IT service models evolve to meet business needs

The most significant costs to business when it comes to IT are downtime and support services. This has made outsourcing increasingly popular. According to Rob Kimmings, managing executive of Business Connexion`s Service Management Centre, South African companies appear to be bucking the IT trend of selective sourcing in favour of a single service aggregator model in the outsourcing environment.

Companies and even government departments have opted to leverage the business benefit of IT by creating a single view to their IT suppliers.

Business Connexion positioned its single service aggregator (SSA) model a little over four years ago to provide an alternative to the direct supplier engagement model practiced predominately in the market.

Kimmings says: "Delivery has become standardised. But advances in the management of delivery, to drive costs down and improve the business benefits of IT, create the opportunity."

Research into the tools and best practices for service delivery around the globe reveal that service delivery is most effective through a service management centre (SMC). The SMC acts as the lynchpin around which the appropriate levels of service demanded by businesses can be delivered and managed at affordable rates.

"Such facilities use the latest technological tools which enable service support staff to resolve issues rapidly, while also proactively identifying issues and, in many instances, resolving them automatically before they have an impact on the client`s business," he says.

As a single service aggregator, Business Connexion`s SMC allows the service organisation to interact with its clients through a number of mechanisms. Events can be entered into the system manually or automatically via e-mail, enterprise system management (ESM) generated events, Internet or telephone.

Explains Kimmings: "The SMC introduces a high level of intelligence to the management of calls - instead of simple queuing, incoming incidents are prioritised, as a problematic desktop cannot be afforded the same priority as a downed financial system. If the intervention of service support staff is necessary, they are notified via a number of means, including SMS and e-mail, to resolve the event," he says.

The SMC handles over 100 000 incidents and events every month. For clients who have the remote management tools installed, 68% - 70% of these incidents are resolved at first line support within 15 minutes. By utilising enterprise management tools, more than 40% of the events are automatically generated into the system and managed by automatic processes. This translates into a huge savings on labour costs, as staff are not based on site and do not need to be despatched to site.

Since there is an enormous range of different technologies and applications at clients` sites, and not every support staff person can solve every issue, he adds that incidents must be automatically routed to the individual who has the appropriate expertise, resulting in a faster time-to-resolution.

The information gathered from the activities of a highly integrated SMC is also leveraged to the best benefit of the clients it supports. Says Kimmings: "Reporting forms an important component of efficient service delivery. Using the data gathered, the effectiveness of service delivery can be monitored. Root cause analysis and event correlation for proactive maintenance is conducted. This valuable knowledge base is researched and leveraged to better gear services to address demand across the client base.

"Notably, there is a high level of standardisation in service delivery through the SMC. That creates the ability to deliver better service at a lower price, which is the point of economies of scale," he says. "Furthermore, this approach allows for the rapid roll-out of support services to clients anywhere in the world."

Business Connexion has in excess of 30% of the South African outsourcing market and believes this move towards managing services via a single service aggregator will gain momentum over the next 18 months and will challenge the way IT services are provided in the future.