"3rd party IT Suppliers" Topic

So it happened eventually, last Jan they selected a 3rd party supplier from India to take over the IT services that we supply to a major UK power supplier.

It was always on the cards once we were hived off to be a seperate company under the group rather than part of the power company. It was a tied relationship but all new that could be easily undone

So a 3 hour Knowledge Transfer session was deemed sufficient for the systems I support, they certainly had no questions.

Nor did they have any questions in Shadow Support Phase, in fact they never even bothered being there as I resolved issues.

The lack of the Support document that they were to produce to show understanding was a concern too.

Then we moved to Primary Support Phase in May and they still ignored any issues and let me get on with them. So I stopped and decided that the Power Supply company should get their value for money from their much cheaper new IT services provider.

I did however point out to the business that 3 weeks of issues were now piling up and their month end reports might not reconcile and that their new IT chaps were too busy doing other stuff, because I'm a caring chap like that.

So we had another 3 hour KT session and still no questions and no action on the issues.

And lo it came to pass that the proverbial hit the fan and some one pulled their finger out.. First question was…

"And how do we solve these issues?"

You get the IT services you pay for.

I on the other hand look forward to my redundancy package and wish them well.

2 months and counting.

They demonstrate such short sighted attitudes about these issues, and lose out of people with real value.

or come back as a consultant after that and charge them an eye watering amount and laugh all the way to the bank.
as some one I know once said " I used to be unemployed, now im a consultant, same hours much better pay!"

Leaving present for your bosses – link

I have one on my desk at work… :-)

Ah, yes. Double-dipped (retirement pay and fee for
consultation) for 5 years…and the company is STILL
trying to get back on track…and I've been re-retired
for 6 years !

Our company had big plans, hire a large group of statisticians in India and start grinding out loads of work at rock bottom prices. The projected earnings were phenomenal. Apparently they were completely oblivious to the track record of such efforts in our industry. I have heard my colleagues in other companies who have gone this route complaining about the difficulty of getting things done, especially with the time difference. 'I send them a list of 3 problems to correct in the program that's due to launch the next day. I come in and look at what they've done last night and find they've only corrected one. You call them up and they promise the moon, but it never rises.' When we finally saw the projections I wss astounded to see they expected to start making skads of money from the start. No lag for start up issues, training, etc. And they pay management for this?????? Of course, they did fire our department head, but she was not the one making these idiotic decisions.

I've seen this for years and in almost every case, the company fails to get what they expected and/or were promised.

I used to think companies would wise up as it's not difficult to look around and see the same problems occur over and over. But I guess the chance to save money overrules everything else and so companies delude themselves into thinking this time it will be different.