Optimizing IT Service Opportunities

Information Technology (IT) has expanded business capabilities at a rapid pace. When the PC was introduced many years ago now, it came with a promise to increase the productivity of most businesses. The next advancement in technology allowed the networking of PCs, which further enhanced organizational productivity. The third milestone was the introduction of the Internet and its promise of global productivity, which has been proven and achieved.

The services component of IT started with simple computer configuration, support and repair, followed by advanced network technologies that required higher-level skills. Today, even more expertise is needed for virtualization, cloud integration and security administration. When the Internet expanded global productivity, IT services moved from back room support to system architecture and business process integration. Today, pervasive computing continues to push IT services further along with the assessment of clients’ business needs and IT system design.

Why is it important to understand the past promises of computer technology to businesses when we are discussing services? While the new era of IT services, including cloud, virtualization and managed services, is about enabling technology solutions, there will still be a call for deployment, uptime, and productivity. Only now, these will be an essential part of helping clients build a competitive edge through technology.

Service delivery disciples need to concentrate on offering proactive services. Smart businesses offer services that focus on their customer’s business needs. Service level management is the primary interface with the customer, ensuring that the agreed services are delivered when and where they are supposed to be. Managed services relies on other areas of the service delivery process to provide the necessary support, ensuring the agreed upon services are provided in a cost-effective, secure and efficient manner. Consulting services can be constructed based on the information obtained by providing managed services to your customers. Potential inefficiencies can be identified and corrected within the managed service environment.

Today, it is not enough to just provide top level managed services for the technology infrastructure.  Once a service provider understands their customers’ business and how technology is currently used in their environment, there are opportunities to consult on additional IT innovations that can improve their business processes. One area where it’s easy to identify deficiencies is in the use of technology in servicing your client’s customers. How often have you found customer service could be enhanced by the use of technology? For every positive story there are likely five bad experiences with businesses that haven’t used technology optimally to improve customer service, actually making it worse. One of my favorite quotes is from business author Tom Peters. He stated that the best companies do three things well:
1.    The obvious
2.    The little things
3.    The accumulation of little things over time.

As a service provider, it is easy to overlook those three principles when deploying and supporting all levels of complex technologies. But what good is all of the deployed technology if your client’s customers or partners are dissatisfied with the customer service level provided? What kind of business partner are you if you provide excellent managed services, superior system uptime and are highly efficient, but have unhappy? The more you know about your clients business the more you can address the three principles above with technology and help them excel at the obvious and little things. Gather knowledge through your managed services tools and the SLAs you are following. Train your technical staff to not only identify issues with technology, but observe business issues that you may be able to solve. Optimize IT service opportunities by gathering business-use scenarios with new or upgraded system deployment. This will give you the knowledge to become a true long-term partner and the fees that they pay you for your managed services become secondary to the real service you provide by helping them improve their business.