Serge Cauberghs
Common mistakes in IT Service Management contractual relationships
By Serge Cauberghs, Senior Counsel Technology Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers Technology Consulting
Summary of the session
Market behavior clearly demonstrates a growing trend to adopt IT Service Management frameworks (typically ITIL); companies give more and more focus on Core Business activities and increasingly ask providers for full managed IT services solutions.
The presentation outlines the most common errors found in Managed Services contracts when (dark) time has come to go back to the initial RFP, supplier written proposal(s), undocumented or small letter paragraphs in agreed service provision contracts.
Be it from the Customer or from the Service Provider perspective, the sooner the omissions, imprecisions and contradictions can be identified and corrected / improved, the lesser the impact on trust, costs and operational performance during contract execution.
Through a pragmatic approach and some war stories, a few examples cover the following topics:
- risks (and associated consequences) when translating delivery model into cost model and then charging model,
- wrong or inadequate KPI's formulation and computation rules,
- impact of SLAs / OLAs on staffing as compared against market industry and good practices,
- hidden impacts of penalties, generating unwanted deviations in service provision,
- extra costs of audits / controls needed during contract execution,
- legal compliance and constraints (e.g.: offshoring limitations, CSSF (in Luxembourg), privacy protection ...).
The conclusion of the presentation proposes two approaches to reduce / limit the above listed risks & costs.
| 
