Adapt Managed Services – Putting Customers at the Centre of Their World...

Oct. 21, 2010 - PRLog -- As modern enterprises grow, so do the demands, complexity and scope of their IT systems. Many organisations have responded to managing their IT estates by outsourcing... but with their multi-million IT investments in the hands of third parties, what checks and balances are in place? And how can they ensure they are at the centre of their Managed Service Provider’s world?

Business leaders take a huge leap of faith in selecting a Managed Service Providers (MSP) as it is vital they ensure their IT infrastructures are in the most capable hands possible. In response to this Adapt, one of Europe’s leading MSPs, has pioneered a flexible approach, based on its ITIL e-Service Desk solution, that puts all of its clients’ technical, contractual and asset inventory information within easy reach, for complete transparency in managed services delivery.

The cornerstone of the services Adapt offers is a web-based portal view of each client’s IT infrastructure. From this portal, business and IT managers can analyse reports of their individual Service Level Agreements (SLAs). e-Service Desk from ICCM Solutions allows Adapt to provide multi-layer SLAs ranging from corporate response rates down to granular mission-critical asset types.

By providing Adapt’s clients with such a comprehensive view and reporting capability of their managed IT estate, business and IT leaders can continually demonstrate improvements in productivity and Return on Investment (ROI) of their MSP, whilst ensuring their resources are concentrated on core business activities.

ITIL Service Management is now a core component of Adapt’s undertaking to provide 24x7 service desk operations to all of its 1,200 enterprise clients. In 2009, when it chose ICCM Solutions e-Service Desk as the technology platform, it invested in a strategic technology that would add value to its long term vision.

Lee O’Neill, Operations Director at Adapt explains, “Adapt was looking for a highly functional, flexible and best-of-breed ITIL Service Desk solution. It was clear after a review of ICCM’s technology that it could add significant value to our services.”

Business Innovation & Competitive Advantage
ICCM’s technology is built on Business Process Management architecture (BPM) which assists in realising business function improvements, IT strategy and their joint execution. This has enabled Adapt to offer a range of value added services to its Managed Service clients, such as its pioneering approach to SLAs.

O’Neill adds: “We’re able to configure each of our client SLA’s to match their exacting needs. We’re even able to offer a granular level of support to individual asset classes in order to support business critical IT. All of our clients are unique and have different response requirements to suit their operational activities; with our offering we can now support them via our distinctive SLA approach. We can only do that because we used ICCM’s BPM service desk technology.

“In addition, if an unexpected event occurs we can now set automated and predetermined triggers with a specific output. These directly correlate to our unique SLA approach. For example, if there is a failure in a mission-critical asset classification class outside of normal office hours, but the SLA requires a four hour fix, the ticket can effectively be raised and an automatic trigger will ensure it is redirected overseas to ensure a resolution within the agreed SLA.”

With ICCM’s e-Service Desk, Adapt has been able to build a range of services centred on reduction of cost ownership, negation of risk and avoidance of managing complex IT systems. This flexible approach is only achievable due to the Metastorm BPM software that underpins the ICCM ITIL compliant e-Service Desk.

O’Neill goes onto explain Adapt’s self-service portal approach, which also increases the value offering to Adapt’s Managed Service clients.

“Via the portal we can report back a 360 degree view of the service we supply, from our SLA adherence and consolidation of Service Desk activity through to a repository of all historical documentation between the two organisations. That means if one of my team is onsite they can upload literature through the portal to which all stakeholders have instant access.

“Though a methodology called Software Network Monitoring Process and a combination of the ICCM BPM approach, we can take an automated and proactive stance in monitoring the IT estate. We’ve even been able to build and offer a service health check capability that links directly into the ICCM e-Service Desk. When one of these scans occurs on the IT estate and an issue is identified, we can raise an automatic notice into the ICCM e-Service Desk, which in turn conforms to the customer-specific SLA.”

The portal services include:

•   Key Performance Indicators/Information Management
•   Support Queries
•   SLA Monitoring
•   Hardware Asset Management
•   Software Patch Release Strategy
•   Bandwidth Usage
•   Financial Controls
•   Incident Management & Trend Analysis
•   Additional Adapt Services
•   Topology
•   Historical Issue & Issue Resolution
•   Track & Review Tickets

Conclusion
“Adapt has successfully identified the importance of looking at the long term investment opportunity of our technology,” adds James Gay, CEO, ICCM Solutions. “It has clearly understood the risk/rewards of BPM and has been able to shape and successfully implement new revenue models in one of its core business services.  

“Adapt looked at the ITIL Service Desk as a strategic investment rather than just a purely technology venture. This resulted in Adapt considering the external impact ICCM technology would have on its client base. What it saw and has now developed are flexible new business models linked directly to our e-Service Desk. Innovation, flexibility and foresight have empowered Adapt to add value to its Managed Services offering and, more importantly, increase revenue and customer retention.”

One of the overriding directives of any ITIL Service Desk product is the ease of use and the simplification of complexity. This coupled with a BPM based architecture allows forward thinking organisations to implement successful technology strategies which collaborate between the business and IT.

The end user efficiencies which have been demonstrated in the MSP market by Adapt have only been achievable by the recognition of the flexibility of the ICCM solution and the approach Adapt has taken. Those which are flexible and innovative, and implement BPM in the right way, ultimately reap the rewards of business innovation and competitive advantage.

Adapt has seen increased sales of 58% on average per year from £7.9m in 2006 to £31m in 2009.

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ICCM Solutions provide turnkey solutions for the simplification of complexity in IT Service Management environments, built on Business Process Management (BPM) Architecture. ICCM was named Gartner ‘Cool’ Vendor in 2010.