In a recent survey of ZDNet's audience, more readers indicated a proclivity to outsource their IT than ever before. Aside from dealing with the controversial implications to the careers of their domestic IT personnel who may be left with no place to park their skill sets, CIOs and senior IT executives are learning that navigating the world of outsourcing is more like a fine art than an every-day business decision: It's a fine art that United Nations Development Programme CIO Norman "Sandy" Sanders is well along the way to mastering.

As one of the many groups that contribute to the United Nations s global activities, the UNDP is a part of the UN's organizational pyramid, the top of which is occupied by the UN Secretariat, where the Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office can be found. With 167 locations around the world, the UNDP is the principal point of contact between the UN and the over 140 developing countries in which it has a ground presence. According to Sanders, the UNDP's efforts --- covering issues from agricultural development to governance techniques to infrastructure improvement to poverty reduction --- help to nurture the embryonic backbones of countries in need of developmental support.

If there was ever an organization that needed an enterprise class resource management solution, the UNDP is it.

In step with the client/server revolution that characterized 1990s-era IT and while staring Y2K in the face, the UN decided to replace its legacy mainframes with a PriceWaterhouseCoopers-grown Sybase-based solution known throughout the organization as the Integrated Management Information System (IMIS). The UN Secretariat, which took responsibility for running IMIS, made its functionality available to other UN organizations on an outsourcing basis. The UNDP, seeing value in that strategic effort, became one such customer.

But, as with many custom-developed solutions, it wasn't long until the UNDP ran into IMIS' limitations. According to Sanders, "Naturally, IMIS was more oriented towards the administrative requirements of the Secretariat. It was not well suited to the global program we do, so it wasn't an exact match. For example, IMIS was not friendly to remote access; anyone who wanted to touch it that wasn't in New York where it was hosted needed to use Citrix. There were also freestanding versions of it that had to be synched up with the central database so we didn't have real-time data on a 24/7 basis. The bottom line is that it wasn't meeting our business requirements."

But Sanders was also careful not to attribute IMIS' lack of suitability to PwC or Sybase. Rather, one of Sanders' biggest concerns was IMIS' custom developed nature. Any time the system needed to evolve to be more in line with modern ERP thinking (workflow, process, procedure, et al) or application platforms (e.g.: the Web), the developers would have to be called back for another expensive round of modifications.

For those parts of the UN where IMIS is still a good match, Sanders said, "the UN is presently working on a Web-based version of IMIS that will resolve some of their 'real-time' issues. But the underlying functionalities will remain similar." Instead of evolving those underlying functionalities, Sanders' thinking evolved to a point where he saw the benefits in using minimally customized commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions.

"The question for us was how to overcome the deadweight of 50 years of civil service procedures and practices that were not enabling us to do our mission for the UN. IMIS was a computerization of those practices," Sanders told me. "If we continued trying to be successful in the 21st century with improved efficiency, transparency, speed, quality, and responsiveness --- all the things you expect from a business --- we wouldn't be able to do it based on mid-20th century practices. To routinely come back and update the system didn't make sense."

In addition to not being in the business of developing software, Sanders came to realize that the UNDP shouldn't be in the business of developing new best ERP practices. Sanders saw benefit in the fact that COTS providers have to incorporate state-of-the-art ERP thinking just to stay competitive, and he decided to take advantage of that out-of-the-box functionality instead.

By steering clear of software development and entrusting a COTS provider with the evolution of his solutions, Sanders saw a clearer path to simplicity. Said Sanders, "UNDP's course of action was not based on an aversion to Sybase or any other part of the platform. It was a more proactive attempt to move quickly to the best-of-breed functionalities that are off-the-shelf and Web-accessible right here and now." If staying with off-the-shelf functionality means changing the way the UNDP does business, then Sanders is prepared for that reality.

"It's like walking into tailor's shop," said Sanders. "We wanted to go into the shop and say 'this looks good. Don't tailor it.' If we have to lose some weight to make it fit, we'll get on the treadmill."

The decision to go with minimally customized COTS software enabled another time- and cost-saving structural decision for Sanders: to outsource. Not only did the decision to not customize make it easier to solicit and evaluate competing bids from IT services outfits, but it would help the UNDP, which had been outsourcing for the previous four years, to fast track the global deployment of its new solution.

"Because a three- to four-year period had passed where we didn't have responsibility or the people on staff for running the enterprise software or systems, we realized that in moving to a new system, our choices were to acquire the expertise and build it ourselves, or to get it done in 18 months through outsourcing." Given the mission criticality of the deployment and Sanders' ability to saddle a provider with service level agreements and the speed with which an existing ERP expert could jumpstart the UNDP, the choice was obvious.

With a rather minimalist IT philosophy in hand, the UNDP then embarked on the next two phases of its deployment: find the right COTS ERP solution, and find someone to run it. "We narrowed it down to three best-of-breed solutions --- Oracle, SAP, and PeopleSoft --- based on what current ERP products do. But we went with PeopleSoft because it had the best blend of functionalities that matched our business needs," said Sanders. "Some solutions were better for manufacturing-oriented businesses. But those strengths were not important to us. PeopleSoft gave us confidence that we could move from the isolated IMIS-based backend to a Web-based system with one UNDP system, where all parts of the organization would be sitting on top of the same infrastructure, seeing the same data, and the same transactions. For us, PeopleSoft had the edge." As a side note, the World Food Programme (another autonomous entity within the UN) went with SAP earlier this year.

Once the UNDP decided on PeopleSoft, it needed to find an IT services provider that could fast track the deployment. In looking for an outfit that could provide, host, and manage the physical systems while providing expertise in bringing up, running and maintaining PeopleSoft, Sanders said, "We ran an open RFP on the Web. There were 26 expressions of interest. We narrowed it down to seven, then short-listed three and ultimately decided to go with Unisys. Unisys put together the best combined offer of price, quality of hosting site and previous experience with servicing a PeopleSoft environment, a portion of which was subcontracted to Corio. In addition, we were also impressed with the quality of Unisys infrastructure, its global presence and significant financial capability. For us, that ensures that as we look forward beyond ERP, Unisys gives us some headroom for growth."

Should Sanders' new-found approach prove successful, which I believe it will, then there will most certainly be life after ERP for the UNDP. The key is Sanders' commitment to leave the evolution of the software and modern ERP thinking to PeopleSoft. It's reminiscent of a strategy that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was evangelizing over two years ago in a campaign he called his war on complexity. In that campaign, Ellison was advising business managers to change the way they think about business. In particular, he argued against the spending of limited resources on customizing core business applications like ERP and CRM.. In response to a column I wrote about Ellison's campaign, many readers wrote that while Ellison's pitch makes sense, most companies were not willing to embrace the necessary cultural shift to make it work.

Apparently, Sanders, and the UNDP are making it work. Fortunately, if you're at one of those companies that resist his sort of 21st century IT thinking, you won't have to compete with him. After all, it's the United Nations. But sooner or later, whether or not you wage your own war on complexity, one of your competitors will.

You can write to me at david.berlind@cnet.com. If you're looking for my commentaries on other IT topics, check the archives.