Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), which entered the SA market nearly two years ago on the back of a $300 million, seven-year infrastructure outsourcing contract with Old Mutual, is expanding its system of Enterprise Development Centres (EDC) to SA.
An EDC is a team of IT specialists with particular competence in an IT field. For example, an EDC may specialise in big enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like SAP and Oracle; others run emerging technology systems based on the Internet and business-to-business; others mainframe-based Legacy systems.
EDCs are the latest best practice application service delivery model evolution in a chain that began with clients establishing application support and capability on their own. These were later outsourced to CSC but still positioned on the clients` premises. Now specialist EDC teams work off-site in their special areas of competence on work packages for a number of clients.
CSC will outsource a customer`s IT and business application needs, such as development, support and maintenance, to various EDCs specialising in those fields. This differs from traditional outsourcing, where one team of people with varied skills was dedicated to a particular client. Instead, the work is split up and allocated off-site to various EDCs, each specialising in a particular field.
As part of CSC`s enterprise application services, it leads to considerable cost savings - an average 25% - plus the implementation of best practices in application management. It also allows companies to leverage off the experience of multiple clients.
CSC already has 6 000 application outsourcing staff in North America, with the largest accounts being AT&T, Nortel, DuPont and General Dynamics. In Europe, 2 500 staff work mainly for BAE Systems and Datacentralen. The SA EDCs are based on UK models.
For some time, CSC UK has been outsourcing work to independent IT firms based in India. In the latest development, SA staff will do work for UK clients from the CSC offices in SA. A Legacy-based EDC pilot for a British client has already been established.
"We have chosen to handle UK work from SA as there is a good cultural fit, the time difference is slight, and travel between Europe and SA is relatively easy," says CSC application services manager Alan Geeling.
CSC will market its EDCs and full application support services to local companies.
"We want to sell the value proposition in this model," says Geeling. "We are confident of gaining a considerable number of local contracts and have launched an active recruitment campaign on a large scale."
EDCs offer baseline services such as support desks, problem resolution, application support, licence management, programming support, user administration, performance monitoring and configuration management. They also offer enhanced services such as on-call service, extended hours support, enhancements, upgrades, projects, consultancy and user training.
CSC will assist companies which still intend installing ERP systems, as well as those which have already gone ahead but are struggling with costs, service and skills levels now that they are in production.
CSC is willing to handle only one aspect of a client`s outsourced IT needs if this is required, but has the capability to handle the entire spectrum of development, support and maintenance. CSC has expertise in e-CRM, e-commerce and ERP, and incorporates all these skills into one holistic service.
Share
