What are the right retention percentages by IT service category as I consider outsourcing and my retained organization structure?  This is a question that seems to be on the mind of every CIO who is considering outsourcing.  The question of balancing work to ensure an equal or better quality of service after engaging an outsourcing provider is key to IT’s ability to sustain the level of service expected from IT’s  customer – the business.

The consultant’s answer is that it depends.  It depends on the centralization, diversification, domestic, regional, and global nature of the current IT organization.   To answer the retained organization question, we have come up with some fact-based information on real deals that have been recently completed.  

The summaries below provide an interesting starting point for a discussion to answer the “right retention percentage” question.   The data shows retained vs. outsourced role percentage broken into two organizational structure categories and four role categories.