Applying the ‘Wisdom of the Crowd’ to Managed Services – Part 2 of 2

Last week, we examined the benefits of utilizing managed IT services with a “wisdom of the crowd” analysis. In doing this, we developed a list of the top five ways that managed services can be most beneficial to your organization. This week, we will be expanding on this idea by looking at the opposite side of managed services.  Using a similar lens and analysis, we will consider some challenges you may encounter in employing a managed services team, and will offer helpful ways to overcome those challenges.  We will provide ways that both clients and managed services departments can be more aware of the broader issues facing their collaborations, along with how both parties can be best prepared to avoid or mitigate the most common issues.

Because there are far less companies or publications willing to examine this issue head on, we are using a wider array of search terms, and looking into the top 20 results for each, instead of the top 10, along with discounting some of the results with a scope beyond our study. Additionally, we will be categorizing the results in a similar fashion as last week, grouping them into a standardized data set based on shared themes, then examining the distribution to see which results are the most commonly cited difficulties.  Once we have identified these results, we can begin to address how to circumvent these issues to improve the managed services partnership for both the client and the provider.

In our analysis, 20 different websites were used, and we ended up with a total of 102 data points regarding issues related to managed services. We standardized the information and were able to create 14 different categories. Once we assigned a value to each data point based on it’s ranking of importance on each website, a very clear pattern emerged. There was a significantly greater level of variability overall, compared to last week, but 5 results stood out very clearly from the others with an average score of almost double the remaining data points.  Following are the top issues our analysis pointed to as the most frequent and critical concerns.

1. Communication

This was a concern of many, appearing repeatedly in the lists we uncovered.  There was a lot of variability in how it was discussed; having very clear and standardized Service Level Agreements, the importance of regularly meeting face-to-face, how reoccurring issues are discussed, having clearly established channels of communication and modes for regular reporting. This suggests that communication is a more deeply entrenched issue than any single quick fix, but instead means that a team must be willing to learn how to be responsive to each client’s unique and individual needs in what information they want and how they want it. Additionally, it means that clients must be able to concretely express and explain their needs upfront, while still leaving room for both to be flexible and adapt to technological, infrastructure, and organizational changes as they occur.

2. Support
Support is the centralized purpose of a managed services partner.  Your managed services team should support your organization and business, including being readily available, responsive, and timely in rectifying problems as they arise. A good managed services team should be able to demonstrate how they have proven themselves in a variety of situations and handled the issues that were faced, in addition to providing metrics on their response times and solutions. A good client needs to be clear about what they believe the priority of incidents are for them and how much information they want regarding each issue and resolution.

It is important for your managed service team to prevent as many issues as possible before they arise.  A quality managed services team will anticipate problems and thwart them, as well as establish contingency plans. Being there for issues that arise is the bare minimum for any managed service team. A high-quality collaboration is one where both the client and the team are able to think through how future needs and changes will influence the software and hardware infrastructure, and consider and prepare for the ways this may fail, along with developing backup and contingency plans for when those problems occur. This often means thinking beyond and outside of the limits of the service agreement.  This is the area where organizations can see the greatest value in partnering with a managed service team. The unexpected will arise, but the teams that have prepared for it are the ones with the operational and functional edge to succeed as others flail to stay afloat.

Security was mentioned almost as much as planning and preparedness in our results.  With the rise of cloud computing, along with internal and external security threats, data protection is becoming more and more critical and a prime focus of organizations. This means that as experts, a managed services team will be one that not only understands the strengths and weaknesses of the client environment, but actively works to improve and patch weaknesses and limitations before they become issues. It also means knowing the current regulatory environment, understanding how new technologies and compliance rules will interact and developing a plan that anticipates these changes, minimizing client risks.

5. Teamwork

Managed services departments should be aware that they are not working in isolation. More and more, a managed services team is working with multiple departments and with different organizational hierarchies, along with a variety of different vendors and third-party interests. Often, managed services is the hub that holds these disparate parties together.  The departments form one unit that takes responsibility and focuses on how to work together to solve a problem. Centralization is one of the aspects that makes a managed services team efficient, and there must be clear communication and a defined format for reporting and addressing issues.  This includes a collaborative strategy developed between the client and the managed services team with well-defined roles, reporting requirements, clear and consistent expectations, responsibilities, and response times for both sides.

An interesting and surprising theme in this analysis is that trust was the lowest-rated issue, mentioned in very few results.  This shows that many managed services teams are doing the right thing.  A trustworthy managed IT services team is one that:

That is what makes a managed service partnership such a popular decision for business and organizations. When you chose the right partner, are aware of all the benefits and potential complications, then you do not need to worry about trust. It is established and maintained by the decisions made together each and every day. What you and your organization can and will gain from this type of partnership goes far beyond anything that can be encapsulated in any top five benefits list.