The information technology services most likely to be farmed out in facilities management deals by the world’s largest companies are hardware services and maintenance, and software services and maintenance, according to research group International Data Corp. A recent IDC survey of directors of US and European companies with revenues of more than $11bn, carried out on behalf of Bull Information Systems, found that half of all large companies expect to increase the amount of services they offload over the next five years. Today, however, the bulk of most service provision is still handled by in-house staff. The only exceptions were hardware services and maintenance and software services and maintenance, where 85% and 86% reported that outsourcing exceeds the level of in-house provision.
Help desk support
The most popular areas for future facilities management deals are help desk support, mentioned by 34% of users, followed by PC/desktop support and network/telecommunications management, indicated by 31% of users. The healthcare/pharmaceuticals industry showed the greatest inclination to outsource across all services with 37 per cent of directors saying they outsourced, while the insurance and energy industries showed the greatest proportional move towards outsourcing. The banking sector, meanwhile, was the one area in which the majority of respondents said they did not expect to increase outsourcing. The importance of buying IT services centrally for use worldwide was viewed as very important, scoring an average of 5.3 on a scale of one to seven, where seven was very important. But companies also want the ability to implement local variation within worldwide contracts. Other important requirements were the flexibility to allow for information technology and business change/development and the ability to pull together services under a single contract with central billing.
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