Outsourcing Support

Afdrukken

OVERVIEW...

Companies are focusing on their core business, the skills and knowledge that set them apart in a competitive market. With this in mind, activities that are unrelated to core business expertise are increasingly delegated to external organizations (vehicle fleet management, cost management, etc.).

IT is no exception, and it is often entrusted to outside companies specialized in application maintenance. Through our ARCAD-Skipper and ARCAD-Observer suites, ARCAD can prepare companies for the outsourcing process.

Successful preparation relies on two key factors:

  • A defined perimeter for third-party application maintenance (TPAM),
  • An entirely transparent relationship between the service provider and the client.

Defining TPAM Scope
Outsourcing all or part of an information system requires preliminary inventory and cleanup. This essential step is needed to build a third-party application maintenance perimeter that corresponds to a set of components known to be reliable and in use.
The inventory process involves a technical audit of available software components. The audit uncovers:

  • Objects without sources,
  • Unused objects,
  • Objects that have a source with a different date than a compiled object.

There is generally around a 30% decrease in the number of technical objects that are placed in the TPAM scope. Next, loading the ARCAD repository provides access to all of the technical components related to outsourcing.  Inclusion in the repository also means that technical documentation can be automatically generated, covering:

  • Database organization,
  • Cross references,
  • Program flowcharts, structure charts, etc.

Integration
This stage makes it possible to consider a new version while automatically analyzing the impact on a company's information system in order to guarantee its integrity. This analysis allows one to discover which components are impacted and what actions will lead to integrate the new version (modification, compilation, etc.).

  • Database diagram,
  • Cross references,
  • Program flowcharts.

A Transparent Relationship
TPAM will then be managed in software configuration (version controlled). Tasks performed by the service provider are listed in detail with the implementation of ARCAD-Changer. The user-provider relationship is managed through our help-desk solution, ARCAD-Customer, which supports compliance with ISO quality standards for improving the application maintenance process.

ADVANTAGES...

ARCAD Software solutions provide invaluable help in:

  • Quality of estimations made prior to modifications (automatic impact analysis),
  • Traceability of completed work,
  • Up-to-date technical documentation,
  • Total traceability of user requests and request handling.