The current structure of IT support does not really keep up with the development of IT itself. And yet as long as there is technology, there is a need to resolve issues with it. So, what's the solution and how do managed services factor in?
We all know the way IT support works (or doesn't work) nowadays in large organisations. Most likely we will have a team of offshore outsourced 1st line generalists, 2nd level support line organised in specific teams (like network, applications, etc.), and 3rd line support from product vendors.
What are the frequent problems with this kind of setup?
The issues with this structure affect it at every level.
- 1st line is often not learning or improving. Most of the time they act as queue/incident/ticket routers. Usually, they do not improve customer satisfaction, as they get a lot of tickets (per head) and fail to really support the end-user by resolving 80% of their issues 'on the spot'.
- 2nd line support teams fail to communicate between each other. Tickets tend to spend a lot of time being passed around between teams, as issues are often 'cross-team' resolved and ownership is thus not defined.
- 3rd line support is extremely costly. Large software vendors like SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM charge a lot of money for a single hour of their engineer's time. Additionally, there are no solution guarantees in their agreements.
- Modern technologies based on the cloud make it even harder. 1st and 2nd level support's knowledge is not keeping up with the pace of change in technology. We had a customer asking our 2nd level support for IP addresses of servers or a DR test, when the solution we delivered was based on cloud PaaS :)
How to approach the challenges in IT support?
We work with many organisations that employ from 50 to hundreds of thousands of people. We support them on 2nd and 3rd lines in several key IT areas, like identity and access management, security, intranets, application development or data analytics.We also have a 3-level support structure, and this is how we manage internal support.
Keep your 1st line close to the business
This means that for smaller organisations (less than 1000 employees) we would recommend keeping it in-house. The 1st line should understand the business very well and know, in general, what the current IT systems in the organisation allow.This way the 1st line becomes an IT advisor to the business user. Without this transformation, this role is likely to be fully automated by bots in the near future.
2nd line support should have 2 goals
These are to:
- automate everything that is possible for the 1st line. They should not build lengthy charts and manuals, but easy to use scripts and tools that the 1st line can run
- be on top of the newest technologies in their area to cut down on operational costs.
Your 2nd level support needs to embrace the new technologies and focus on automation. Otherwise, your IT support costs will hinder your competitive edge.
You should keep 3rd line support ONLY as a backup
It's a kind of insurance policy for your business. It's recommended for critical, complex systems that rely on specific vendor products (e.g. ERP, financial systems). Ensure that contracts with software vendors grant you quick access to the product groups developing these products.The reason is that if you get your 2nd line right, the moments to engage 3rd line will be rare and will require inside knowledge of specific products/online service with access to code/internal vendor knowledge base.However, the 3rd level support line must also understand the business needs and the industry well. Why? Because finding a root cause is often about asking the right questions.Work with a service provider that understands your industry and can propose solutions that fit based on their experience in that industry. You should center your 3rd line around top technology experts that also understand your business.
How do we do it?
The 3 steps above describe how we've built our internal support. On the 1st line support, on rotating shifts we have people who know all our internal systems. They have basic access to do some simple troubleshooting. We track all our tickets and allow each user to reply via email or portal (Freshdesk).We cannot, of course, afford for them to do only internal support, so they also do the support for all customers. But this is beneficial in both ways. Internally, we use almost the entire Microsoft online offering (Dynamics 365, Office 365, Azure, EMS...). Our 1st line is therefore often equipped with the latest knowledge on these products and thus acts as the customer's 2nd line support.Our internal 2nd line support is with our software developer leads. We have a lead in each of our business units, who has a deep and up-to-date knowledge of the technology, as well as of how we use it internally.For 3rd line support we use direct vendor support. As most of our systems are SaaS or PaaS based, we get it within the subscription price. As an additional benefit, we have direct contacts to some of the product groups. We also see them every year at MVP summits to pass on our feedback and get inside knowledge.
What is ""SoftwareOne Care"" and how can you benefit from it?
We understand that transforming a large organisation's support model is challenging. We have worked and are still working with a few organisations on such transformations. If you have a solution that is running on code developed by us during a project, you probably already have or have been offered a 3rd line support contract.If not, and you run some critical workloads on the Microsoft Cloud platform (Office 365, Dynamics 365, Azure, EMS), consider getting in touch with us to learn about how you can benefit from our ""SoftwareOne Care"" package. We have 3 models of engagement, and I would suggest you engage with them in the following order:
Free trial
Simply send us your NDA agreement (or we can use ours) to sign, and share a problem/case/incident on which you've been working hard to resolve but been unsuccessful with your current support setup. We will analyse it and if feasible, with a time-cap of 8 working hours' effort at no charge we will do our best to resolve your issue.Alternatively, we will propose an approach to dealing with it (workaround, change, next steps plan). Be ready to jump on a screen-sharing session with one of our engineers.If the proposed solution or action plan resolves your issue or gets you going further, we will invite you to continue working with us. However, there is no commitment whatsoever.
T&M with SLA
You can treat this contract as an insurance policy, giving you access to top consultants and software engineers in Microsoft technology in your 3rd line support.We also have experience in several industries: retail, transport and logistics, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, energy, real estate, professional services and many others across the globe.This contract simply has a flat, monthly or quarterly retainer fee, that includes a number of pre-paid support hours. If the number of hours exceeds the already acquired pool, we apply a specific rate. Pricing of this contract depends on a few factors:
- availability hours – we offer both business hours and 24/7
- guaranteed response time – from 15 mins to 8 hours
- the number of hours in the pool – the more hours are pre-purchased, the lower the price per hour.
This contract is ideal for 3rd level support of key Microsoft-based systems/platforms regardless of whether they run on SoftwareOne code or not. Just get in touch to get your quote.
Managed service
If you have worked with us for some time, we are both ready to enter a closer business partnership. A managed service contract provides financially-backed advanced SLAs on multiple ITIL processes. This includes incident, problem, availability, release, change management and service request fulfillment.The SLAs can cover things like response time, resolution time, service availability, change request realisation time, etc. This support model is most suitable for 2nd line support.Moreover, the last two models allow you as a customer to acquire Microsoft Online services directly from us. We are a Tier-1 Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, thus providing you with 1 invoice for the entire system (subscription + support) from 1 vendor.If you find any of these (or other) challenges with IT support in your current organisation, do not hesitate to contact us.
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