CIOIN

Rajeev Batra

CIO, MTS India

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Rajeev Batra is CIO, MTS India

Over time, strategic IT outsourcing has gained phenomenal footing in and around high-growth verticals. It’s only naturally given IT’s ability, especially in sectors like telecom, to differentiate companies and leapfrog or provide ‘next-level’ services and solutions to customers.
In India, a landmark example is the Airtel-IBM outsourcing deal. As the then-chief architect for IT at Airtel, I was deeply involved with that model and imbibed many lessons that could help CIOs create successful partnerships.
When I look to build a strategic IT outsourcing model, I focus on three areas. First, ensure that contracts and SLAs are lucid and very clearly defined. Proactive scoping is important as frequent change requests in the real world can mess up financials. It is vital to remember that while defining scope, a contract should describe exclusions clearly—and not the other way round.
Second, focus on defining an exit strategy. A contract should include clauses for termination depending on convenience, KPIs, SLAs and force majeure, and should state the consequences attached to specific exit strategies.
Third, don’t outsource a broken ship. If you have legacy systems that need to transform, do that upfront. Trying to influence a partner to introduce changes, after outsourcing, will break down a deal. Also, take care of enterprise architecture with clearly-defined principles. CIOs need to keep their IT strategy and architecture under tight control. If a CIO leaves it to an outsourcing partner, there could be trouble later. Obviously, CIOs need to develop a very high level of trust with their partners. It definitely needs to go beyond the transactional and into a partnership zone. A taskforce or a committee to conduct periodic reviews—with adequate escalation models built in—can really help in achieving that.
Naturally, anything left on its own to happen, will never happen. Hence, it is crucial to preempt strategic implications of IT decisions and keep pushing a partner. Finally, it is always better to have a second pair of eyes like external advisors or consultants to look over a contract before a CIO finalizes on it, given the expanse of strategic IT outsourcing.

"CIOs need to keep their IT strategy and architecture under tight control. If a CIO leaves it to an outsourcing partner, there could be trouble later."