Thoughts that amuse me as entrepreneur: Transformation Outsourcing - Right Approach, Wrong Application

You probably don't know me so I think it is fair to start with a brief description:

I am just a regular guy who had to fight his way through from a carpenter workshop at a small town to Financial Computing at London. By playing the game differently, I managed to surpass some interesting challenges so, now and then, I like sharing insights to honor those who shared theirs with me before

This belongs to a series of (bold) views on a series of topics that I am finding amusing. This time about:

Right Approach, Wrong Application

The approach

No one has ever been fired for giving a project to a widely-known provider. If things go wrong, everyone understands that the error is from the widely-known provider, and that's it. However, if you give the project to a new provider and there is an error on the delivery... that error is taken as yours

The story

I have spent most of last week at Switzerland. Helping a company rise money through the right communication of their platform - a tier one for assets' digitization - to investors

It was the typical trip where you work day and night, talking about each of the dimensions that can affect a company. We tried to brainstorm everything. In fact, we actually were a team that enjoyed discussing very openly, hence we had the chance to dig into even those subtle things that would not really affect the project immediately, but were interesting by themselves (exploration-exploitation)

As a result, at some point, we talked about the pros and cons of onboarding niche boutiques vs more mainstream names. The agreed-by-all statement seemed to be that from above

Overall, it looks like a not-too-bad statement: being aware of whose fault it is if things go wrong, helps. I use it a lot. In fact, we manage our company based on what we call a Value-at-Risk approach (I may have to talk about it at some point)

The risk

But, if you think of it for a couple of minutes, you realize it is very 90s-10s. Old school. Furthermore, in an era of Transformation, as the one that will lead the 20s+, it can easily become precisely the opposite to what you should do if you want not to be fired. So, be careful with the former decades' wisdom

The new truth

Overall, nobody will pay you, as an IT manager, for a one-size-fits-all solution/partner. Simply, because challenges are becoming so complex that niche boutiques are starting to have their own right to be chosen, first. And that shall become obvious going forward

In fact, I am pretty sure a large part of the value add of the IT manager will be to identify these, and on-board them on each of her areas of influence

The right version

Just hack it a little bit until it looks like something compatible with the near future:

No one will ever be fired for giving a project to a niche-expert provider that came already with a test environment instead of a Power Point. If things go wrong, everyone will understand that the error is from the niche-expert provider, and that's it. However, if you give the project to a mainstream name with no niche expertise and no test environment beyond a Power Point, and there is an error on the delivery... that error will be taken as yours. Furthermore, you'll also seem fairly easy to substitute, right?

The funny thing is that, this very statement is already the one leading many RFIs (beauty contests) out there. With only one caveat: those are still overloaded with a myriad of extra barriers to entry. Hence, in the end, niche experts barely pass the initial filter.

Not ideal, but not a bad momentum already settled on 2019, though. Step by step.

Still, remember:

I am just a regular guy who...

Not a guru that has already gone successfully through all this. So take it as it is: just thoughts that amuse me and I want to share, in case anyone around my network can timely exploit them for good.