Tuesday, October 20, 2009
TEAM’s Capabilities in Meeting the Nation’s Healthcare IT Needs
Monday, September 28, 2009
TEAM’s Corporate Social Responsibility Update
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Central and Eastern Europe IT Outsourcing Review: Q1 2009
Recent research commissioned jointly by Central and Eastern European Outsourcing Association (CEEOA) and Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS), confirms active development of IT offshore outsourcing markets in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in general and Ukraine in particular. Central and Eastern Europe IT Outsourcing Review’s 2008 research suggests that CEE are gradually transforming from the fringe to preferred locations in the global outsourcing market.
Friday, July 24, 2009
TEAM International Becomes A Microsoft Certified Partner
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Current trends in European and North American Offshore Outsourcing
Monday, June 1, 2009
Top Offshore Outsourcing Trends to Watch in 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
TEAM International Announced A Rising Star in UK by IAOP
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Why Outsource Healthcare IT Staffing?
Current call for EMR/EHR implementation in US healthcare
On February 17, 2009, US President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ("ARRA") as a $787 billion “economic stimulus law”. This Act launched new federal mandates on health information technology (HIT) and privacy of personally identifiable information (PII). ARRA encourages healthcare and patient care facilities to adopt a wider use of electronic medical/ health records (EMR/EHR).
The benefits of EMR/EHR are too obvious to list. First and foremost, EMR/EHR technology helps increase productivity by supporting automation of clinical processes from filing paper charts and prescribing medications to storing sensitive patient data, managing accounting information and consulting on treatment options. The second benefit of EMR/EHR consists in revenue increase. Implementation of medical billing software allows healthcare facilities to offer new services to patients, to attract new businesses and reduce workload on the medical staff. In spite of rather high costs of implementation, EMR/EHR technology promises to boost healthcare profits in a long-term perspective by improving patient satisfaction and office image resulting in increased patient referrals and retention. EMR/EHR software comes with many in-built and added-on tools able to help physicians make faster and prompter decisions. Such tools include, but are not limited to: diagnosis and prescribing medications, automated appointment reminders, automated treatment planning etc. EMR/EHR technology is also able to eliminate queues in the physician’s office and missed appointments by allowing patients to arrange an appointment and receive an electronic reminder online.
In overall, EMR/EHR will allow better physician-patient interaction, physician-physician communication, higher quality treatment and protection of sensitive information.
The federalization of encryption and security norms for PII and EMR/EHR promises a new wave of government-funded IT contracts with private contractors, advisors and consultants.
According to Accenture Electronic Health Records Survey (2005), the major barriers to successful and effective EMR/EHR implementation are:
• Capital costs
• Physicians’ resistance to learn new technology
• Lack of technology standards
• Increase of IT staff workloads
It is important to note that the increasing of IT staff workloads is one of the most frequently cited obstacles. As many as 17% of the Survey participants reported the drastic impact of EMR/EHR adoption on IT staff. Considering that the task of implementation is a temporary one augmenting in-house staff with the contract IT specialists would be a better solution than hiring permanent workers.
Vendor market notes
According to Wipro Health Industry Insights Report (2008), healthcare IT vendor market is fragmented by solution set, geography and segment. The market is dominated by the major hospital information system vendors such as Cerner, Epic, Eclipsys, GE Healthcare, McKesson, Siemens, Meditech etc. In regards to physician adoption of EMR/EHR, the vendor market is both fragmented and opened for new joiners.
Healthcare IT staffing outsourcing: current state of affairs, benefits and expectations
Today’s US healthcare organizations are faced with growing pressure to reduce overall labor costs and at the same time to improve the quality of patient care. In order to painlessly and efficiently implement the required technology, organizations need to access the best IT talent pool requiring the latest technology skills coupled with excellent recruiting expertise.
Progressive healthcare organizations are currently resolving the problem of IT talent shortage by choosing to partner with recruiting experts with enormous side experience and outside perspective. The professional vendors can support healthcare services providers with qualified teams of IT experts able to fill in all of the gaps relating to poor technology implementation.
No secret that in the healthcare industry people are the single biggest expense (nearly 60% of the total cost structure). To find, attract and retain qualified professionals to meet the growing IT demand is a real challenge.
Healthcare IT staffing outsourcing can be a valuable option to leverage the organizations’ screening capabilities of narrowing the funnel of prospects to those people who have qualifications, desire and commitment to bring a positive IT change to the company.
Besides leveraging screening capabilities, healthcare IT staffing outsourcing can help companies standardize their recruitment practices, increase turnaround times and reduce vacancy rates down to 2.3 percent and increase overall efficiency by allowing healthcare facilities to focus on their core competencies.
President Obama’s call for total automation of processes in the healthcare is matching a time of limited IT human resources, which puts a serious barrier in the way of successful EMR/EHR adoption. Today’s healthcare administrators are facing a challenge of having to transform and innovate while maintaining and/or reducing the total operating costs to the organization. Healthcare IT staffing outsourcing offers an effective means of increasing IT efficiency while cutting costs.
Sources: Accenture
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
TEAM International Launches Software Development QA and Testing Center of Excellence
TEAM International announces the launch of our new QIQ Assessment Tool, designed to assist companies with in-house QA and testing teams to measure the maturity and effectiveness of their software development QA and Testing processes and capabilities.
“The Statistics support our decision to build a separate QA & Testing offering” said Chris Walton, President of Team International. “In early 2005, we decided to separate our software development teams from our QA & Testing teams in order to increase the quality of our deliverables to our clients. Our clients loved it and we expanded our offering as a stand alone capability” said Chris.
According to a CIO survey, finding and fixing bugs accounts for almost 50 percent of the total cost of a software project. The same survey reveals that the migration of the QA & Testing function to an offshore third party can save companies up to 75 percent compared to in-house costs. Another survey conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finds that US companies spend as much as $60 billion on fixing software defects at the post-release stage. This study also reveals that third party QA & Testing could have saved companies nearly $20 billion had they focused on quality early in the software development life cycle.
TEAM encourages all organizations that take our QIQ Quiz to get a better understanding of potential areas for improvement.
Ukraine Included in Gartner’s Top 30 Countries for Offshore Services in 2008
On assessing 72 offshore locations, Gartner generated its new list of Top 30 Hot Spots for offshore outsourcing. According to Gartner, the analysis of offshore locations showed the dynamic growth of the outsourcing market and helped identify countries that are most likely to become credible alternative to such traditional locations as India and China.
Ukraine is listed in Gartner’s Top 30 among other EMEA countries (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Romania, Egypt etc. Gartner determined that Ukraine as well as other EMEA locations became a powerful nearshore center for outsourced services. Ukraine continues to attract its mature neighborhood such as EU and the Nordic regions as a high quality and low cost services provider.
TEAM International hopes that in the conditions of the economic turmoil Ukraine will grow as one of the most effective offshore and nearshore destinations in EMEA region and will continue to be listed among Gartner’s Top 30 countries in 2009.
Why Outsource QA and Testing?
Benefits of outsourced QA & Testing
The objective of using Offshore Outsourcing is based on price arbitrage where lower cost resources are used to perform functions that would otherwise be more expensive when compared to domestic staffing. There are always tradeoffs in terms of which functions make sense to port overseas. When a function such as systems architecture is outsourced, many CIOs feel uncomfortable and perceive that they may be losing control of a strategic function or a core competency of the organization, QA & Testing is a prime candidate for outsourcing as the function is considered rote and not perceived by the average IT professional as a career path to greater responsibility within the organization. At the same time, the strategic importance of the QA & Testing function continues to increase in the enterprise in terms of the overall IT budget and the cost of releasing a defective product to the market.
The main benefits of outsourced QA & Testing can be divided into two categories: quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative Benefits:
• Reduced Costs
Current economic conditions have forced organizations to focus on the bottom line. Top line revenues are under pressure, so cost reduction is one of the focuses of business leaders. Focusing on cost reductions only takes a company so far. The best and brightest organizations are emphasizing new product development to assure that once the economy moves in the right direction, they are poised to capitalize on revenue growth. Based upon the statistics in the first paragraph, the cost of deploying a software product with significant defects has a staggering effect on both internal costs and marketplace perception. IT organizations that have their QA & Testing functions right-sized spend approximately 25% of the overall IT budget on QA & Testing. One of the main objectives of any outsourcing engagement is to reduce cost. Offshore outsourcing can bring an experienced QA & Testing team to the table and save up to 75% of the overall QA & Testing budget. But the benefits don’t stop simply at cost alone.
Having a third party perform the more mundane functions allows the organization to redirect resources toward new development projects that can positively impact bottom line profitability. Each stage of the Software Development Cycle (SDLC) requires a unique set of skills and competencies. What is one of the primary roles of the IT organization? Understanding the internal and external competitive landscape of the industry in which the organization operates and proactively develops products and services to create a competitive advantage. Outsourcing the QA & Testing function allows the organization to focus employees on core competencies while leaving the functional subject matter expertise of QA & Testing to the offshore firm. When Outsourcing the QA function, the QA Team should be viewed as an independent QA team to validate that the application/product is ready for market.
• Cost Avoidance
In a traditional waterfall model where an IT shop migrates through the SDLC in measured steps, completing each phase, before passing a project into implementation. The influence stakeholders have over cost is significantly reduced. When the IT shop adopts the Test Driven model, the development process is modified to allow for the creation of test cases during each phase of the SDLC. The earlier in the cycle that a defect can be identified, the less costly the defect is in terms of impacting the enterprise. For example, if a defect is found in the Design phase, the cost to correct the defect is minimal. If the same defect makes it all the way through the SDLC and the software is deployed into production, the cost to correct is multiplied by a factor of ten. If a defect is caught in the Implementation phase, the cost to correct is multiplied by a factor of five. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where the investment should be made.
Qualitative Benefits:
• Revenue Optimization
Once the software product is marketed to end users, the informal evaluation by customers begins. As we all know, information travels over the worldwide web at the speed of light, in particular when it comes to product quality. The tech community is filled with user groups and associations performing real time informal product evaluations. When a product goes to market with significant defects, the negative comments move quickly throughout the user and prospect community. Though business leaders are pressed to deploy new capabilities at a breakneck pace, quality needs to be at the forefront of thought leadership. The best way to reduce the probability of significant software defects negatively impacting perception and sales is to have a robust third-party QA & Testing process. Investing in quality processes increases both current customer satisfaction and the probability of closing on new business.
• Independent Verification & Validation (IV&V)
Much has been written about the maturity model related to QA & Testing. The final stage of the maturity model is Independent Verification & Validation. Organizations that invest in quality come to the conclusion that to institutionalize quality processes requires separate processes and separate people within the organization, along with using an independent third party to perform the function. An independent third party has many advantages, the first being that they are compensated to perform the function properly. Their continued existence relies upon process and quality. Secondly, since another organization is contracted to perform the function, separate processes and people are performing the tasks by design. And thirdly, the Outsourcing Company already has mature processes. After knowledge transfer, the QA & Testing team will be up and running quickly.
• Decreased Defects/Increased Application Quality
Mature processes capable of moving the enterprise toward Independent Validation & Verification are vital to the success of an outsourcing QA Project. Problem/defect identification and documentation are best performed by an organization familiar with process quality improvement. In software development one of the certifications that a potential outsourcing customer needs to look for is the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). CMMI in software engineering and organizational development is a process improvement approach, that seeks to provide organizations with the essential elements of effective process improvement. It can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organization. CMMI helps integrate traditionally separate organizational functions, set process improvement goals and priorities, provide guidance for quality processes, and provide a point of reference for appraising current processes. Organizations that have received CMMI already have mature processes and are more capable of integrating provider processes with customer processes. This is a very important component of the contracting process and is a predictor of successful outsourcing initiatives. Partnering with a certified vendor means immediate focus on project quality, correctness, compliance with the customer requirements and elimination of budget overruns.
Corporations around the globe are under pressure to survive in a harsh economic environment. Outsourcing has become main stream for many industries and when economic times are difficult, reducing cost while increasing quality is a value equation that cannot be ignored. For organizations assessing outsourcing strategies for the first time, focusing on QA & Testing is an easy place to start. For Organizations that have developed sourcing strategies, segregating the QA & Testing function and contracting with another supplier can significantly increase product quality. Migrating to a Test Driven QA Process with the goal of reaching the pinnacle of the maturity model, IV&V will build credibility within the organization and outside, where it counts most, marketplace perception. Reducing staffing costs, increasing product quality and avoiding the expensive cost of post deployment errors can only assist growing a profitable business.
(Based on materials from CIO.Com
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Why Choose a CMMI Certified Outsourcing Vendor?
What is CMMI?
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a specific guidance derived from the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) methodology that has been developed by Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of
SEI defines CMMI as a model providing “guidance to use when developing processes”. Based on this definition it becomes clear that the CMMI models are, in fact, not the processes, as misunderstood by many organizations, nor are they the process descriptions. They are guidelines that contain criteria of the processes’ quality assessment and methods of their improvement. The actual processes used within the organization depend on such factors as application domain, organization’s structure, size and many others. The process areas of a CMMI model do not map one to one with the processes used within the organization.
There are five CMMI levels:
Level 1 - Ad-Hoc: The processes are undefined and unstructured. There is chaos in each organization’s process area.
Level 2 – Managed: The processes are defined at the project level. The solutions are very reactive.
Level 3 - Defined: The processes are defined at the organizational level. It is one of the most important levels, since it suggests that the company has learnt how to put the processes to the project level and how to make them work in each certain case.
Level 4 - Quantitatively Managed: All the key processes are properly managed and controlled. The project metrics are gathered and analyzed.
Level 5 - Optimizing: The processes are improved based on the gathered metrics.
Key benefits of outsourcing to CMMI certified vendor
- Higher quality of a product due to constant quality control on each of the development steps
- Lower costs due to a more productive and efficient way of creating a product
- Better communication between client and vendor due to established rules and procedures
- Better visibility of the product life cycle and development activities due to better organized documentation
- Higher quality and lower costs due to use of the newest technologies and tools
What TEAM guaranties as a CMMI Level 3 outsourcing vendor
TEAM International Services, Inc. is CMMI Level 3 Certified since July 2008. This designation acknowledges the fact that we have adopted an institutionalized quality management system, confirmed by an accredited CMMI Certifier, to ensure we provide quality at any phase of service delivery. The high–quality service capability is conducted through the implementation of industry best practices with respect to and with consideration of specific conditions: legal and company policies, customer requirements regarding product, product components, and process of production, as well as selected/required software development lifecycle models.
Achievement of CMMI Level 3 attests to TEAM’s deep commitment to a customer-oriented approach to business. Working closely with client needs and applying quality assured methods – including (but not limited to) requirements traceability, scientific project management approach (based on historical and current project data collected and analyzed), quality control during the entire project lifecycle (in the form of peer reviews, testing, and work product validation), systematic evaluations of defined and adopted processes – we have a superior capability to prevent defects and non-standard practices in our completed delivery.
CMMI Level 3 Certification is only a first step which TEAM has committed to take in the pursuit of better delivery and client satisfaction. While these endeavors are often costly, requiring time, money, and the dedication of support (i.e. non-billable) personnel, TEAM believes the resulting value-add to the quality of our work far exceeds any tangible costs associated with these efforts. We are proud of the steps which we have taken, and we are delighted with the opportunity to provide better client satisfaction as a result.
