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That’s the chasm between expectations from investing in a new technology and the real value when after it has been implemented. The big gap between the initial business case and the ever-shifting business requirements. The gap between skills required to run the complex software solutions while operating the core business. And the quest for understanding this gap always comes back to the question ‘why the initial investment was ever made’? Was it to get the hands dirty on the new software or to drive outcomes that help the core business to thrive?

What we see right across the Enterprise, irrespective of the sector, is that IT platforms and service delivery models are getting more and more complex… More integrations… More hybrid solutions… More partners… More data…. More analytics… More Automation… More cyber events… More regulatory changes and pressure… And while all this is going on, you cannot lose focus of your customers and customers’ customers… Reduce customer churn… Gain more market share… Reduce operational costs… and so on.

The big trend in the Managed Service Provider (MSP) space over the past decade has been ‘outcomes-based services’.  Deliver a service that operates part of IT’s complex portfolio towards an outcome, which is tightly aligned with the business needs. But that is far easier said than done. Delivering outcomes requires a few key ingredients that most organisations, Enterprises and MSPs typically lack:

1. Indepth understanding of the technology – But that’s a given, right?
2. Indepth appreciation of how to eradicate technology friction points and reduce noise – more difficult. This requires many years of operating complex solutions in large heterogeneous environments.
3. Indepth understanding of the business initiatives in play – OK – now this is getting harder!
4. Ability to link the underlying technology with the key business initiatives and deriving specific KPIs that support these initiatives – Tough.
5. And finally, operating the underlying technology based on these KPIs to deliver specific business value.

And the complex nature of these key ingredients delivering business outcomes means there aren’t a lot of MSPs that truly deliver value beyond running a workflow or a technology platform, with SLAs as the sole service outcome.

Bridging the chasm

Fusion, I believe, is on a different path. We are the biggest players in the IT Service Management and Operations. We have built the largest service management platforms in Europe and US. We have built CMDBs with 50+ data integrations. We have built data centre server lifecycle management for two of the top 3 of the world’s largest banks handling 100,000+ servers on a global basis. We have helped global FMCG businesses split, then merge, then split and finally merge again! We have built the world’s largest service catalogue in the defence sector support hundreds of thousands of end users, spanning across 5 of the largest outsourcers in the world. We operate the desktop SecOps for a global manufacturer operating across 37 countries with 35,000 desktops.

Consequently, building and operating super complex systems is in our blood. That’s what we do. And we do it well, because we have managed to couple operational maturity and excellence with business consulting and unique Intellectual Property (IP), to build services powered by BMC Software, Salesforce and many other software and service providers, delivering specific business outcomes.

The following are some of the key ingredients for delivering outcomes based services:

• Augmentation – Augment what is in place today and definitely don’t re-invent the wheel or displacing what is already working and in situ.
• Data Quality Assurance – A unique set of capabilities to deliver trusted, timely data across many sources driven by specific outcomes.
• Support for Secure Environments – Capabilities to support special requirements for the security and defence sector.
• Improve Quality of Service – Through our industrial-strength change management process, we deliver exceptionally high levels of QoS.
• Delivery to Blended Resources – The right resource at the right time at the right price point, utilising our blended resourcing model covering onsite, on-shore, near-shore and off-shore.
• Scaling the service – A unique flexible commercial model that enables clients to expand or shrink the service depending on seasonal demands or business operational requirements.
• Roadmap development – Operating the service based on a roadmap that is tightly integrated across both the technology roadmap and the key business initiatives.
• Continuous service improvement – All about removing frictions and reducing the noise generated by the in-situ system.
• Outcome bases services – Unique set of outcomes based services, spanning across Capacity Optimisation, Discovery, Cyber-security compliance and customer experience.

It’s all about Customers’ Customers

Our aim is to help organisation become more effective supporting their customers and their customers’ customers. Over the next few weeks I will expand on the key ingredients for delivering world-class outcomes-based managed services and how we achieve this high aim.

Keyvan Shirnia
Head of Managed Services

Follow me on twitter at @kshirnia