This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 26 Mar 2008, by Reggie Ryan.
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26 Mar 08
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If a computer teacher spends 75% of his time resolving technical issues for his building, it shows up as a "shadow cost" because his salary is budgeted from the teaching staff line. Computer aids may be spending 50% of their time on technical support issues but they are budgeted from the instructional support line and become "shadow costs". In some buildings it is not unusual to have teachers who have become technology gurus in their colleagues eyes spend 20% of their time resolving technical issues for teachers in nearby classrooms.
Before a district can fairly consider performing a cost analysis of outsourcing technology support, it must come to terms with the true cost of in-house support.
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Before making outsourcing decisions, schools and businesses must ask the same question, "What are our core competencies?" For most schools these core competencies are not cable engineering, networking architecture, telecommunications engineering, systems integration, hardware repair, network engineering, and software development.
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- Develop an outsourcing strategy that minimizes the number of vendors you work with. The more vendors involved the more complex it is for you to manage and the more difficult it is for you to demand accountability.
- Diligently check every reference that is supplied by the vendor. Be sure they have enthusiastic referrals from other schools. Vendors tend to overstate their roles in technology projects. Never outsource to someone without verifying successful prior experience.
- Before beginning a partnership with a vendor, jointly develop and approve a list of functional outcomes and a timeline. These outcomes are the items that if completed in the period of time agreed upon will allow you to accept the work and say, "thank you". Many novices to outsourcing get caught up in creating detailed task lists. ( i.e. TCP/IP will be configured on every workstation, rather than stating every workstation will have high speed access to the Internet.) You should provide clearly stated outcomes and leave it to the vendor to worry about the tasks and resources necessary to achieve them.
- Be sure to develop a detailed service level agreement (SLA). This agreement needs to specify all the commitments the vendor is making to you and what will happen if the vendor does not live up to these commitments.
- If in doubt get a second opinion. Sometimes unreliable vendors are driven by their own self-interest and not by your best interest. They may have special relationships with particular software or hardware manufacturers and steer the project in directions to maximize their profit. They may try to get your project into their "cookie cutter" approach. Checking with another vendor can be a healthy step in the decision making process.
The following is a list of tips for educators considering outsourcing:
- Develop an outsourcing strategy that minimizes the number of vendors you work with. The more vendors involved the more complex it is for you to manage and the more difficult it is for you to demand accountability.
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