The San Francisco designer of mass-market fashions was the first company to sign up for Systems Management Specialists' Global Enterprise Management System, a comprehensive set of IT management services that includes remote monitoring of the IT infrastructure. The vendor designed its system largely to meet the needs of companies, such as Esprit, that have small IT staffs and would prefer to devote IT resources to issues that affect key sales and product strategies.

The retailer's approach is representative of a growing number of IT organizations that are focusing on how technology can help meet business goals, and spending less or no time managing systems and technologies that run business operations. "We just couldn't do this in-house," Damen says. "We couldn't attract the kind of talent and experience that would be needed. And I'm not so sure we'd want to if we could." Damen, who considers herself a business strategist at Esprit, has a background in finance and operations and oversees a small staff of 15 IT employees.

Esprit's colorful history began in the 1960s, when husband-and-wife team Doug and Susie Tompkins began selling 1940s-era housedresses out of the trunk of their car in San Francisco. The couple used the proceeds to launch Esprit, which grew to revenue of about $1 billion annually in the 1980s. But late that decade, the company was struggling. Doug Tompkins left Esprit following a 1990 divorce from Susie. In 1996, Susie Tompkins sold Esprit to a partnership that included Oaktree Capital Management, Cerberus Partners, and former Tommy Hilfiger executive Jay Margolis. Revlon veteran Joseph Heid replaced Margolis as CEO, chairman, and president of the 1,300-employee company late last year.

Though Esprit's revenue is considerably smaller than it was 15 years ago, it retains a respectable place in the fashion industry, selling its clothing and accessories through more than 40 of its own stores and via partnerships with 500 stores worldwide. The company doesn't disclose sales or profit figures, but Hoover's Online reports that Esprit did $350 million in sales in 1998, the most recent year for which figures were available.

Esprit's relationship with Systems Management Specialists dates to 1995, when the vendor was asked to replace the aging mainframe at Esprit's headquarters. The first IT outsourcing contract led to others, including the design and installation of a distributed network. Esprit has two IBM AS/400 mainframes, five Hewlett-Packard 9000 servers, more than 500 desktop computers, and several hundred point-of-sale devices that are located in its retail stores.

By extending its outsourcing relationship with Esprit to include the new Global Enterprise Management System offering, Systems Management Specialists can help the retailer keep operations humming by detecting problems before they occur on each of its servers and throughout its networks, says CIO Damen. She chose to contract out most of the management of that system, rather than handle it in-house, because of the time and cost involved. "The economic impact of the cost savings was very critical," she says.

Systems Management Specialists president Patrick Dolan says Global Enterprise Management System can predict down to the hour when a drive on a server will reach capacity, based on usage patterns monitored from SMS's West Coast command center in suburban Orange County, Calif.

If problems pop up with a disk or server, SMS staff can do most of the repairs from hundreds of miles away. "I don't have to deploy an army of technicians," Dolan says. "We can analyze data from the command and control center. In fact, we can get a good view of the entire enterprise."

Global Enterprise Management System uses agent technology and software tools to ferret out problems, and then communicates recommendations back to Systems Management Specialists technicians. That helps avoid wasted hours trying to diagnose problems, Dolan says. The remote-management system can also review configurations and delete unnecessary software that's taking up space; keep track of systems and components and identify possible theft; and monitor the time spent on a particular computer.

Global Enterprise Management System can also manage installations. Dolan says that when Esprit decided to install Microsoft Office 2000 on all its 500 desktop PCs last year, Systems Management Specialists didn't have to deploy an army of technicians to each Esprit facility and store. The remote installation took a fraction of the time required to do it the old-fashioned way of physically installing software at each desktop. "We don't send people out on airplanes to do this anymore," says Dolan, adding that software up-dates are also done remotely.

The remote-management system helps avoid downtime that Esprit can't afford, Damen says. As Esprit's fashion and accessories are sold worldwide, sales and other business transactions take place around the clock. She says Systems Management Specialists can keep her enterprise network running 99.98% of the time, an achievement she couldn't accomplish with her own team. Esprit's IT group spends most of its time working on forecasting and strategy, she says.

Systems Management Specialists has also stepped in to help Esprit solve internal staffing issues. In 1996, the vendor appointed IT professionals to assume responsibilities for about 40 employees who were let go during a budget crunch. Esprit doesn't have the budget to keep extra IT workers on the payroll for times when the workload is heavy, Damen says, but the vendor can offer contract employees at a reasonable price.

Companies such as Systems Management Specialists that provided outsourced IT have the expertise and flexibility that would "cost Esprit a fortune" to duplicate on its own, Damen says. By outsourcing IT management, Esprit can focus more on its core competency of designing, making, and selling clothes and accessories. She says the company's use of Global Enterprise Management System will help keep the apparel maker on the edge of change in the years ahead as it competes with companies such as Tommy Hilfiger and The Gap.

Says Damen, "We've been very happy with where we've been and where we're going."