Managing IT in Government, Business & Communities

In principle, this concept seems to be transferable to other SMEs. The differences will be in the fraction of the outsourced services. This will mainly be influenced by:

• the absolute number of service staff,

• the complexity of the systems,

• the service times, and

• the geographical extension of the users.

A minimum of resources is necessary for tracking all tasks and for substitution in the case of vacancies or illness. The indispensable number of employees depends on several factors and cannot be rated generally.

The complexity of the systems is a main factor and influences the expenditure and the needed skills. A well-chosen infrastructure and IS architecture allows the reduction of this complexity. A typical problem is the increasing of complexity over the years, caused by the introduction of new applications or the co-existence of different software releases. This can be solved by consolidation projects.

The service times and the geographical extension of the users are influencing the expenditure, especially for the technical and the 1^st level support.

Besides these operative aspects, there exists a dominating general management aspect: It is necessary that the top management is convinced of the importance of IS for business processes and business strategy.