Multisourcing Service Integration: from SPOC to SPOSA

In my previous blog about service integration, I talked about how useful it is that we now have car dealers. Specialists who are familiar with all the parts in your car, so they can always make sure those parts work together optimally, and when things go wrong you can just call them and say, “I have broken down on the motorway. Please come and help.” It sounds quite simple, but in a not too distant past, in a similar situation, my grandfather would have had to crawl under the engine with pliers, a can of WD40 and a roll of duct tape.

What I am talking about is SIAM: Service Integration And Management, in the optima forma of an SPOC (a Single Point Of Contact) if we are referring to IT. It may sound ideal, but this is not the whole story because, as is often the case in IT, things are rarely as easy in practice as they sound in theory.

“The current outsourcing market is no longer a question of one party taking care of an organisation’s various IT solutions. We are talking about multisourcing.”

Multisourcing

The car analogy is nice, but in practice things are slightly more complicated. As a car user, you not only have to deal with various suppliers who each supply a car part. Every car part is basically a separate product, supplied by a specialist, who in turn uses second-tier suppliers. What I am trying to express is that the current outsourcing market is no longer a question of one party taking care of an organisation’s various IT solutions. We are talking about multisourcing.

Nowadays, organisations do not outsource to just one party but to multiple external specialists for various types of IT-driven solutions, such as cyber security, cloud, workplace, communication, etcetera, and as a result they end up with a jungle of suppliers, each with its own peculiarities. Managing all of these specialists and their various services becomes a day job and a headache, which is exactly what you were trying to avoid.

You are not the only one. At Solvinity we, too, observe that multisourcing does not always go smoothly. People who used to build their own PCs will remember that you can buy a RAM that on paper should fit your system perfectly, but in practice it is simply not compatible with your motherboard. If you are unaware of this, you can buy as many expensive and high-quality parts as you like, but it will not result in a well-functioning system. We see in practice that customers use diverse suppliers that we may consider to be good parties individually but in combination do not offer the best solution.

SPOSA

Our aim is not SPOC, but SPOSA: a Single Point Of Service Accountability. This refers to one supplier that you can hold accountable for the quality of your service as a whole. Returning to the car analogy, a car dealer who not only knows how a car works but who also understands your mobility wishes and can help you to organise your fleet and your lease contracts in such a way that all you have to do is determine the location of point A and point B, because everything in between is arranged for you.

With apologies for the many abbreviations, as SPOSA we offer MSI (Multisourcing Service Integration) in two flavours, based either on contractual responsibility or on operational responsibility. Operational responsibility means that the selection and contracting of external chain partners is up to the customer, who is also responsible for ensuring that the chain partners fulfil their contractual obligations. However, within this framework we provide a SIM (Service Integration Manager), who ensures that all services within the service delivery chain are optimally coordinated and carefully maintained. In the case of contractual accountability, we take charge of all of the customer’s IT services, taking over ongoing contracts and, if necessary and in consultation, making the decision to negotiate other agreements if we believe these will lead to better services.

Of course, we will establish all wishes and demands in Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Underpinning Contracts (UCs), or Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) in the case of operational responsibility. In all cases, we will also provide crystal-clear deliverables, such as an unambiguous database in which all agreements with all suppliers under our responsibility and their relations are kept, and a report in which the performance level of each of the suppliers is carefully registered.

In the end, we have one goal: making sure that all IT services are coordinated as closely as possible, so that you can focus on your core tasks in the knowledge that your organisational objectives, both short-term and long-term, are supported maximally by technology. We will gladly take over this responsibility from you.

If you want to know more about Multisourcing Service Integration, please contact Bas Demmink, CTO at Solvinity, or send an email to info@solvinity.com.