The Corporate IT Forum is to launch a new benchmarking service to help businesses evaluate outsourced IT contracts.

The Continuous Performance Improvement for Outsourced IT Services (CPI OS)
allows companies to compare the cost and service levels of their contracts.

Suppliers' own benchmarking is unreliable, said Corporate IT Forum director of improvement services John Parker.

"IT users told us that they were finding it impractical and too costly to discover how their outsourced contracts compared with the services given to other companies – and they didn’t want to depend on suppliers offering to benchmark themselves," he said.

The service – which will be launched on November 1st - has been developed and funded by Corporate IT Forum members.

CPI OS is being launched alongside an expanded Continuous Performance Improvement Enterprise benchmarking service which allows businesses to compare their entire IT estate’s performance with other corporates.