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In today’s global economy, it can’t be that hard to deliver the right hardware, support and engineering services to where you want them in the world. Can it?

Of course, it depends on how you choose to do it. There’s no doubt that delivering consistent, good quality IT services, designed around your needs, is a tough nut to crack for many organizations.

So why is it so important? In the current climate you’ll be surprised to hear the main driver isn’t typically cost savings. It’s about being able to ensure you can realize the planned IT benefits across your global organisation. With increasingly centralized IT departments, and a growth in branch-office architectures, if you can’t deliver the IT services you need, where and when you need them, it’s likely it will hurt your business. Whether it’s an integration project, system roll-out, or simply ensuring the availability of your current business, if you can’t guarantee IT service delivery, you will fail to achieve your business objectives.

So you’re facing a global IT deliver requirement, what are the pitfalls?

One-night stand. For most organizations global programmes are one-time activities; a roll-out of a particular technology, or organizational integration, never to be repeated again. Most organizations focus their efforts on the repeatable, and are not well equipped to manage the one-off; organizationally, processes, logistics, or simply the agility.

Resourcing is key. Firstly, where will you get it? Most people will be focused on their day-to-day activities, and won’t have the capacity to stretch to providing time to a global programme. Secondly, when do you need it? You’ll need to manage resourcing carefully. For many resources, you’ll only need them at certain points in the project and won’t want them sitting around. Lastly, do you have the expertise? Many roll-outs require technology, commercial or logistics expertise that you just won’t need day to day. It’s unlikely you’ll have an “importer of record” expert sitting around, why would you?

Who’s at the other end? If you’re in a central global IT function, it’s not making the choices that are hard; it’s having some-one in the remote location to help you implement them correctly. Getting on the plane to your Antiguan office for an upgrade might be a perk, but the 15 other locations, in less appealing locations, an aggressive roll-out time-line, and no local help, probably aren’t. Let alone the 8 hour on-site response your business needs for failures. You would think that getting skilled resources to a location is easy, but just try coordinating skilled engineering resource across 20 locations, installing non-Cisco technology, with complex requirements, and you’ll see what we mean. Local partners are a solution, but if it’s a one time project, how do you know they’re any good, and what relationship do you have with them to go the extra mile for you?

It’s the admin silly. Let’s not forget the complexity of getting something from point A to point B across borders. Forget the import tax, duty, and administrative overhead. Do you have a legal entity that can take ownership? More importantly, do you want to take ownership locally? With different, often archaic, import regimes in many countries, it probably will turn into the nightmare it looks. It’s not glamorous, and absolutely no-one will thank you if it goes smoothly, but it’s got the power to stall a project in its tracks.

Ensuring Success. You could try this yourself. But it’s time consuming and the risks are high. Especially if you have IT programme’s depending on this to realize significant benefits to the business.

nscglobal is delivering services for customers in more than 140 countries, and helping them realize the benefits they want to, when and where they want to.

To understand how nscglobal has helped TNS with logisitcs and support in 80 countries click here


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