BT Global Services are a major provider of outsourced IT services for thousands of businesses in the UK; customers doubtless reassured by their perception of BT as a big player.
But is that customer confidence so well placed for the future? Who will be the weakest link now that BT are outsourcing much of their “routine” services and extending the service delivery chain for their customers?
Customers who did their due diligence on BT will soon be faced, like it or not, with an extended service delivery chain because BT Global Services has decided to outsource much of its customer service delivery to an unconfirmed subcontractor.
For some BT customers, this might mean receiving service from a provider that failed to win their business in the first place, possibly in competition with BT.
Of course this is by no means an unusual situation, I know from my own experience that other major service providers already regularly subcontract service elements, effectively providing their customers with the comfort factor of their big name and headline contractual responsibility.
From the financial and contractual perspectives, such an arrangement can be attractive; as a Finance Director once said to me: “I only want to have to sue one company when things go wrong.”
But, from an operational perspective, such extensions to the service delivery chain naturally increase risk and dilute the value of outsourcing to a “major” provider.
What happens when your big name outsourcer’s outsourcer has an outsourcer with an outsourcer that subcontracts to a bloke with a van and a screwdriver?
