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What's fact, what's fiction when it comes to doing business with an ASP.
A common misconception in the IT community is that outsourcers, including application service providers and Web hosting firms, take on network projects without much effort.
If you think this is true, then you should talk to Mitch Tanenbaum, chief information officer at Guardian Mortgage Documents in Lakewood, Colo. He learned the hard way that breezing over plans with an outsourcer and not paying close attention during implementation could cause big problems. A botched Web implementation cost his company $80,000. The outsourcer didn't understand the business process, he says."You can't leave an outsourcer to its own devices."
Believing that ASPS don't need hand-holding is just one of many mistakes IT managers make when they send projects out of house.The following are five other hyped-up myths about outsourcing applications that, left unquestioned, could drown IT managers venturing into the ASP waters.
ONE - ASPs always assign the best people to a project.
"Wrong!" says Robert O'Connor, a network supervisor at Penn State University, speaking from his experience overseeing many outsourcing projects at the State College, Pa., school. "We've had some of the very best and we've had some that didn't even have a clue as to the things they were working with," he says. Some outsourcers don't even know their own products. O'Connor says, "[On one project], we ended up training the people, wasting a tremendous amount of time and money," he says.
It's not uncommon for an ASP to send its top talent for the consultantation, then substitute less-skilled workers for the actual project, warns Alan Fontes, director at U.S. Interactive, a New York firm that helps companies develop outsourcing strategies. "We've had to go back more than 50% of the time and ask the vendor to replace people who are on...