Over the past few years, contact centre technology has evolved significantly, driven primarily by cost-saving requirements, effective customer engagement efforts and streamlined workforce management processes. Advances in cloud computing, virtualisation, unified communications and customer experience management have given a new outlook to the contact centre industry. Organisations need to ensure that their contact centres keep up with these emerging technologies. If they do not, they risk being overtaken by their competition. Is your contact centre in need of transformation?

A pre-requisite of good IT governance is well defined and managed processes which ensure the right thing is done at the right time. However, the challenge is how do you determine whether your IT governance processes are aligned with global good practices? ISACA recently announced the COBIT 4.1 Process Assessment Model. This model provides an internationally recognised mechanism for assessing an organisation’s existing governance processes and improving governance performance through enhanced process maturity.

Good IT governance is essential
Governance is about defining the principles, rules and processes that enable effective decision-making. It provides a framework to address how decisions are made, defines the authority to make decisions and describes the process for communicating decisions. It ensures risks are effectively managed, and IT service contracts deliver value for customer and supplier alike.

In practical terms, good governance is about managing the complex set of processes, forums, deliverables, dashboards and scorecards, decisions and relationships required to ensure the successful delivery of IT services to the business. Good governance results in early delivery of business benefits, well managed services, end user satisfaction and strong customer-supplier relationships.

Organisations today are more reliant than ever on their information and communications technology (ICT) services for their business activities. As such, it is imperative they can control and manage these services effectively. Investing in the design and implementation of a robust operating model is essential to maximising the business benefits of ICT.

The increasing complexity of enterprise ICT environments makes managing these services a challenging task. Gone are the days when organisations would be content to either manage all of their ICT in-house or outsource everything to a single supplier. Multi-sourcing environments have become the norm, characterised by a multitude of internal and/or external suppliers providing services to one or more business divisions. Organisations need to ensure that they don’t end up with an operating model that is essentially a collection of different contracts and relationships. Instead organisations need to design and implement a single, fit-for-purpose operating model encompassing all the different players within their ICT eco-system. The operating model must also be aligned with the wider IT strategy of the business, corporate governance structures and culture.