Follow these 7 rules to thrive in a digital world

As an IT Services firm it is likely that you are already a digital business. If not, you could benefit by extending your business to Digital business. Services relating to Digital are growing at a rate of 25% to 40% versus 10%-15% of traditional IT services. The bill rates for Digital services are at a premium to traditional services. Whether Digital is a small part of your IT Services business currently or sizable, you could benefit from the following 7 rules in creating a thriving Digital business.

1. Internalise and agree on the relevance of Digital for the future of your business
2. Fast track investments in building Digital offering
3. Ring fence Digital business operations
4. Demonstrate commitment and leadership in Digital
5. Operate as a Digital business
6. Measure and Reward Digital business growth
7. Attract, Train, Retain Digital talent

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10 Key Questions to Assess Application Outsourcing Maturity

As more companies look to external IT service providers to help them both innovate and optimize, many are initially surprised by the amount of change required for a relationship to work successfully -- issues that extend well beyond onboarding supplemental, temporary staff. Many companies think that the key to outsourcing success is selecting the right partner, but even the best partner will disappoint you if you are not prepared and organized for an outsourcing arrangement.

In Forrester's Services Sourcing Playbook research, my colleagues and I maintain that it is critical for companies embarking on an outsourcing journey or trying to optimize their existing outsourcing relationships to ask themselves the following 10 questions in order to assess maturity and identify weaknesses. Without effective project and program management, internal process consistency, management and change control processes, and a mature vendor management function, it will be difficult -- or nearly impossible -- for organizations to work with external IT services suppliers effectively.

1. Project management track record.
2. Project management expertise.
3. Central program management.
4. Communication and collaboration tools.
5. Internal process consistency.
6. Software development process maturity.
7. Requirements definitions and management capability.
8. Managing to SLAs.
9. User acceptance testing rigor.
10. Vendor management function.

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