For many years, successful Managed Services providers have been those who have strived to deliver business outcomes and not just SLAs and ticket volume bounded contracts. These business outcomes are aligned with the customer’s strategic roadmap and are agreed between the customer and the Managed Services provider. SLAs continue to remain an important aspect of the services to assure quality, availability, and accountability, but they must be aligned with the agreed business outcomes.
The Move From Ticket and SLA-Driven Managed Services to Business Outcome-Driven Managed Services
This shift starts as early as in the sales process to ensure the Managed Service is designed around the business outcome. So, how exactly is this done? The first step is defining the critical business outcomes. As explained earlier, these outcomes are driven top-down and consider the overall growth strategy of the customer’s organization. One example from our world of Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management is illustrated below:
With the outcomes established, it sets the stage for pulling together the right Managed Service design that will deliver instant value. This will include the right end-to-end process, clear roles and responsibilities, the right skilled staff in the right location, and the definition of KPIs and SLAs that are aligned to the business outcomes - all of which are underpinned by a solid governance framework.
We’ll come back to this in a minute, but first, let’s look at how this differs from a ticket and SLA-driven approach. I remember discussing this with an operator some time ago. They had a large System Integrater managing their firewalls. The contract was based on the number of firewall configuration changes that were allowed in a given period. The price of the Managed Service was incredibly cheap, but the operator’s experience didn’t live up to expectations:
So, back to an outcome-driven approach. Imagine if, in the above example, the first step in the managed service design was to align that accuracy was the primary outcome. The service could have looked very different as a result. There could have been more focus on validation, more emphasis on reviews with the operator, potential on-site presence to ensure that teams worked more closely together, and finally SLAs aligned to accuracy.
One final thought on something that often gets overlooked in a Managed Service is Continual Service Improvement (CSI). In an outcome-driven Managed Service, the provider should always be working with the customer to deliver a better business outcome. I remember working with one operator where one of the most time-consuming tasks was comparing current enterprise invoices against the previous month’s invoices as part of invoice validation. By writing a simple report that pulled out key information on the previous invoice, that task was reduced by close to 50%. This example demonstrates the power of looking at CSI through the lens of business outcomes and demonstrating true partnership and business value to the operator.
If it’s not already the case, operators should be looking at managed services as a move beyond just cost-cutting and traditional outsourcing. A successful managed services program can drive strategic outcomes, enhance the customer experience, and drive business growth.
Mobileum’s managed service offering spans our revenue assurance, fraud management, network security, testing and service assurance, roaming management, and network operations solutions. Click here for more information about to learn more Mobileum’s managed service offering and how our team of experts can help streamline your telecom operations, mitigate risks, accelerate transformation and boost your business performance.