IT outsourcing in Ukraine: prospects and expectations

Outsourcing has been and remains the most promising trend in the IT-industry. Ability to see this introduced in 2009, when the background of general decline in the cost of information technology segment of the IT-outsourcing to keep up the pace. Having survived the crisis, outsourcing, and to this day remains one of the key drivers of growth of the Ukrainian IT market.

Resistant outsourcing

Being in the ranking of 30 countries that are best suited for IT-outsourcing, Ukraine has once again confirmed its status by winning the 2011 nomination of “Destination for IT-outsourcing” within the European Outsourcing Excellent Awards. Not the last role was played by a high level of professional development, competitive prices, and rich reserves of manpower and geographical location. For example, last year the growth of outsourcing industry has reached about 20-25%. Active development of IT-outsourcing in Ukraine partly attributable to companies with western capital, which prefer to focus on core business, shifting automated processes on the shoulders of IT-outsourcers with the necessary level of service of special systems. In turn, this reduces the cost of routine operations, improve business processes and get more services in the shortest possible time. However, a certain percentage of companies with Ukrainian capital is still opposed to contractors, believing that outsourcing is unreasonably expensive, and assign to important infrastructure projects to staff members, out of habit considering IT department as a cost center, providing infrastructural functions, rather than a source of business advantage. This position is with respect to system integration impact on the share of orders in the portfolios of system integrators. The main customers of outsourcing services today are foreign companies, big banks, industrial, energy and insurance companies. However, despite the odds, Ukrainian companies are increasingly showing an interest in IT-outsourcing, understanding the advantages and economic benefits of work with relevant experts. In connection with such distribution to estimate the real amount of IT-outsourcing market today is quite problematic. This is primarily due to the fact that most customers of these services use mixed scheme involving contracting companies and a large part of the functions performed by their IT-departments. In addition, an extensive number of companies use the services as freelancers and smaller regional services outsourcers.

Organizational issues

To date, the greatest demand among IT-outsourcing services are building IT-infrastructure, support for remote offices, information security and maintained equipment. Also in high demand projects, which ensure a relatively rapid return on investment, provide a clear and immediate impact on business processes. In Ukraine, are in demand both types of outsourcing – partial and full. Under full outsourcing to a third party means a transfer of all service processes of IT-infrastructure company, while partial outsourcing – is attracting a service company to service a particular part of the company’s information system. Business structures are trying to adjust to international standards of best practice library organizations IT (ITIL), which describes the best practices applied in ways of organizing work units or companies providing services in information technology. In ITIL standards included in the division line of support in the processing of applications users. Thus, the first line of support can be performed by regular employees, since it does not require high technical skills and technical expertise in outsourcing. The main task of the first line of support – to let the user as quickly as possible to continue. At the same time, the second and third line tasked with the elimination of technical failures in the infrastructure, which may affect the users of IT-provided services. Therefore, these support lines are composed of specialized teams of technical specialists, each of which has a high IT competence in the specific area of infrastructure. But no matter what kind of IT outsourcing company nor used in any case it has two major advantages: cost savings on maintenance information system and obtaining a stable and quality of service.

How to choose a company-outsourcer

When selecting an outsourcing company, you must consider several key factors. The company should have many years of experience in projects of high complexity for various clients and have a portfolio of successfully completed projects for diverse organizations. Equally important is the qualification of experts, on which may indicate the presence of certifications and partnerships with leading hardware manufacturers and software developers. When selecting a system integrator is also important to consider not only the use by the best international practices, but also our own know-how. Equally important is the rapid response – the time, claimed the company to perform work at the facility, as well as control over the entire period of work at the facility. Source: The Outsource Blog