Sun:IT uses a practical Service Life Cycle model to understand where you are today, where the gaps are, and what to do next. It covers the full journey from "why" you exist through to mergers, acquisitions or exit.

0. The Why - Business Philosophy, strategy & drivers

Business case, business plan, overall strategy & model

1. Initiation - if you are starting off

Location, hiring, infrastructure, core systems, processes

2. Technology - the tools part of people, processes, tools & partners
Tools, support platform, call logging, telephony, call routing, multi-channel support

3. People - your own people; as well as suppliers and vendors
Build effective teams and conduct staff appraisals regularly.

• Set clear goals for each team member.
• Manage compensation, incentives, and rewards to motivate staff.
• Plan rosters, support career growth, and focus on retention.
• Perform succession planning and knowledge management practices.
• Provide training and development opportunities.
• Enhance team dynamics and boost staff morale.
• Energize and transform teams to maximize performance.
• Improve internal communications across departments

4. Customer - the people you are serving
Segmentation, relationship, key accounts, customer communications, new customer on-boarding, customer satisfaction bench-marking, measurement, improvement, proactive service, escalations, intensive care, reference customers, marketing communications, customer loyalty, user groups

5. Finance - dollars and sense
Billing, renewals, retention, budgeting, forecasting, new business dev, new offerings, support & service programs, service & support models, contracts, grand-fathering & retiring old versions and superseded contracts, (multi)-vendor & alliance management

6. Operations - processes
Reporting, KPIs, scorecards, capacity planning, escalations, critical situations, call flow models, service delivery, continual improvement, alliances, external providers, offshore providers, 3rd level support, organisational readiness for new products, versions & releases, 24 hr support

7. Excellence - taking your operations to the next level
Customer satisfaction measurement, bench-marking & improvement, matrixed organisations, local vs global, ITIL, Lean, ISO 20000, frameworks, standards

8. Mergers, Acquisition, Exit - completing the life cycle
Integration of operations on account of mergers & acquisitions, divestitures & spin-offs, exits