Extra Efficiency and Value for a Large Public Sector Customer
Read time: 5 mins
Introduction
Version 1 has worked with this public sector customer for over 10 years now as a Managed Services supplier. Version 1 supported the customer on their E-Business Suite Estate, Fusion ERP, and HCM in 2020, and provided payroll support in 2021.
In October 2022, the customer’s Head of Finance reached out to Version 1 with a keen interest in our ASPIRE Cloud SaaS Managed Services.
Client Profile
Challenge
Some of the key challenges the customer faced were:
- Duplication of tickets: Consultants would fix the issue but not communicate the resolution, this resulted in the same ticket being logged again
- Lack of knowledge transfer back to the team which prevented tickets from being resolved efficiently
- Junior resource-based offshore
- A lack of traction on closing out tickets – thereby failing to deliver on SLAs
- There was a lack of testing on the quarterly releases, as there were bugs after each release
- There was no real collaboration between the SI and the customer
- No adoption of any new features or a review of existing processes.
Solution
Version 1 took over work from a previous Systems Integrator. This posed its own challenges as the incumbent SI did not provide a handover. Using our well-developed transition methodology, Version 1 was able to ask the right questions and probe their work to get a better understanding of the work done so far.
We were able to complete the transition in 7 weeks and dived straight into Managed Services with over 40 open tickets that hadn’t been resolved.
The work started with our ASPIRE Managed Services workstream. We supplied the best offshore Managed Service team who supported our onshore leads. Knowledge transfer and transparent communication are embedded into the workings of our team. This enabled us to solve problems efficiently.
For instance, there was a recurring payroll issue – our consultant quickly got in touch with the customer’s team, worked together, and fixed the issue. This ticket has not been raised with us again.
ASPIRE Managed Services promises the delivery of VLAs or Value Level Agreements. This framework includes the measurement of business results and outcomes and not just service levels.
Version 1 ran monthly service reviews for the customer. We shared all review resources prior to the meeting so that our meeting focuses on more than just SLAs. In the meetings, we covered pain points, provided an update on our VLAs, and built a roadmap to understand what our next steps are, and in this case how to implement more automated testing using Selenium and Cucumber.
With regular and transparent communication, we have taken our customers’ feedback and made changes to the service where we felt we could have been stronger. We have listened to the customer and this has helped us build a stronger relationship.
Our solution included:
- Weekly calls to understand priority tickets with Version 1 consultants
- Monthly service reviews – run by Version 1
- Quarterly webinars with Subject Matter Experts to look at the new features and the impact of implementing them
- Automated testing
- A ‘best-shore’ team with a mixture of onshore and offshore to best suit the customer
Real Difference, Delivered
Version 1 implemented VLA’s to automate processes, which resulted in:
- Faster resolution times
- Knowledge transfers back to the customer so they are always learning
- Reduction in ticket numbers
- Adopting new features
- Challenging the customer to ensure they are adopting and not just adapting to the new system
To learn more about this project and other customer stories, watch our webinar Move Beyond the Status Quo – Optimise Your Oracle Cloud Support.
