Implementation Strategies!
As far as technology is concerned, the technologies, operational capabilities, and performance measurement systems needed to implement customer-centric IT management are, at best, still in their infancy. Therefore, implementing a consistently customer-oriented approach within an organization generally continues to involve risks.
How can we address these challenges? What strategies for implementing customer-centric service management are effective?
1. Using Agile Methods to Transform an Organization into an Integrator
In a connected world, multi-sourcing is a reality today. Today, we talk about “rightsourcing.” The question remains: what should be procured, and how? In SIAM, the focus is on informed decision-making. The key consideration here is which competencies to retain and which to source externally. It is less about outsourcing specific technologies or parts of the organization. This allows for flexibility in the phased implementation of transformations. In our experience, “big bang” approaches are no longer feasible today due to the increasing interdependencies resulting from the interconnectedness of organizations, services, and processes—without incurring a high level of risk with an uncertain outcome.
2. Development of a robust approach to evaluating and improving consumer relationships
The traditional approach in service management—which involves separating customers and users of IT services and viewing them in isolation—should be reevaluated in light of the rapidly changing environment in many organizations, because, ultimately, users have a strong influence on opinions and subjective perceptions of service quality.
In most cases, a customer is also a user, and due to interactions (e.g., via social media), customers can less and less afford to ignore the opinions of the majority of users when making decisions. That is why we now refer to “service consumers.” And it is precisely this consumer—who is both a customer and a user—who, as a digital native, expects modern support from IT services. An important prerequisite for this is that the impact of IT services on the behavior of service consumers and their business activities becomes transparent. For example, information should be available on how often specific services are used, which services depend on the functioning of other services and in what ways, how critical a service outage is to the organization’s business operations, and how availability affects the achievement of business goals.
Operational metrics, such as the number of abandoned tickets or the first-time success rate for digital self-service, can be combined with qualitative data—such as ratings and comments from customer feedback—to paint a clearer picture. This only scratches the surface, but it illustrates the kind of robust analytics and reporting that IT managers should have at their disposal to improve customer retention.
3. Addressing Complexity Through Design Thinking
Design thinking is about understanding the world through the eyes of customers and learning through direct observation. Managers, front-line employees, and IT leaders should all participate in the design process. Design thinking, combined with ongoing customer feedback, helps create services that are better tailored to the needs of business units. Often, services that initially function correctly become out of sync with today’s environment over time due to migrations and new requirements, and the associated risks are tacitly accepted for cost reasons.
Service marketing, too, can be better tailored and more targeted through design thinking. The goal is not to persuade consumers to purchase existing services, but to effectively improve their daily work lives through their experience with those services and to embed a culture of continuous improvement in the operational areas of an IT department. This is how you earn trust and loyalty in the long term! The best IT services focus on improving the customer experience, which often also reduces delivery costs. Large corporations often face complex challenges related to legacy IT systems and data that digital-native companies do not encounter. But large corporations also have a significant advantage: they typically have decades’ worth of accumulated customer data and possess the resources to leverage it.
4. Aligning the multi-sourcing business model with customer needs
Comprehensive customer insights and “design thinking” will not be able to realize their full potential unless IT organizations adopt new operating models that drive decision-making all the way down to front-line employees, reduce cross-functional friction, and enable the use of data and methods by shifting the organizational culture toward a customer-centric focus.
SIAM stands for Service Integration and Management and has been an effective standard for IT organizations focused on multi-provider management since 2010. SIAM not only enables IT organizations to keep pace with digitalization in the medium term, but also provides them with an adaptable framework for transforming and delivering IT services to their customers in order to gain strategic competitive advantages. You can find out more about what this looks like in practice by consulting the SIAM Foundation Body of Knowledge or by visiting Blueponte to learn how it applies to your organization.
Conclusion
The question today is not where you can squeeze a few more euros out of IT or whether it might be better to invest in data and technology after all, but how you can best leverage the investments that are necessary anyway to remain competitive. It’s easy to blame the pressure from the business environment for the short-term nature of decisions (or lack thereof) in IT.
Do IT managers and leaders also play a part when the focus is on cost reduction rather than customer orientation, or when there is insufficient investment in the necessary skills for the service desk, customer relationship management with business units, or in environmental analysis and the marketing of results and services? In this context, actively optimizing the IT operating model plays a crucial role. Even if it looks tempting on a spreadsheet at first, it would be irresponsible in the long run to outsource service and product management capabilities to companies whose business model is primarily geared toward optimizing operating profit.
At Blueponte, we believe there are alternatives. Specifically, by using rightsourcing in multi-provider management to bring the benefits of outsourcing back into the focus of IT strategies. This can yield strategic competitive advantages. Methodological and interpersonal skills are crucial to success in implementation. We therefore recommend that executive boards not only demand solid investment analyses but also request corresponding forecasts and, later, evidence of how IT can increase corporate value. This can be achieved through modern operational concepts such as SIAM.
All stakeholders will benefit: Users of IT products and services will find that their daily lives become more efficient and transparent. Employees will benefit from the resulting boost in motivation. IT management and those responsible for IT finances will see a “return on investment.” And ultimately, service providers can look forward to working with a client organization that is not solely focused on cutting costs.
For more information, please feel free to contact us!