eSCM-SP – in 3 minutes

The basics

eSCM-SP (The eSourcing Capability  Model for Service Providers) is a ‘best practices’ capability  model for service providers in IT-enabled sourcing, which can be used as both an improvement roadmap and as a certification  standard; it complements eSCM-CL  for clients.

Target audience

Providers of IT-enabled services and their clients; regardless of whether  the service provider  is an in-house provider, a shared services unit, or an outsourced or offshore service provider.

Summary

eSCM-SP is owned and supported  by ITSqc, a spin-off from Carnegie  Mellon University.  Version 1.0 was released  in 2001; the current  version is version 2.02 (2009). The model has three purposes: to give service providers guidance that will help them improve  their capability  across the sourcing life-cycle, to provide clients with an objective means of evaluating the capability  of service providers, and to offer service providers a standard to use when differentiating themselves  from competitors.

Each of the Model’s 84 Practices  is distributed along three dimensions: Sourcing Life-cycle, Capability Area, and Capability Level. Capability Areas provide logical groupings of Practices to help users better  remember and intellectually manage  the content of the Model. Service providers can then build or demonstrate capabilities in a particular critical-sourcing function. The ten Capability Areas are Knowledge Management, People Management, Performance Management, Relationship Management, Technology Management, Threat  Management, Service Transfer,  Contracting, Service Design & Deployment, and Service Delivery.

The five eSCM-SP Capability Levels indicate the level of an organization’s capability.  Level 1 indicates that the organization is providing a service. A Level 2 organization has procedures in place to enable it to consistently  meet its clients’ requirements. At Level 3, an organization is able to manage  its performance consistently  across engagements. Level 4 requires that an organization is able to add value to its services through innovation. Service providers at Level 5 have proven that they can sustain excellence over a period of at least two years, and has demonstrated this through  successive certifications.

Scope and constraints

The guidance provided  in the eSCM-SP can be applied by providers of IT-enabled services in almost all market  sectors and service areas. The eSCM-SP has been designed to complement existing quality models.

Strengths

Most quality models focus only on design and delivery capabilities:  the eSCM-SP’s Sourcing Lifecycle includes Delivery, and also Initiation  and Completion of the contract.  The two phases are often the ones most critical to successful sourcing relationships. The Sourcing Lifecycle also includes Overall Practices, which span these Lifecycle phases. eSCM is twofold: eSCM-CL  for Clients and eSCM-SP for Service Providers. These two models are consistent, symmetrical and complementary for each side of the client-provider relationship and this is the strength  and the uniqueness of this model. Both models have been used to ensure alignment  of processes  to build stronger  partnerships.

Constraints

• Failing to define exact measures to be collected; the eSM-SP requires that organizations define the measures that they wish to collect to manage  their service delivery and relationships.
• Provides requirements (i.e., Practices) for establishing service management processes, rather than providing processes  as is done by other Frameworks, such as ITIL.

Want to know more?

Title: eSourcing Capability Model for Service Providers
Authors: Mark C. Paulk & Elaine Hyder & Keith M. Heston & Bill Hefley
ISBN: 9789087535612
Price: € 75,00
Order here your copy or view the sample file on our website.