There has been a great deal of deliberation around the changes the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to doing business across all industries. These changes have highlighted the requirement for creating new business models in order for organisations to successfully navigate the changing landscape. Digital transformation strategies have become the tip of the spear, and need to be introduced at a much faster pace than expected, leaving some organisations struggling to take control and create new opportunities.
Even before the pandemic, managed services offered organisations a faster, more effective route to transformation, but the past two years have brought the value of having the right partner in place to the fore. In the past, a managed services model was adopted because cost reduction was a priority as management teams looked to leverage new technologies and improve efficiency. Cost reduction remains in the foreground as imperative, but organisations are now trying to manage multiple technologies across many different roles, functions and divisions under added market pressure to remain competitive.
As a result, managed services providers (MSPs) have an opportunity to disrupt and innovate as an extension of their customers, improving and influencing their offerings. COVID-19 not only highlighted the latent need of changes to legacy technology solutions within companies, but it also highlighted the “gap” in many service providers’ solutions. In the connected world in which the global community can influence the success or failure of businesses, customers expect multiple digital channels and services on demand, and more customer-centric service than ever before.
The customer-centric approach, even when it’s B2B
Today’s managed service providers must empower the consumer. The end-user, as we traditionally thought of them, has evolved into a consumer of internal services provided by the organisation, significantly driving the customer-centric approach. This approach can be achieved in a variety of ways, such as self-service portals, knowledge articles and robotics to automate repetitive tasks. We are already experiencing the impact of this approach in our everyday lives in the form of virtual agents, self-service portals and chatbots in contact centre environments, and the automation and orchestration of front- and back-office can be expanded even further.
Social platform experiences through the integration of familiar communication application platforms such as WhatsApp extend the engagement and channel for things like reporting outages and problems as well as requesting assistance and updates to reported tickets. A myriad of communication channels and channels of assistance should be available from any type of engagement method, ie, web or mobile to facilitate seamless experiences for the consumer/end-user. This capability should extend further than just facilitating queries for the provision of technology and should result in a single point of contact for all business functions and related worker enablement – everything from payroll and HR queries, to technology requests, as well as administrative and operational requests such as air-con repair or kitchen goods like coffee.
In much the same way that common digital consumer channels are available 24/7, a managed services provider should allow for round-the-clock service and performance availability. With the growth of hybrid and remote workforces, this is no longer an optional necessity, but rather an absolute requirement. Staff working remotely can’t wait for hours or even days for a query to be resolved. Response times must be as fast as possible, and an XLA of less than a five-star rating is unacceptable: companies cannot afford to have anyone sitting idle for that long.
Managed service providers (MSPs) must always enable the consumer/end-user, offering proactive management and fast response times. They must start focusing on the “customer” as a strategy – with the customer being the consumer as end-user – as much as any external demand, customer-centric, consumer-focused differentiator.
Adding value beyond IT
Digital transformation has become such a frequently repeated term that many companies have lost track of what it should be achieving. Digital transformation relies on technology not only to gain efficiencies or operational improvements, but to help reimagine the entire business model. Digital transformation should enable the business to be more resilient and agile, and to find new opportunities.
Managed services must enable a company’s digital transformation. This means that the services being provided must enable flexibility and agility while also ensuring a better user experience for everyone consuming the technology or the services being provided. At any point, digital transformation initiatives – and, by extension, managed services – must add business value, increasing the speed to serve customers.
A managed service provider must therefore help customers enhance their own business in such a way that the company can then add further value to its own customers. A managed service provider should work with customers to deliver business-critical services that add value, not do the same thing over again and expect a different result. Essentially, managed services should deliver suitable fit-for-purpose solutions, intelligent smart services and a digital interface to enable the business to meet – and exceed – end-user expectations.
Adding value beyond IT should be the measure of managed services success. When the technology side has been simplified and automated, a managed service provider has the freedom to start helping customers to innovate, creating solutions that matter to the business.
For example, Nexio has created packaged solutions that provide customers with a foundation from which they can innovate without having to worry about the underlying technology. These “business in the cloud” packages combine a number of tools, removing barriers for companies to start using new technologies. With everything provided as a service and with the organisation only paying for what it uses, companies can afford to add supplementary tools and technologies as and when they are needed to further their goals.
Creating solutions that matter
For years, businesses have been promised that the path to reinvention is through managed services. With the changes brought by COVID-19, this is more of a reality than ever before. Those companies that use their technology investments to become more agile and to allow themselves room for innovation are faring much better than those that have been playing catch-up to enable remote working and digital services for their own customers.
With the right managed services partner, companies can not only gain fast, cost-effective access to the technologies they need to stay competitive and the technical expertise needed to master these, but also a foundation from which they can start planning for growth. Service providers must offer more than merely providing a portal through which they can order technology. They must enter into partnerships with customers, using smart tools to help drive customers to enhance their own businesses.
At Nexio, we believe in working with clients to see how we can add value to their businesses beyond IT, providing digital managed services that create a foundation for resilience and innovation. From helping customers use their data smartly, to helping ensure governance and compliance, to providing a secure backbone for everything the company does, managed services must go beyond the provisioning of technology to help create solutions that matter.
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