Benchmarking, prioritizing and outsourcing services
Benchmarking at a macro level
When IT services can be clearly specified and priced, it positions internal IT
organizations to be able to consider service delivery alternatives using external
service providers. There are two primary reasons why IT organizations may wish to
benchmark their services:
1. To compare the services of the IT organization with those being offered by
alternative providers. The aim behind this comparison is to assist the IT
organization to answer questions such as: Are we offering the right services and
service levels? Are there service providers who can do the things we don't want
to focus on?
2. To gauge competitiveness of service pricing with alternative providers.
Benchmarking using services as the basis, is different from traditional benchmarking
approaches that use productivity-based parameters such as, ratio of support staff to
workstations, notional cost per workstation, total cost of ownership, and so forth.
Ÿ Services-based benchmarking can be tailored for the business. Traditional
benchmarking relies on existing averaged and categorized data organized in
predefined categories from peer groups for comparison. Services-based
benchmarking enables the business to compare the services at the level of
service required to meet the unique requirements of the business.
Ÿ Services-based benchmarking is oriented towards bottom-line cost and includes
all productivity contributions and value-add considerations. Traditional
benchmarking usually revolves around productivity and efficiency with inferred
potential cost benefits.
Ÿ Services-based benchmarking performs comparisons with commercial service
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