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Managed Service
In outsourcing terms, the ‘Managed Service’ represents the ideal at the other end of the scale. It has all the advantages of its less sophisticated alternative the body shop, and more besides - but few, if any of the drawbacks.

An analogy one can use to describe the operation of a managed service is to see it as a wall  with the service consumer on one side and the service provider on the other.

The wall has two service windows in it – one for inputting requests, the other for receiving the requested items. The service consumer has no need to know what happens on the other side of the wall – that is, how the service is actually manufactured – so long as the delivered service and level of quality meet ordained targets.

The invisibility of the process of service generation frees the host company completely from all considerations associated with it. The competence and commitment of the service staff, their level of skill and motivation, their structure and career paths, internal communications, politics and so on – in fact all the human baggage that tends to accompany the retention of employees to do a job – all of that becomes somebody else’s problem.

These things, which are for a service delivery manager part and parcel of the process of creating a service, all become completely irrelevant, so that only the issue of service itself actually matters. One might see this as managed services bringing with them a form of freedom from man-management liability.

Preparation
A critical first step is to identify precisely what services are to be included in the catalogue of provisions. For some IT departments, this is an immediate stumbling-block, as they may never have thought of their activities as individual services. What is more likely is that they have hired staff as needed based on demand to fulfil user requests rather than to populate production lines making services. They see what they do only as ‘activities’.

From this there must be a service catalogue. Few managed service implementations will actually do ‘whatever the user asks’. In a managed service environment that type of request will have been anticipated, a service published to deal with it, a process created to manufacture it, the requisite skillsets defined and the staff put in place to exercise those skills in following the process to resolve the request.

This does not mean that the managed service needs to be absolutely rigid – but the type of flexibility needed should ideally be designed into the service delivery.

A service level benchmark is critical. There must be an indicator of how the service is performing at present. This is not just so as to be able to demonstrate a positive difference after implementation, although that will be a useful confidence booster for all involved – but also as part of an exercise to define everything that will need to take place after implementation of the managed service and to ensure that there is not actually a fall in service levels unless one is designed into the service contract.

Managing the Relationship
Of course if the process of service management changes so radically, then so must the types of managers involved in it. The usual way for running a managed service relationship is through the appointment of two service delivery managers, one for each party in the relationship. They are often known as the ‘Supplier-Side’ and ‘Client-Side’ managers.

These describe functions rather than roles - and so in real life, either individuals or groups may carry them out. Their job is to get together regularly to ensure that the service continues to meet its terms of reference and service level targets and to deal with exceptions that may impede either side. These are not man-managers – their skillsets have more in keeping with those of a project manager or a construction-site Clerk of Works.

They will have as their main point of reference a Service Level Agreement (SLA). This document will be the contract between the two partners. It describes the services themselves as individual provisions, (from the previously identified ‘Service Catalogue’) and in a separate schedule, the levels at which those services should be delivered. These ‘levels’ will include the details of service delivery targets, such as speed of response or resolution, levels of quality, and perhaps even financial considerations. Continue...