# Outsourcing Guideline

The company should have most of the knowledge regarding the IT components in-house. However, some services must be outsourced either as redundancy, fall back solution or because the competencies are too unreasonable to acquire. 

## Goal

Through outsourcing additional competencies are brought into the company. The outsourced services should be integrated into the in-house competencies as smoothly as possible with a high quality standard. In general, competencies should be kept within the company if reasonably possible.

## Implementation

Services and competencies should only be outsourced as a fall back solution or if they cannot be kept in-house with reasonable efforts. Before a service is outsourced the head of IT should evaluate the feasability of the outsourcing. This includes checking alternative solutions such as purchasing the necessary hardware, trianing existing employees or implementing alternative solutions which don't require outsourcing. 

In addition to the feasability analysis by the head of IT, a supplier evaluation must be performed. The supplier evaluation for outsourcing includes:

* Are the necessary competencies available?
* Is the pricing reasonable?
* Are the necessary certificates available, if required?
* Are the terms of service / contract details reasonable?
* Does the vendor comply with GDPR and can it be integrated into the existing structure of the company?
* Is the vendor large enough to provide the services reliably?
* Are there signifcant negative reviews?

Potential documents to be used are:

* [Third Party Software Validation - New](../../Processes/IT/Third%20Party%20Software%20Validation%20-%20New.md)
* [Investment Form](../../Processes/Purchase/Investment%20Form.md)

Potential documents to be changed are:

* [Outsourced Services](../../Processes/IT/Outsourced%20Services.md)

## Responsible

The responsibility for the outsourcing lies with the head of IT.

2022-01-01 - Version 1.0