Large organisations have become increasingly reliant on the application infrastructures that support their business operations. In many cases their IT applications have become business critical – they cannot afford even a moment of downtime. Retailing, trading and internet banking are some obvious examples where any infrastructure failure to applications or hardware spells disaster. Lost revenues, lost profits, stunted growth. For these organisations the availability and continuity of their mission critical applications have become their strategic resource and competitive advantage.
And that’s our focus – maintaining 100% functional availability of these applications through a deep-rooted risk management and right first time culture, while keeping pace with business demands for innovation and regulatory compliance – all critical to business success. The Chief Information Officer’s (CIO) daily challenge is managing:
- Seamless and continuous implementation of new functionality
- Delivering additional capacity
- Executing improved technologies
All without any business interruption. Whilst many questioned Schuberg Philis’ decision to focus exclusively on mission critical applications in 1999, the results speak for themselves. We have developed a unique service model welcomed by customers and partners alike and with 100% guaranteed applications availability to help the CIO manage change. The service model includes:
- 100% SLA on functional uptime
- Cost predictability, flexibility and control because fixed priced
- A dedicated team with decision making capability from day one
- Co-creation: the process where customers and all partners collaborate in a totally transparent and open way
- End-to-end responsibility for service integration and mission critical applications
- Infrastructure and application(s) monitoring
- Comprehensive risk management processes
- Regulatory compliance
- Audit trails – approval and tracking & tracing of changes by means of central service portal and versioning system
- A solution-driven attitude to help reinvent customers’ success and deliver more value
- Dedicated focus on customer requirements and employee development.
The model provides customers with assurance and peace of mind, safe in the knowledge that their applications will be available at all times.
Anybody who has been involved in IT outsourcing will be familiar with the phenomenon of first-line, second-line and third-line support. Whenever there’s a problem, you first work your way through two layers of agents who have insufficient skills and insufficient expertise. Only once the problem has been escalated will the senior engineers be called in.
The problems with this approach are obvious, so Schuberg Philis turned the model on its head, bringing senior engineers with decision making capability right into the front line and forming a collaborative and consistent team with the customer and its partners from day one. See the Schuberg Philis way in pictures…
Schuberg Philis transforms mission critical outsourcing from service support to service delivery with an emphasis on change and risk management.
Whilst for more generic applications the fist line, second line, third line support structure maybe sufficient, it simply doesn’t work for business critical applications where even a minute of downtime could mean significant revenue loss. For organisations running mission critical applications any SLA response time is going to be too long.
In 2003, Schuberg Philis introduced a unique service model for outsourcing mission critical applications. One which introduced guarantees, brought the senior engineers to the front line of support – along with a distinct and exceptional promise: 100% functional availability for mission critical applications with end-to-end responsibility. We launched as a solution-driven company – based on the Sharma, Lucier and Molloy (Booz Allen Hamilton) definition where a real solution is a fundamentally different approach that creates additional value for customers and suppliers by meeting five criteria:
- It is co-created by customer and supplier
- It integrates products with services to meet essential customer needs
- Suppliers accept some of the risk, often through performance-based and/or risk-based contracts
- Relationships between suppliers and customers are unusually intimate, far beyond a traditional buy–sell relationship
- Solutions, therefore, are tailored to each customer.
We believe that this selective outsourcing, solution-driven approach is the future. Teams of specialists come together, bringing the requisite skills, experience and knowledge to bear on the challenges presented in delivering mission critical applications services. Market trends support this conviction.
The biggest thing in the outsourcing landscape over the coming years is going to be customers’ expectations – looking for changed attitudes from the service providers they work with in the outsourcing space.
It is not only going to be a matter of cost reduction and the service provider just being the recipient of a customers’ to-do list. One size no longer fits all. Customers expect service providers to build cooperative and collaborative teams of specialists and to jointly create as much cost efficiency and value as possible across the whole service chain.
Specialist outsourcing providers are able to meet customer demand for real solutions and innovation in close cooperation with the customers themselves; along with other partners in the service chain being able to support the customer in achieving high performance. According to Gartner, CIOs have become service brokers, rather than direct suppliers to their organisations. Market trends identified by Schuberg Philis and leading industry analysts include:
- Outsourcing will continue to trend toward shorter-term deals with more specific requirements.
- Buyers want to purchase more point-specific solutions, instead of just getting rid of the headache of infrastructure; now they want to get something out of it.
- Outsourcing agencies will focus on their particular areas of expertise and look to partners for help.
- Even the largest service providers are starting to pick their poison, recognizing they can’t be excellent in every segment of every vertical.
- Some of the larger outsourcers will begin to farm out parts of the project, much as a general contractor hires subcontractors.
- Organizations have now come to view outsourcing as a different operating model that uses multiple sources — some internal, some external, some near shore and some offshore.
Multi-sourcing is all about co-creation and partnership within a clear governance and risk management structure. It’s about total collaboration. Success is not in the scale but in the relationships, the way we offer our services, our organisational processes and in our specialist expertise and craftsmanship.
