Gone are the days of bi-annual strategy meetings. Today’s business landscape requires that strategic decisions be made within days–not months. And this is only possible when your technology initiatives and business strategies are aligned.
This is why organizations are moving beyond traditional managed service providers (MSPs). They are looking for more modern services that align their technology with their strategic vision and enable teams to adapt quickly while still delivering value at scale.
Modern Service Management is a new approach to managing IT infrastructure. It empowers organizations to fill in expertise gaps and evolve their technology with the constant shift of customer expectations and business priorities.
However, not all Modern Service Management offerings are created equally. Some providers are product-driven companies that are new to the IT services space, while others only exist to make your tech stack work properly. But the modern enterprise organization needs so much more than just infrastructure monitoring and one-dimensional platform expertise.
In this article, we explore what to look for in a Modern Service Management partner and how to choose the right partner for your company.
1. Diverse Technical Know-How vs. Atlassian Advisory Services
Achieving enterprise alignment takes more than just one tool stack. That’s why it’s rare to find an organization committed to one platform. In fact, the average organization uses 976 different applications, all of which play a unique role in delivering the seamless experiences that customers and users expect from companies.
The key to executing strategic initiatives across multiple platforms is building a connected and integrated ecosystem. This is why your Modern Service Management partner needs to support a diverse tool stack. Having expertise with only one platform will only get you so far if you are trying to modernize ways of working.
For example, many organizations rely on Microsoft or AWS for their cloud-based IT infrastructure, but their teams work within the Atlassian platform to move their work forward, and still have other tools specific to various departments’ product outputs. This is just one example that illustrates how enterprise companies use a diverse set of tools and platforms to achieve their technology objectives and deliver the connected experiences that customers and users expect.
There are product-first companies that now offer IT support like Atlassian Advisory Services. However, their expertise is limited only to Atlassian products and the platforms they support. While no one does collaboration and project management tools better than Atlassian, today’s business landscape demands technical expertise and know-how across a broad spectrum of platforms.
Having expertise with only one platform will only get you so far if you are trying to modernize ways of working.
2. IT & Business Alignment Strategic Services
When business priorities are a constantly moving target, you can’t have a stagnant technology strategy. Your technology and business processes need to move with you.
Traditional IT managed services that only involve monitoring your IT infrastructure are no longer enough for the modern enterprise. From enterprise resource planning, platform integration, and cloud optimization, the next generation of Modern Service Management partners offer strategic advisory services around all digital touchpoints that impact business outcomes. Their focus is on the long-term end game, not just day-to-day operations.
Additionally, the reactive nature of traditional IT managed services leads to accumulated technical debt because it is only focused on “break-fix” solutions and not the overall user experience. However, if your organization wants to stay agile and keep pace with the speed of business, you must embrace the constant change of customer and user expectations. Your Modern Service Management partner will help you continuously evolve your user experience while making it central to both your tech and overall business strategy.
3. Expertise Curated to Your Business
Every business has a unique set of needs, so there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all IT service offering. However, your infrastructure requires a high-touch approach from a team of experts that ensure your technological capabilities are aligned with your business strategy.
This is something that you can’t get when you go the route of an inexpensive, bot-powered IT service. Going with an off-shore, bot-driven IT service limits you to just tackling tech problems. How can a bot or a remote MSP truly help your business grow if they don't know the ins and outs of your company and its nuanced ways of working?
Your business demands better than a bot. Your business requires a team of people whose collective expertise is curated to your unique organizational requirements. Together, this team delivers a comprehensive portfolio of services that include proactive maintenance, 24x7x365 monitoring, data backup and recovery, and strategic roadmapping.
Your business demands better than a bot. Your business requires a team of people whose collective expertise is curated to your unique organizational requirements.
This ensures that all aspects of your organization's IT infrastructure are covered and that you won't have to engage multiple vendors for different services like this leading railway company had to do. Even though this enterprise organization hired a third-party vendor to host their Atlassian applications, they were still responsible for managing their hosting infrastructure and application stack.
After experiencing performance issues with both their IT environment and Atlassian tools, they sought out a partner that offered a fully-managed, scalable hosting solution where they could securely and reliably run all their applications so that their teams could get back to their core business functions.
4. An Extension of Your IT Organization
There's no room for downtime in today's fast-moving market. According to Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC), 40% of enterprises said a single hour of downtime can cost between $1 million and over $5 million. In a Gartner survey, 98% of companies stated the cost of IT downtime ranged from $100,000 to $540,000 per hour.
To meet the demands of today’s business landscape, you partner should know the intricacies of your IT environment so they ensure your infrastructure is reliable and secure. Having a Modern Service Management partner that knows your instances intimately makes it easier to respond to change and helps reduce friction for the valuable work that your teams do.
40% of enterprises said a single hour of downtime can cost between $1 million and over $5 million.
Take this global media and cable company as an example. Their Jira instance was unstable, which meant that workflows were constantly interrupted. The leading cable company didn’t have the bandwidth to get to the root of the problem, much less develop and execute an incident management strategy.
They needed a partner that could serve as an extension of their internal IT teams, proactively managing and monitoring their IT environment so that their DevOps teams could focus on delivering quality product faster. After bringing on a Modern Service Management partner to host and manage their IT infrastructure, they experienced improved communication and collaboration between end users, DevOps teams, and vendors.
5. The Power of Partnership
So many organizations just want their MSPs to make their technology work properly. But as companies move to a need for 24x7x365 support, they require more than a “break-fix” solution.
When it comes to managing your digital ecosystem, you need more than just a provider that monitors your IT infrastructure and troubleshoots tech issues.
You need a partner that is backed by years of experience and know-how of different platforms so that you can evolve your technology with the shifts and changes of your business. From solving critical operational challenges to helping you reduce technical debt, your Modern Service Management partner is with you every step of the way as you look to increase organizational agility and drive faster time to market.
A partner that offers comprehensive solutions for building a connected enterprise was exactly what Ginkgo Bioworks needed to execute its business strategy. The leading biotech company was growing at a rapid rate and had ambitious business goals lined up for the next few years.
One of those goals was becoming a cloud-first enterprise, so they required a partner that could help them migrate to cloud and maintain a high-performing, scalable cloud ecosystem. In addition to saving time and money, working with a multi-dimensional partner enabled Ginkgo Bioworks to reduce technical debt, strengthen security, and improve the user experience.
Praecipio's Modern Service Management Offering
Outsourcing IT services is no longer enough if you want your business to do more than survive. Customer expectations are shifting and business priorities are a moving target. You need speed, security, compliance, and responsiveness, and you can’t just rely on expertise in one platform.
That’s where Pracipio comes in. When you work with Praecipio, you get more than just a transactional managed services provider. You get a Modern Service Management partner that provides you with a curated team of experts that connect your technology with strategy and increase your organization’s scalability.
Instead of focusing on just the tools, Praecipio takes a DevOps approach that aligns your digital footprint with your goals and growth strategy. By combining our Catalyst subscriptions with Cumulus hosting, Praecipio ensures a team is proactively focused on your technology, all the time, in real-time with 24x7x365 global support.
Leveraging our network of industry-leading partners and decades of experience, we help you build and manage a reliable, secure, and agile ecosystem that adapts to your evolving business needs and moves your strategy forward.
Ready to drive real change? Contact us and let’s work together to make it happen.
