IT Services Qualification Center

Organizations are increasingly delegating IT-intensive business activities to service providers, taking advantage of new capabilities in the global telecommunications infrastructure. Service providers range from in-house units to shared service centers to captive offshore units to external service providers. Business processes being delegated range from in-sourced shared services to outsourced routine and non-critical tasks, as well as outsourced strategic processes that directly impact revenues. Managing and meeting client expectations and providing effective governance of these relationships are major challenges in these business relationships. The IT Services Qualification Center (ITSqc) was created in 2000 to develop and support adoption of "best practices" capability models and qualification methods to improve sourcing relationships in the Internet-enabled economy.

Our Models

The eSourcing Capability Model
for Service Providers (eSCM-SP) v2

The Service Quality Model for eSourcing
The eSourcing Capability Model for Service Providers (eSCM-SP) helps sourcing organizations manage and reduce their risks and improve their capabilities across the entire sourcing life-cycle. The Model's Practices can be thought of as the best practices associated with successful sourcing relationships. It addresses the critical issues related to IT-enabled sourcing (eSourcing) for both outsourced and in-sourced (shared services) agreements.

Service providers use the eSCM-SP and its accompanying Capability Determination methods to evaluate their eSourcing capabilities, and to become eSCM-SP certified. This status provides an advantage over their competitors.

The eSCM-SP has been designed to complement existing quality models so that service providers can capitalize on their previous improvement efforts. A series of documents comparing the eSCM-SP with other models and standards has been developed.

Each of the Model's 84 Practice is distributed along three dimensions: Sourcing Life-cycle, Capability Area, and Capability Level.

Most quality models focus only on design and delivery capabilities, but the eSCM-SP's Sourcing Life-cycle includes not only delivery, but also Initiation and Completion of the contract. The two phases are often the ones most critical to successful sourcing relationships. The Sourcing Life-cycle also includes Overall Practices.

Capability Areas provide logical groupings of Practices to help users better remember and intellectually manage the content of the Model. Service providers can then build or demonstrate capabilities in a particular critical-sourcing function. The ten Capability Areas are Knowledge Management, People Management, Performance Management, Relationship Management, Technology Management, Threat Management, Service Transfer, Contracting, Service Design & Deployment, and Service Delivery.

The five eSCM-SP Capability Levels indicate the level of an organization's capability. Level 1 indicates that the organization is providing a service. A Level 2 organization has procedures in place to enable it to consistently meet its clients' requirements. At Level 3, an organization is able to manage its performance consistently across engagements. Level 4 requires that an organization is able to add value to its services through innovation. Service providers at Level 5 have proven that they can sustain excellence over a period of at least two years.

Comparisons

Many models and standards exist to improve the capability of companies in building and providing services in a variety of fields. Service providers in particular have many resources available to aid them in quality and process improvement.

The eSCM-SP was developed so that the Model can be easily adopted without abandoning prior process or quality improvement work. It fills the need for a model that specifically addresses providers of IT-enabled services while allowing reuse and overlap with existing quality initiatives. An overview of comparisons is in Chapter 5 of The eSourcing Capability Model for Service Providers v2, Part 1.

The ITSqc is releasing a technical report series that provides detailed comparisons between the eSCM-SP and other frameworks, including Software CMM^®, People CMM^®, CMMI^®, ISO 9001, BS 15000 and ITIL, COBIT, and COPC. The comparisons show clearly the value-added differences of the eSCM-SP and the complementary relationships it has to other quality models. Our experience from more than 40 appraisals on multiple continents shows that organizations that already are implementing one or more of these frameworks, using an internal improvement capability, are well positioned to successfully implement eSCM-SP.

The eSourcing Capability Model
for Client Organizations (eSCM-CL) v1.1

Over the past several years, all kinds of organizations, from manufacturing firms to banks and hospitals, have delegated their computer-intensive activities to external service providers because they are focusing on core competencies or they lack their own in-house capabilities. In many cases, they have not been satisfied with the results.

The actions of both the client organization and the service provider in these sourcing relationships are critical for success. With that in mind, ITSqc developed the eSourcing Capability Model for Client Organizations (eSCM-CL), a best practices model that enables client organizations to appraise and improve their capability to foster the development of more effective relationships and to better manage these relationships. This new model allows client organizations to continuously evolve, improve, and innovate their capabilities to develop stronger, longer-term, and more trusting relationships with their service providers.

Existing frameworks do not comprehensively address the best practices needed by client organizations to successfully source IT-enabled services. Our preliminary investigations showed that most current quality models do not address all phases of sourcing process (sourcing analysis, initiation, delivery, and completion).

The eSourcing Capability Model for Client Organizations (eSCM-CL) addresses a full range of client-organization tasks, ranging from developing the organization's sourcing strategy, planning for sourcing and service provider selection, initiating an agreement with service providers, managing service delivery, and completing the agreement.

eSCM-CL Comparisons

Many models and standards exist to improve the capability of companies in performing their routine business activities, including performing sourcing. Many of these resources available to client organizations are intended to aid them in quality and process improvement., or are provided as guidance or checklists for ensuring that good sourcing practices are implemented in a client organization.

The eSCM-CL was developed with this in mind. The Model can be easily adopted without abandoning prior process or quality improvement work. It fills the need for a model that specifically addresses clients of IT services or IT-enabled services while allowing overlap with existing quality initiatives. An overview of comparisons will be made available in an ITSqc technical report.

The ITSqc is releasing a technical report series that provides detailed comparisons between the eSCM-CL and other frameworks. The frameworks being considered for this report series include:

• eSCM-SP V2
• COBIT
• ISO 20000 (ISO 20000-1)
• CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ)
• ITIL V3
• Val ITTM
• Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) IT Examination Handbook: Outsourcing Technology Services (US)
• US Comptroller of the Currency (OCC Bulletin 2002-16: Bank Use of Foreign-Based Third-Party Service Providers and OCC Bulletin 2001-47: Third-Party Relationships)
• Financial Services Authority Handbook (UK)
• Financial Regulatory Documents (FDIC, FFIEC, OCC, FSA, AU Prudential Stds.)
• ISO 9001-2000
• ISO 27001
• General Accounting Office (US)
• Standards Australia (AU) HB 240:2000
• COPC-2000 VMO Standard
• People CMM

The comparisons show clearly the value-added differences of the eSCM-CL and the complementary relationships it has to other quality models.

ITSqc Research Consortium

'The ITSqc Research Consortium includes organizations involved in the growth and development of this fast-growing segment of the global economy. Our members consist of international industry leaders in eSourcing on both the Client Organization and Service Provider Sides of the relationship, including clients, service providers, advisors or consultants, and the standards community. http://itsqc.cmu.edu/