Creating the perfect business case for service transformation

So many people think technology transformation is the one key initiative to underpin their business change in a digital world. But it’s service transformation that is the critical success factor. You can have all the latest technology in the world, but if you can’t access it easily and it isn’t always available, then it’s not what you need. In today’s world, the service experience for a user, business, or customer defines success.

There is a perfect business case model that could be utilized to help customers on their service transformation journey. Think of a triangle with three important objectives.  The first one is ‘I want better services’, the second one is ‘I want to drive down my costs’ and the third objective is ‘I want to lower my risk’.  If you can drive a service transformation journey and achieve these three objectives, you are on the road to success.

Let’s examine these objectives more closely.

What does it mean to want better services?

It’s a highly competitive world. Change is ever present. To stay competitive and even better - ahead of the pack - your service quality needs to be exceptional.  This is the whole CX (Customer Experience) movement in the industry. Just look at how many major technology brands and service providers have hired CX Leaders or Customer Success Managers in the past 24 months. Services culture in the technology industry is evolving.

One key initiative in service transformation is to consolidate and reduce the complexity of partners and suppliers; this has been around for a while but it’s speeding up. This is usually enabled through a managed services arrangement. Managed services is as relevant as it was a decade ago. Focus on your core business and partner with someone whose core business is technology services.  Leverage their investments and learnings. The challenge is you must give up ownership of services in the managed world and trust someone else to deliver a quality experience on your behalf. This is still something organizations struggle with. But, where there is high trust, you can drive great success. You must seek out a partner who puts genuine value on quality. If you’re a global business, then find a partner that can think globally and act locally and one that continues to invest in its people, processes, and technology.

How can I lower costs?

Everyone wants cheaper. Cost to serve is now an everyday conversation across all industries. Providers need to use their shared services, resourcing models and innovations to give customers the best possible price to support their go-to-market and business success. This is achieved through advanced tooling, automations, and continued emergence of AI/ML overlay to reduce some of the labor intensity of delivering global services. Providers are delivering remote fix with Managed Services wherever possible, but of course we will still need technical people in the field to touch the devices at times. This is true especially as architecture is deployed at the edge to push compute functions to various sites. Even though the cloud movement has taken us more centralized, now we see the hybrid mix– some in the cloud and some decentralized tech at the edge. Providers will constantly drive operational efficiencies into their services to help customers. It’s difficult to build expensive technical skills in-house, especially when it’s not your core business. So businesses still rely on capable global service providers to give them excellent quality services at market competitive prices. Price is always firmly in the minds of the buyer.

Less risk for my business is better, but how?

Customers need a safe pair of hands they can trust to operate and manage their services. As we saw during the pandemic, some providers found it difficult to deliver basic services, whereas others excelled and leveraged their scale and continuity to keep quality at a high level. When the c-suite goes to sleep at night in any business, they worry about service availability and service performance. These things directly impact their brand, their growth, and their own customers. Services that fail or are slow are just unacceptable nowadays. The speed of the market does not tolerate it.  Ultimately you need a partner or provider you can trust.

Don't miss out on opportunities during this time

Service transformation is the future and crucial to unlocking the perfect business model. With transformation, you’ll not only see growth opportunities, but you’ll also be able to improve your business by providing your customers with excellent service that minimizes complexity and halts frustrations, drive down operational costs, mitigate risks while modernizing your capabilities.

Choosing a telecom and technology partner that can help you with a true global reach and services that will deliver the three business case objectives: world class experience your customers expect, a competitive price and that safe pair of hands to reduce your risk is key. No one said service transformation is easy. It’s a journey.