Insource IT Management Principles
Insource's approach to managed services is designed to be highly flexible

Insource's structured approach to IT management is a compilation of the best practices found, among other places, in the frameworks published by:

• COSO - the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission;
  
• COBIT - Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies; and
  
• ITIL® - the IT Infrastructure Library.

This comprehensive approach to IT management ensures that clients receive the highest levels of IT service no matter the company's size. While structured, Insource's approach remains highly flexible so that best
practices are used appropriately and just not for the sake of the principles themselves.

The Insource management approach often starts with strategic planning followed by tactical and business process analysis where IT activities are identified, prioritized and optimized to align with and achieve the company's strategies and objectives.

Once the strategies, objectives, and IT priorities have been established, Insource will evaluate the company's resources to determine if any changes or investments are required and where cost savings can be realized. Resources may include IT personnel, infrastructure, applications, time, or money.

Resource changes may involve projects, staffing, or development activities. In most instances all changes are managed through a change management process. Once the systems are in place they must support the service delivery activities. Ongoing monitoring is performed to ensure that the IT environment is performing as expected and that objectives are being met.

The degrees to which these activities are carried out are determined by many factors such as the organization's risk profile, regulatory and statutory requirements, and the size and complexity of the IT environment, to name a few.

For instance, most small companies do not have formal IT Steering Committees where strategies are discussed and results reviewed. Typically, for smaller companies, strategy and review discussions occur during meetings between the Insource teams and the clients.

Another example is that publicly traded companies not only require the full spectrum outlined above but need to meet the additional requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley and possibly exhaustive COBIT analyses followed by possibly significant implementations. Physicians' practices on the other hand are typically much smaller and are faced with HIPAA regulations, a move towards national standards, and possibly application/infrastructure decisions.

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