Organizations are increasingly delegating their information technology (IT) intensive business activities to external service providers, taking advantage of the rapid evolution of the global telecommunications infrastructure. The business processes being outsourced range from routine and non-critical tasks, which are resource intensive and operational, to strategic processes that directly impact revenues. IT-enabled sourcing services include IT-intensive business processes, projects, and tasks that use information technology as an enabler for designing services, coordinating service deployment, and delivering services. Managing and meeting client expectations is a major challenge in IT-enabled sourcing services and examples of failure abound. Failures typically happen throughout the sourcing process, i.e., during requirements specification, contract execution or service completion.

The eSourcing Capability Model (eSCM^SM) contains a set of 93 best practices that address the entire sourcing process, and seeks to aid IT-enabled sourcing service providers in forming, managing and improving sourcing relationships. Each practice in the escm is associated with a capability level. The five capability levels in the escm describe an improvement path that progresses from a limited level of capability to deliver a service that meets a client's particular requirements up to the highest level of enhancing value through continuous innovation.

Part One of this Technical Report provides an overview of the (eSCM^SM). To learn more about the practices, see Part Two, which provides detailed descriptions of each practice in the (eSCM^SM).

317 pages

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