Is Information Technology a core function in todays business world?
Some parts are. Having a small staff of technical support personnel to provide immediate response to computer problems, training, loading new software, and clearing work stations of viruses pay great operational dividends while indirectly supporting the bottom line. Should your IT staff program company computers and work stations? If they are, the staff is too large. There is a need for customized software. It is an easy exercise to show that life-cycle costs are measurably lower when employing well-developed, customized business process software. But its development and maintenance should be outsourced. The return on investment for the cost of contracted software and its maintenance, balanced by the operations savings alone, is a small fraction of the useful service life of the system. When including cost savings by reducing the number of overhead personnel, the argument for outsourcing is undeniable.
