SIAM: should you be outsourcing it?

SIAM is a way of thinking about how IT can manage end-to-end services in a competitive and financially constrained environment. Most large organisations require many different IT services, some of which are handled in-house and some of which are outsourced. SIAM is the function that coordinates these different suppliers, looks after the relationships between suppliers and customer and assures the effective delivery of services from start to finish.

The awareness and presence of SIAM has evolved greatly in recent years. Many organisations now choose to outsource it to a third party it due to the complexities of managing a multi-source environment. In outsourcing SIAM they also attempt to establish a more agile, competitive and specialised IT supply chain. However, this can raise as many problems as it can solve.

A business is like an autonomous community, made up of various members of the organisation. These members include service providers. In order for SIAM to work effectively, it needs to be more than just an additional layer to the business community; it needs to be an integral part of it. In practice, however, it simply introduces another supplier, another contract and another dimension to manage. This additional and badly integrated layer can also mean that the SIAM provider and the organisation are not always singing from the same hymn sheet. This can upset the overall service delivery.

One of the biggest challenges involved in outsourcing SIAM is managing crisis response. The investment of an external supplier in an organisation can never equal that of their client. Consequently, when an IT issue directly affects business operations the outsourced SIAM provider will rarely react with the same sense of urgency as their client would. Added to this is the fact that an outsourced supplier will rarely have the required authority to deliver a quick resolution when an urgent incident arises. This can prove problematic to organisations.

Another key concern is loss of control. A business will always want its IT function to remain accountable for service delivery. However, if SIAM is outsourced then one of their main levers to drive performance is out of the organisation’s direct control.

It is clear that outsourcing the SIAM function can be complicated and problematic for many businesses. If you decide to go down this path then there are many factors to be considered. It is essential to establish a strong chain of communication with your SIAM provider to avoid the challenges outlined above. Expectations and understanding of requirements must be clear to all involved from the outset, and SIAM must be treated as a well-integrated way of managing complexity, not simply as an owner of IT services.

For some organisations, the right path to pursue is to bring the SIAM function back in-house. The findings of Coeus’ white paper show that many businesses struggle when outsourcing SIAM and for most, this function is too critical to be handled by a third party.

Above all, the decision to outsource SIAM or not should be approached with care as the right route is not always straightforward. SIAM should not be seen as the Holy Grail. I would advise all businesses to carefully consider the impact of SIAM on their outsourced and internal services, and to make sure they adopt an approach suitable for them.