Traditionally, IT had always been a cost center for organisations. But in this dynamic business world, IT needs to mature from just a business enabler to role of business transformer, where it will clearly set the company apart from the competition. Managed Service can help organisation undergo this journey and help companies achieve its goals.
Considering the rapid changes in which business is done, it is necessary that the IT of an organisation should also evolve to provide competitive advantage to the organisation. An organisation typically has to pass through various phases (or generations), before it can achieve this maturity and Intertec can help by consulting and managing this journey for the organisation. Typically, Intertec divides IT maturity and therefore the managed service journey into 4 key generations and plays a role of a transformational partner in migrating the organisation through the consecutive generations, until it arrives at its target maturity level. Each of these generations have distinguished characters in the way Resources are provided, Processes and tools implemented, SLA provided and Pricing is done. The details of these generations are defined here.
GENERATION 1: This is the most primitive stage in managed service maturity model. The resources are typically in-house on the payroll of the organisation or outsources on T&M basis with no or very little tools or process. Usually, the knowledge base is with the resources and there is a lack in documentation, Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) which makes the organisation very people dependent with no or very little SLA and KPI. Another typical gap in this stage is that there is no proper MIS reporting or dashboard and the pricing model is typically resource based making it the most expensive model from the cost-benefit point of view.
GENERATION 2: This is a little advanced stage in the sense that resources may be dedicated or shared with basic level of tools, process and SLA in place. Shared resources make this model commercially more viable. The basic SLA like Incident, Change and Problem Management advances the maturity and there are considerable amount of documentation and SOP available. Setting up a service desk essentially means that there is a single source of truth for all IT related problems/query in the organisation and adds accountability and ownership. Also, basic SLA like response and resolution enhances uptime and adds to customer satisfaction. This model also provides basic reporting and the best part is that client has a scope based pricing in this model. The main advantage of this generation is that it is a considerable step towards process and proactive monitoring but it still lacks charm of shift –left philosophy and hence no optimisation of operational expenditure on IT is achieved.
GENERATION 3: This is a fairly advanced model in the maturity journey where the dependency on resources decreases and an organisation becomes completely process oriented. Also, a considerable cultural shift of the organisation happens where more and more users wants to resolve their own issues through usage of tools realising the “shift-left” phenomenon. Shift-left is a philosophy in managed services where more and more issues are resolved at user level (L0 Level) through usage of password reset tool, selfheal tools or Do-It-yourself (DYI) portals and even before occurrence of issues (L-1) through proactive monitoring of end users. This reduces the dependency on L2/ L3 resources freeing them for more project base work. Another advancement in this stage, is the IT knowledge of the organisation, which becomes completely ITIL processes based. Usage of advanced level tools for monitoring the enterprise assets and applications with advanced correlation and usage of analytics & dashboards has their own sets of benefits towards uptime, availability and MIS. Also the SLA/ KPI are fairly advanced and is more than just response resolution, shifting towards performance and availability. The most interesting thing is that at this stage, the organisation can shift to a pricing model which is contact (call/ incident) based or service catalogue based. This essentially decreases the operational expenditure on IT service with increase in productivity and adoption of self-service.
GENERATION 4: This is a fully developed stage where organisations can leverage IT towards competitive advantage. At this stage cognitive tools like AI chat-bots tools are fully utilised to make the dependency on service desk lesser and more self –enabled. More emphasis is provided on automation and usage of digitalisation and omni channels and their management. The SLA evolves through the availability and is more towards experiences and enablement. The most intriguing character of this stage can be summarised as ‘Skin-in-the game’ which essentially mean that that the pricing is business outcome based – if the business grows than service grows along and if business reduces than a corresponding reduction can be taken on the price. Generation 4 is a paradigm shift in the culture of the organisation and may take lot of time to realise. Also at this stage, though considerable investment in IT is required, but considering the cost benefit analysis and the competitive advantage it provides, this is the most commercially optimal stage for any organisation
