Delivering value in a Managed Services Arrangement

How Systech enhanced and brought structure to application development and product delivery at the core of customer’s business. 

Who we worked with: 

A leading television and film network, reaching over 87 million households worldwide. 

What Systech delivered:

Stable and efficient App development systems and processes, adding value to the overall business by reducing expenses and improving service. 

What the solution entailed: 

• A phased transition from the existing support model to managed services with minimal risk 
• Support platform fostering incident management, change management, and adaptive/preventative/perfective maintenance services 
• Continuous operational improvements and enhanced productivity 
• 24/7 access to a team of experts, for short-term operational and long-term business transformation
• Centralization of delivery and KPIs (key performance indicators) through managed services processes
• Periodic data backups of mission critical data 
• Help-desk insights and support for third-party applications and external services
• Robust infrastructure for Ticket Management 

THE CHALLENGE 

Expedited transition to a revamped Managed Services solution amidst significant changes 

The customer was in desperate need of a robust Managed Services offering that could support their Development Products Delivery Team. Their existing technology operations were characterized by poor controls and were an ad-hoc production support process. The system performance was uninspiring and resulted in complaints and tickets. The technology team was outside the centralized IT organization and lacked the appropriate skills leading to delayed product releases marred by significant defects. The client also faced several lapses in terms of security and governance of the platform and security policies by their existing services provider, which rendered them vulnerable to fraud and cyber-attacks.  

Systech was hired to consult and address the enterprise’s unmet needs and inefficiencies in the system. The lack of operation manuals, guidelines, documentation, and design specs to efficiently transition to a new system and framework made the re-contracting of the implementation with Systech even more challenging.  

Systech’s expertise in Managed Service Providers (MSPs) was to be leveraged to help the customer keep IT infrastructure running smoothly while allowing them to establish a consistent budgetary expense. The customer faced challenges in terms of planning for the expense of necessary upgrades, anticipating issues before they arise, and looked to move away from the break/fix mentality that restricted their cash flow. 

The customer required a solution that supported Continuous Service Improvements (i.e., performance, improvements, automation), Incident Reduction, User-Driven Enhancement Requests, Application Delivery, Ticket Support, as well as Tool and Technological Development and Implementation all within the existing budget inherited from the previous provider for that calendar year. 

THE SOLUTION 

Focus on process and control to cater to scale and complexity 

Systech first assessed the associated App development and delivery organization and then planned to take over the day-to-day technology operations in a managed services arrangement to bring enhancements, structure, and greater control to customer’s critical technology solutions. Systech developed a low-risk approach with phased transition from the existing support model to Managed Services operating model in four phases: scope, target, deployment, and model evolution.  

The implementation included streamlining Incident management, Application deployment, Platform support, Manual and minor enhancements, Continuous service improvements (“CSIs”), DevOps management and administration and 24/7 expert support 

Systech’s team of experts reverse engineered the existing platform and built playbooks and documentation manuals for the client. 

All implementation related activities geared towards improving the environment overtime and finding creative ways to cut down associated Management Services costs. Several processes were automated to foster the creation of content dashboards for executives to perform rating and viewership analysis. The app responsible for selling and locking down advertising contracts was tweaked to add instantaneous, monetary value. In less than 10 months, the operations of the App Development Team were streamlined drastically, achieving On Time Delivery (OTD) of an efficient, productive, and fully stabilized environment. 

THE BUSINESS IMPACT 

At the completion of the initiative, the client benefited from the following: 

• A swift, efficient, and seamless data environment transition from the existing platform to Systech’s Managed Services solution 
• Enhanced overall systems and business, through the delivery of process automation, manual effort reduction, and improved data delivery by 5%-10% annually 
• Established support team activities 
• Product support in the form of job monitoring, incident management (data), manual data & process validation, and escalation management 
• Platform support in the form of tools administration services, infrastructure services, incident management (tools), escalation management, change management, and CICD services 
• Reduced number of incident analytics, by 3%-5% decrease in average volume of tickets 
• Faster access to new data, with dashboard and app rollout automation 
• 24/7 expert support 
• The centralization of delivery and KPIs as a byproduct of managed services processes 
• Improved governance and harmonized processes across all business applications 
• Achieved ticket reduction, higher offshore leverage, preventive maintenance, performance improvement, data validation, data reconciliation automation, and health check monitoring automation. 

A smart and reliable data model is key to a sustainable competitive advantage

Systech met all service requirements and delivered Managed Services on time and on budget. Documentation of system design and functional specs, as well as operation guidelines and manuals empowered the customer to take ownership of their data landscape for years to come and set them in motion toward the path of data and management excellence.  

Systech is now working with the customer on the next phase of their data transformation journey.