How Managed Service Providers can Orchestrate Service Delivery at a Single Point of Collaboration

The market for IT services and automation is steadily increasing. IT has evolved to the point that almost everyone is offering to save you money and increase your efficiency in this area or that area but very few are offering an optimal approach to orchestrate service delivery end-to-end. We are finding that as the range of process optimizing technology increases, that outsourcing companies are becoming increasingly robotic in their approach to service delivery. Hence as we’ve become stronger technically, we’ve siloed ourselves as maximizers of process and forgot to communicate like humans.

What matters most to you about the service you receive from the companies your purchase products and services from and what made you choose that company in the first place?

For example: Why do you trust buying a router from Cisco more than any other company? I’m willing to bet that it all comes down to trust. There is something more inside the box than just the router, that is of intangible worth and is just as valuable as or more so than the carefully assembled circuitry inside. It’s your piece of mind. It’s your confidence that there is a real person eager to help if anything happens. Have you ever opted for a cheaper alternative product and come out disappointed? I think we all have at some point. Here is what I think is missing:

• Trust – Do you feel comfortable buying?
• Customer Focus – When you ask for service, do they tell you how and where to get it? Or do they do it for you?

Companies that do this well are masters of service orchestration. In other words to be successful Managed Service Provider (MSP) the whole must be greater than the sum of its sourced service partners. To do that MSPs must be able to break services down into small pieces, collect them into service bundles and deliver it to the end customer in a transparent way that includes the customer as an active part of the delivery process.

Orchestras are conducted from a single point and the conductor is responsible for coordinating and leveraging the talents of each individual musician to create a beautiful symphony that, in the end, will command a standing ovation from a single source. In the same way, a successful MSP must be able to coordinate service delivery from a single point in order to effectively govern and collaborate with individual sourced partners to create a unified customer experience. Delivering services in this fashion will uphold the implicit contract for trust that goes along with every product you deliver.

The reality of modern IT is that everyone in your value chain is your end customer. So it’s time you think about how you compose your service delivery so that everyone is included in the process and you can continuously receive that standing ovation.

• I’d like to invite you to check out what Service Orchestration looks like here