Sun:IT | IT Service & Programme Delivery, ERP Modernisation & NZ–India Digital

How to Become a Successful IT Service Provider

Wed, 31 Aug 2016 15:34:08 -0700

More than one large government organisation is looking to transition themselves from a narrow inward focus to a new role of an IT service provider. Without exception these transformation projects carry high risk, and in the government world that immediately means high visibility too, creating a perfect storm of risk if not managed well.

The nuts and bolts of the technology are usually in very good hands: the servers, the database, the applications, the network, the desktop and end user devices - the tech transition itself can be tested, piloted, corrected and implemented. This is not where some of the real risk resides.

There is real danger is when you overlook service management. As someone said at the recent ITx Conference "Imagine doing an engine transplant while the aircraft is still in flight".

Having done this before, there are some simple checkpoints to consider from a service management point of view.

Start with the overall key guiding principle. In government departments this may be something like the Digital Transformation Strategy - this is a key input document or artefact
Look at the total technology landscape. This is usually contained in the overall Enterprise Architecture - key input document or artefact
Identify the technology components that are going to change. It might be the infrastructure, the database, the applications, or even the network, or end user devices; this should be in the high level technology road-map - key input document or artefact
With a little bit of luck, a programme has been set up and it has broken this down into individual projects, each dealing with one aspect of the technical change - key input document or artefact
A key part of this is drawing up a matrix outlining when each technology component will be changed for which customer or business - input for project planning
From a business perspective, you may be moving to...Read More

STEP 1: Set Up, Discovery & Due Diligence - 9 Point Checklist to Developing & Implementing your Service Management Model

Sat, 08 Oct 2016 13:42:41 -0700

This article goes into some of the detail as to how to go about the prelim work that needs to be done before developing and implementing your Service Management Model.

The previous post provided a High Level 12 Point Service Management Checklist to transition from an inward focus to transforming to a new role of an IT Service Provider.

Implementing your service management model can be tricky, however, this 9-point checklist will set you off to a good start.

Preliminary tasks

Set up the project and appoint a project manager
Identify internal and external stakeholders and sponsors and start engaging with them through early stage preliminary internal workshops

Due Diligence & Discovery - Current State Analysis

Run an asset audit - how many of each asset do you have, and where are they? – in this example I’m talking about PCs, laptops, servers, widgets and related items
What is the current service model – who is supported and how? What time is support available, in what way and by whom?
Who are the current suppliers and in what state are the contracts?
What is the level of maturity in terms of documented processes, reports, controls, knowledge? Review the documents and artefacts. Sight them yourself.
What products and services are out of support? What maintenance is required at end of life for those products and services and what compelling events are scheduled?
Identify the pain points in the current model. How can they be eased or mitigated?
What are the known metrics? Review incoming call volumes, number of defects, total headcount, open backlog and customer satisfaction. Document these as a benchmark

High Level 12 Point Service Management Checklist to transition, and the previous post as to how to set yourself up, discovery & due diligence or audit of the current state.

Planning can be time consuming, but you’re better off spending a bit of time at the beginning than a lot of time when you’re active and people are experiencing sub-par service because you weren’t prepared!

Here below is a list of questions to answer, which, if answered completely, will ensure that your Service Management Design and Strategy follows best practice.

What products or services need to be supported?
What are the critical components?
What does the new service and support model look like?
Are there additional staff required; what about rostering and after hours support?
Where is the first point of contact for your customers and what level of service will that first point of contact provide?
Is multi-channel support and self-service an option? What level of support will be available as self-service and at what point will a customer need to engage with a real person?
Who are the second level support teams and are they in-house or an external support agency?
Who are the partners? Are some to be dropped? Are new partners to be on-boarded? What is the scope of their roles and responsibilities?
What about monitoring, alerts and alarms, who’s responsibility is it to manage and maintain these?
What kind of...Read More

STEP 3: The Business Case, Financials, Commercials - Developing & Implementing your Service Management Model

Fri, 28 Oct 2016 12:46:39 -0700

FOR THE BUSINESS CASE, THE FINANCIALS AND THE COMMERCIALS TO BE SOUND AND ROBUST - YOU SHOULD HAVE:
Initiated your project plans and started to set up & organise your project teams
Performed discovery, due diligence or performed an audit of the current state
Created your vision of the future state service management model
THESE STEPS FORM YOUR MAIN INPUTS
With the information collected around:
People
Processes
Tools, and
Partners
The business case should start to emerge.
YOUR ANALYSIS SHOULD RESULT IN THE FOLLOWING KEY OUTPUTS
Project Financials - covering not just the service management work stream, but the entire project including all the workstreams
BAU Financials - the total cost to run and deliver once the solution is in production and running
Price Book or Rate Card - complemented with the catalogue of services to be provided
khichdi) you have in-house teams providing support for services that can not be outsourced, service aggregators and a number of specialist service providers.
From my experience - many/most service providers have been local, but in the mix are the local representatives and offices of global players and Indian IT majors; many of the global players will also have an element of off-shore service delivery.
So this is a complex list of ingredients as it is. And if someone was starting from a clean slate, this would be challenging, but relatively manageable.
In today's real world though, many services are already being delivered and many of the suppliers and vendors are already in place. What is really happening is that either new services are being added or refreshed, or the supplier/vendor mix is being re-balanced.
So the khichdi is already cooked - ingredients are being added or removed, cooks are being changed - and all this is being done as the customer is actually consuming it.
The cooks themselves speak different languages.
A typical team will have a mix of legal, procurement & business accountants - they speak one language (commercial, legal, numbers, business case). Architects will be speaking another dialect (TOGAF, strategy, roadmap). Sales & pre-sales speaking of BAFO and the high level solution. Techies and the engineers diving into the detailed technical...Read More

STEP 5: Customer Facing Marketing Collateral - critical when a government agency is turning IT service aggregator

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 11:01:20 -0800

As many government departments go own the path of digital transformation, they are also transforming themselves into providers of services or service aggregators for smaller, related, downstream agencies in the sector - who often do not have the resources to deal with some of the complexities of running a full fledged IT operation.
Traditional IT suppliers and vendors have long played the role and are generally well set up with customer collateral.
When a large government department turns supplier, the expectation of of the prospect sector agency is the same as what it demands of its suppliers, perhaps peppered with a degree of skepticism.
And so, for the now-turned-supplier government agency, having well thought out, end to end, consistent and professional customer collateral is critical.
The customer collateral needs to fit for purpose through the lifecycle of the customer in their journey from suspect, prospect, signing up, implementation through to BAU.
For many IT projects, this falls under something called "Organisational Change Management" and while recognised as critical, often is not fully integrated and thought out, certainly does not go far enough in its scope.
Done well, this approach takes a holistic view of what is required from a customer perspective.
Delivered well, it makes it easy to sell the concept to the customer, engender confidence, demonstrate maturity and to implement or on-board them.
And of course it provides the end-to-end continuity - in that you promise the customer, you show them how you deliver on the promise, then you deliver and show the customer that you delivered on the promise you promised
A little bit like going on a date I reckon.
In a way, this is having clear line of sight on customer outcomes, and...Read More

STEP 6: People Considerations

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 12:27:39 -0800

Before diving into resourcing and the people aspect of the new Service Management Model - you should already be well down the track to completing the following prerequisite steps:
Setting up and organised yourself
Performing discovery & due diligence
Defined your Service Management Strategy & Design
Done the financial analysis, business case and started on commercials
Understood the role of partners, where, what and how many will play
Started on creating the customer facing customer collateral including service catalogues and associated contracts.
see previous blog posts on each of these steps; links at the bottom
The people requirements and their roles will have started becoming evident during the initial due diligence and review of who does what.
As the new Service Management Model is defined while performing the strategy & design, the people model and requirements should become clearer.
A key input into developing this, is the role of partners, who does what, and the RACI model.
Step by step guide for estimating resourcing requirements:
Input 1: current state, number of customers, the IT services themselves, criticality, hours of service, service metrics, number of resources, people model, partner model
Input 2: future state; same information as above for the "to be"
Action 1: list all the ITIL processes
Action 2: list current relevant metrics associated per ITIL process (xx incidents, yy changes, zz problems, aa reports, bb invoices, cc customer meetings, dd partner management meetings etc
Action 3: estimate metrics for the new model
Action 4: work out the delta and estimate the number of resources required per ITIL process for the new model; remember to factor in after hours support, on call resources, and ensure there are no key man risks. Be mindful of extra...Read More

STEP 7: Processes - Pragmatic Steps to Constructing Them

Tue, 14 Mar 2017 15:09:26 -0700
Once you have:
set up your project
performed discovery & due diligence
designed the Service Management strategy and construct
worked through the financials
agreed on the partner model
created your customer facing collateral
worked out the people resourcing requirments
- you are ready to look at Process Design. These bullets above form the prerequisite steps required before going into detailed process design.
INSIGHT 1
At a minimum, for process design, the high level service model is agreed, the partner model is in place, and the technical design scoped, before processes can be mapped in detail.
Typically, I start with the customer perspective. From "how will the end user or customer get help", then move on to what happens after hours, then what happens if there is an escalation.
The chain of my thoughts when going into process design looks like this:
starting at Service Desk
then moving on to Incident Management, Major Incident Process, After Hours Support, Problem Management
through to the process for moves, adds, changes & deletes
what consitutes a work request, standard work request, non-standard work request and full blown projects and so the process to request and handle these
through to change & release management
and finally I put a focus on alerts and alarms; who is monitoring system performance, who is alerted in case of an outage or other issue and what happens when they are alerted? - this is related to tools, availability and capacity management
Security related...Read More

STEP 8: IT Service Management Tools

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 14:25:23 -0700

A Fool with a Tool is still a Fool
- old IT Service Management saying
For a brand new project, implementing a new service or solution, you should have set yourself up with a program of work or a project, performed discovery & due diligence, constructed Service Management Design & Strategy, created and reviewed financials & commercials, engaged with partners and agreed on the the partner strategy, defined your customers and created customer collateral, have a team of people in place and starting to implement the required processes - phew !
These aspects have been covered in the previous blog posts. This post is to do with IT Service Management Tools - an important component of the total mix.

The overall well-being and management of any new service, solution or construct is underpinned by the tool-sets. It is not just a detailed design for the service management tool-sets that is required, but the full attention of an architect to map out what the service management tool-set principles should be, and following on from there, the overall IT Service Management Tools strategy.
Questions:
Does your organisation have a service management tools architectural road-map ?
Do they form part of the overall Information Systems Strategic Plan
Is there an architect assigned to Service Management tools, strategy & road-map
In a simple world, there would be one single tool, and everyone from customer to internal operational teams through to partners would be using that one single tool.

In the real world, multiple teams...Read More