A global investment bank had outsourced its IT service desk and key ITSM functions to a managed service provider a decade earlier. The contract was coming to an end, service quality had declined steadily for three years, and the new CIO wanted independent counsel on whether to renew, retender or insource. What started as a strategic advisory engagement became the foundation for a complete ITSM insourcing programme.
The CIO had inherited a managed service arrangement that had worked reasonably well for its first few years but had deteriorated significantly. SLA compliance was technically being met — but the metrics didn't reflect reality. User satisfaction scores were the lowest in the organisation's history, shadow IT was growing as teams found workarounds, and the managed service provider's response to every problem was to propose a contract extension or scope change.
With the contract renewal decision approaching, the CIO needed independent counsel — someone without a stake in any particular outcome. The three options on the table were renewal, a managed service retender, or insourcing. Each had significant cost, risk and capability implications that the organisation's internal team was not well-placed to assess objectively.
Crucially, the CIO also knew that whatever decision was made, the underlying ITSM processes needed to be addressed. The outsourcing arrangement had allowed process ownership to atrophy inside the organisation — nobody internally fully understood what was being delivered, how it was being measured, or what good would look like.
"The SLAs said green. The users said something very different. We needed someone with no skin in the game to tell us what was actually happening — and what our real options were."
We began with a rapid but structured assessment — not a full ITIL benchmarking exercise, but a focused diagnostic of the areas that mattered most to the insource/retender/renew decision: true service performance, cost transparency, internal capability and the realistic effort required for each option.
The findings were unambiguous. The managed service provider was delivering to the letter of an outdated contract that no longer reflected the organisation's needs. The cost of renewal, adjusted for the scope changes required to bring it to an acceptable standard, was significantly higher than the headline renewal figure. Insourcing, done properly and with the right foundations, was both feasible and financially superior.
With the decision made, the engagement shifted to insourcing advisory and programme support — helping the organisation build the internal ITSM capability it had allowed to atrophy, recruit and onboard a new internal service desk team, select a modern ITSM platform, and manage the transition from the managed service provider without service disruption.
Fourteen months after the initial advisory engagement, the organisation had successfully insourced its IT service desk and core ITSM functions. The transition was managed without material service disruption — a significant achievement given the complexity of unwinding a ten-year outsourcing relationship.
The financial case proved conservative. Annual savings against the renewal option came in at £1.2M, with the insourced model delivering a level of service control and visibility the organisation hadn't had in over a decade. User satisfaction improved 38% in the first six months of full insourced operation.
Perhaps most significantly, the organisation now owned its ITSM capability — the processes, the people, the knowledge. That resilience and control had been the CIO's underlying goal from the start.
"Having someone truly independent — with no managed service relationships, no tool commissions, no stake in the outcome — made the difference. We got honest advice, not a sales pitch dressed up as a recommendation."
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