Today, more than ever, everyone is aware of the pace of change.
When it comes to technology, we think about the shift to cloud, the exponential growth of iOT devices, machine learning and of course, artificial intelligence.
The way we live, work, shop and learn has also seen a rapid shift, with Coronavirus accelerating new digital channels, mass remote working, and the huge adoption of collaboration solutions.
When the Forge team recently debated these trends, we all agreed it was also noticeable how little change there has been when it came to IT support and managed services. Many providers offerings do not appear to have kept pace with technology advancements. The majority of competitors service offerings continue to be focused on ‘keeping the lights on’ or ‘allowing customers to focus on their own core business competencies’. Forge believe this approach is not enough to help customers keep up with the pace of technology change or to enable their digital ambitions.
Forge think that modern IT support and managed service offerings should be as evolved as the technology they support. In particular Forge think there are four key characteristics you should look for in any modern IT Managed Service.
Focus on the stakeholder experience – Customers, colleagues and partners all interact with IT via digital touch points. Their experience matters and this should be the focus of continual improvement. Many providers focus their service efforts on monitoring platforms, applications and connectivity; however, this is just the tip of the iceberg and the majority of user frustrations often go undetected.
By monitoring the user experience across all digital touch points, it is possible to deliver a far more proactive service. A service that allows for intervention, when a user would normally suffer in silence and not worry to contact the service desk; a service which can quantitively measure the user experience and ensure transformation initiatives only serve to improve it.
Future flexibility, rather than historic metrics and trends – Digital initiatives place constantly evolving demands on your IT platforms. Technology is now evolving so fast, many IT projects will change shape before you are even out of the design phase! It is therefore essential that your managed service, offers you true flexibility throughout the term. The majority of service offerings today, are still defined against a static list of technology components, services/features, locations, user volumes and other metrics. Rather than provoking, supporting and enabling change; they stifle it.
Your IT service should be a business enabler, helping you realise your digital ambitions. Forge believe that modern IT support agreements should include ‘built-in’ innovation and change; and we’re not talking about a nominal ‘plus or minus X%’, or ‘Y x standard changes per month’… We mean real, material change, that makes a difference. Ongoing Continuous Service Improvement Processes (CSIP) should have meaningful KPI’s, which not only foster innovative suggestions and stimulates debate, but also implements them within the scope of your agreement. The importance of this approach could not be better illustrated than when it comes to implementing security improvements.
Leverage existing and future investments – Your cloud subscriptions are expensive and offerings such as Microsoft 365 or Azure include a raft of features and functionality. Sadly, many IT service provider’s offerings are based around their own central tools and platforms. Not only does this approach fail to leverage the investments you have made, but it also increases your dependency upon the provider, reduces flexibility and increases the cost of any change or service exit.
Forge believe that a modern IT service should leverage the investments you have already made; be that an existing network management tool, or Microsoft cloud features such as Azure Monitor, Sentinel, ATP, MFA Intune or AAD self-service password reset (to name but a few examples). Indeed, as your tools or cloud management capabilities evolve with each release, your IT service provider should be obliged to maximise the extent to which they are exploited. Your provider should bring ‘know-how’ from other customer engagements, sharing the pitfalls, opportunities and new approach’s available to you; helping you improve your service maturity and stakeholder experience.
Improve and optimise – All too often the focus of a traditional IT service is centred around reactive services, with historical reporting based on the service availability or incident resolution. As workloads continue to shift to cloud platforms, their availability is assumed. Whilst ongoing service performance should continue to be measured, the focus needs to shift.
By their very nature, Cloud platforms have near limitless capacity and are constantly evolving. It is therefore essential that your IT service provider helps you keep pace with change and constantly secure and optimise your environment. They should be demonstrating new features, highlighting new architectural options or changes in best practice, helping to reduce your subscription costs and improve security, performance or resiliency. This is especially important for customers who have adopted a ‘lift and shift’ approach to migrating away from traditional on-premise platforms.
Forge believe the above characteristics will become essential components of any modern IT Managed service. Indeed, as digital IT services are transformed and you collaborate more widely, the need for a new approach becomes critical to preserve and improve security.
Many of our competitors are struggling to make the change and evolve. They have poured years of investment into defining rigid service catalogues/contracts, building central tools or automation, creating complex cost models and ‘sticky services’ which lock you in. This means they struggle to keep pace with technology advancements and just focus on ‘keeping the lights on’; rather than helping you realise your future digital initiatives.
The Forge team take a different approach. We create bespoke and highly flexible IT services, based upon your requirements, technology investments/roadmap and digital aspirations. Our services are underpinned by robust but flexible processes (all mapped in a process management tool) and a combination of service tooling that’s right for you. We give you direct access to our experts, without the traditional 1st, 2nd and 3rd line tiered model, and we know you will love the experience. We would encourage you to get in touch to find out more, or to challenge your existing provider to offer the same modern approach.
