievable target has to be set to consistently improve productivity and reviewed periodically. The partner should understand the business imperatives of the enterprise and strive to provide improvement in efficiency and productivity. They should make sure that the best practices which they have developed over a period of time should be applied at the client’s environment. Ultimately it should be a win-win partnership.
You should see ROI after about six months of engagement. Initially, you should see a continuous increase in productivity and efficiency and you should need fewer resources to manage the same infrastructure within a year of engagement. The extra workforce can then be deployed to take care of the increased size of the infrastructure or can be deployed to automate monitoring and management activities, thereby increasing the efficiency further.
With 23 years of IT experience, Ram Mohan is vice president and the head of Infrastructure Management and Tech Support for MindTree Consulting, managing delivery of this practice across the globe.