Managed Services: What Customers Really Want

With the evolution of cognitive intelligence and the rapid scaling of new digital capabilities, global companies are increasingly becoming dependent on a multitude of disjointed systems stack and legacy network infrastructure. As technological advancements become more diverse and distributed, complex customer organizations are looking for experienced consultants to help simplify their quote-to-cash experience.

Enterprises are looking for industry-leading partners, who specialize in a variety of technical disciplines, like managing complex infrastructure, providing advanced analytics, performing intelligent automation etc., to help their global teams pivot from multi-tiered legacy systems and network stack to cloud-based, software-as-a-service solution.

What Enterprises Want: Enterprises want their managed-services partners to develop technology centric capabilities that are reusable and easily customizable to meet their unique needs, with improved back-office productivity and at a lower cost structure. Enterprises demand transparency throughout the integration process and expect direct visibility across their contact center, CRM, delivery, support, network, supply-chain, and billing suite of tooling.?Enterprises want their consulting partners to enable them to pivot to a new era of digital experience by offering an array of software services, while maintaining their voice, data, and over-the-top network infrastructure.

What Service Providers Offer: Managed-services consulting partners can help with transforming quote-to-cash experience for the customers. They can successfully navigate their way through the intricacy of business process re-engineering (BPR) efforts and the complicated software development life cycle (SDLC). They can assist with establishing robust governance, perform business continuity planning, support contact center operations, and offer white-glove experience at an optimized cost model. The industry-leading managed-services consulting firms can offer the futuristic thought-leadership that is critical to drive a successful transformation campaign across end-to-end customer experience, all from under a single partner umbrella.

Managed Services Capability Catalog: While emerging technologies continue to overhaul the managed-services industry, focusing on improving just the CIO experience is no longer adequate to gain customers’ confidence. Enterprise customers are now demanding that their industry partners address all sorts of pressure points across their quote-to-cash experience. Enterprise customers expect that the consulting firms will truly understand their strategic vision, empathize with the market dynamics they are facing, and then offer integrated and customized business solutions at competitive price points.

To satisfy their customers’ needs, the managed-services consulting firms ought to invest in scaling their core capabilities across a diverse set of domain practices. Highlighted below is a set of twelve managed-services capabilities – mastering these will enable the consulting firms to assist their enterprise customers more effectively.

1. Strategic Business Consulting: Provide expert guidance to improve experience across learn, buy, get, use, support and pay functions. Assist customers to drive higher ROI on capital investments. Unleash 360 degrees of customer insights by producing a robust reference architecture, with reusable components, which caters to unique customer scenarios.
2. Agile Program Office: Design an effective strategic program office and governance model that optimizes the best practices to eliminate frictions among internal organizations. Understand the current mode of operations, and then develop a reference blueprint for the desired FMO experience.
3. Systems Integration as a Service (SIaaS): Specialize in streamlining customers’ multi-tiered technology stack by reducing complexity, increasing throughput, and by providing a superior user experience across its digital transformation journey. Synergize the front-office and back-office technology platforms to improve operational efficiency and agility.
4. Cloud Computing: Provide cloud-based technology solutions to create a secured and agile infrastructure with improved operability, sustainability, accessibility, and self-service capability, all at a much lower cost structure. Additionally, offer customers seamless access to their service operation and performance insights.
5. Cybersecurity & Privacy: Provide a suite of managed security services to prevent ransomware attacks and security breaches, drive recovery assistance, and provide end-point security. Unlock future opportunities by facilitating cybersecurity training, advanced consulting, and assisting customers to prepare for the unexpected.
6. Application Managed Services: Manage customers’ mission critical business and network applications, including life-cycle maintenance, security compliance audits, vulnerability detection, change management, data-center hosting, dB management, and IT help-desk oversight.
7. Digital Experience Transformation: Provide an intricate collection of digitally enabled performance solutions, interconnecting a suite of cross domain capabilities across quote-to-cash flow. Utilize industry leading SaaS platforms to address the needs of the customer, seller, and operator personas.
8. NetOps as a Service: Provide an integrated network management experience, across LAN, Edge WAN, SDWAN, and security services. Provide a suite of support functions, like monitoring network performance, resolving service tickets, keeping a close watch on security vulnerabilities, performing life-cycle changes, and providing the necessary professional services expertise.
9. Operations Excellence Transformation: Drive customer services and operations transformation through process re-engineering techniques and by infusing digital assets across all touchpoints. Assist COOs to reimagine the art of possible with revamped systems and processes to attain desired cost point. Infuse excellence across operations through robotics process automation, advanced performance analytics, machine learning, and other innovative technologies.
10. Contact Center Transformation: Provide on-premises or cloud-based first-touch solutions and enable on-demand scalability with adjusted operational needs. Manage omni-channel engagements across IVR, email, chatbots and B2B bonding. Transform legacy systems with a modern cloud-based contact center solution. Empower the workforce with thoughtful decision-making capability by introducing artificial intelligence and machine learning modules.
11. Generative AI and Advanced Analytics: Tap into the power of generative AI to drive initiatives focusing on optimizing cost and improving digital experience across quote-to-cash lifecycle of customer touchpoints, across sales lead generation and improved contact center efficiency, to optimizing network planning and identifying new monetization opportunities.
12. Workforce Transformation: Provide a robust technology centric performance management and coaching platform to transform business culture and improve staff productivity. Scale cloud-based workforce management platforms to simplify internal engagements. Utilize advanced modeling to forecast force-size, track schedule adherence, and provide KPI metrics and dashboards with proactive alerts.

In summary, as global enterprise customers maneuver their way through the post-pandemic challenges, they are actively searching for the managed-services partners to help them pivot to an operating model that is highly productive, customer centric, and cost effective. Enterprises must select the “right” managed-services firms to partner with – firms that not only offer advanced process re-engineering techniques and cutting-edge technology automation, but also can drive thoughtful and sustaining transformation for their customers.?