About: François Zielemans

François Zielemans

Website: http://sourcingthoughts.blogspot.com

Profile: Over the last ten years I gained deep knowledge and international experience in defining and executing IT & sourcing strategies, improving financial performance, (compliance) risk management and business-IT alignment. I have managed complex international projects with a value-at-risk of more than 60 million and worked in among others FSI, Technology/Telecom and FMCG. As a managing partner at Virtum I advise organisations which want to unleash the full potential of their IT Value Chain.

Posts by François Zielemans:

  • Outsourcing and Madoff

    In a recent interview of Z24 (Dutch internet news channel) and the Chief Risk Officer of Fortis Bank Netherlands (3 billion revenue 2008, 184 billion in assets) the risk management practices of the bank were discussed. The CRO stated among others that the board was closely involved with all new product introductions, and determines how new products fit into the risk profile of the bank. Read more

  • Get European companies a better deal?

    Even though the American market retains its top position as the largest market for Indian and other foreign service providers does this not automatically mean that American companies get the best deals. Many foreign service providers were already worried for some time about the depreciating dollar, but the economic collapse really showed how vulnerable one is, if completely dependent from one market. This has resulted in those offshore vendors who have the cash, to double their efforts to get European clients in. Those vendors which do not have the seize to invest in European (non-UK) front offices are now looking frantically to open other sales channels like partnering with smaller European vendors. Read more

  • Chinese versus Indian IT service providers

    Indian service providers continue to mature and this helps them to penetrate the continental European market after having captured large parts of the IT service cake within the United States and UK.  Where some American contracts state the scope as “ hiring 50 IT employees performing network management”, demand many European companies a more ‘functional blackbox’ kind of service.  Instead of hiring a couple of network engineers to do the work a typical client of mine (I’m Dutch) would require ’100Mb network bandwidth to desktops with a response time of X and an availability of Y for price $$ per connection’. This latter one requires a more sophisticated service delivery model and is more in line with the in Europe widely adopted ITIL methodology.   Read more

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