Rob Addy

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Rob Addy
Research Director
3.4 years at Gartner
17 years IT industry

Rob Addy is a research director in Gartner's Technology & Service Provider Research division, focusing on software and hardware support services across EMEA. Mr. Addy also covers the provision of desktop support services in an outsourcing context within the region ...Read Full Bio

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Let Guinness be Your Guide

by Rob Addy  |  October 12, 2012  |  Submit a Comment

The cloud is much more than a mere delivery mechanism. Much much more. Guinness know it. Learn from the liquid velvet creator. I urge every “Something-as-a-Service” provider to watch the following infomercial… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URxLYupra5s. It is not an advertisement. It is a road map to success.

I delivered a session entitled “To the Point: Releasing SaaS’s True Potential — More Than Just Software Delivery” at our US Outsourcing and Services Summit a few weeks ago. During that session, I demonstrated that the SaaS value proposition could be far more than just the traditional Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reduction play.

The inherent solution configuration and usage visibility that “as-a-Service” providers have enables them to do many things that deliver increased customer value. As-a-Service Providers “see” many many things! (But most look but don’t see. Many don’t know what they know…). Here are some examples of the kinds of stuff they “know” irrespective of whether or not they know that they “know”:

  • User profiles and behaviors
    • Frequency of usage, user demographics, session durations, committed and aborted actions…
  • Solution configurations
    • Process definitions, meta data update frequency, degree of solution capability usage…
  • Integration points
    • Bottlenecks, delays, duplication, process dependencies…
  • Transactional flows
    • Inputs and outputs, levels of effort used, consequences of inactivity, what does good really look like…
Using these data streams, providers could create and deliver incredibly valuable services for their customers. Services that contain service elements such as:
  • Pre-defined configuration meta data templates
  • Reference data updates / imports
  • Environmental monitoring
  • Proactive interventions to prevent issues
  • Benchmarking content
  • Operational risk assessments
  • Business intelligence services
  • Role specific reporting and dashboards
  • Best practice guidance
    • IT Operations staffing / activity
    • LOB process / procedures
  • Process improvement recommendations
  • Personnel performance data
    • Activity vs. Productivity vs. Results
  • Test and training environments
  • Development sandboxes
  • Load / Stress testing services
Providers must use the added visibility and benchmarking opportunities available to them from as-a-Service solutions to drive real business process improvement for their customers. Create optional aggregated obfuscated data sharing models to facilitate user benchmarking. Ask your customers to enrich their meta-data to help you to help them to conduct more meaningful analysis. Show your customers how you can help them to get the best possible return from their subscription. Tell your customers how their usage of your solution compares to similar organizations. Provide a road map outlining the features and value added deliverables described in this post. But above all else…  Remember that As-A-Service’s true value is much much more than mere TCO reduction!

Do more. Become more!

TRKFAM :-)
PS: Value Aware. Please deliver your services responsibly… ;-)

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