Get the most out of your application investments

Past years have seen a tremendous development in product-based or tailor made software applications. As these applications started improving operational effectiveness to the organizations, it started getting much more complex. The time and resources required to manage these applications are becoming a significant burden, to the point where they divert critical resources away from other initiatives and have a negative effect on growth and profitability.

Ensuring sustained operating and financial improvement in IT operations has been a perpetual challenge for the senior IT executives across all organizations. As they endeavor to do more with less despite ever increasing user expectations and service level demands, they face challenges in delivering services effectively and achieve a breakthrough in service performance. Encountering similar situation with in-house application maintenance, many CIOs have concerns about how to:

• Ensure savings due to reduced operational costs to invest in new IT initiatives
• Seek excellence in application service delivery for end user satisfaction
• Drive efficiency and effectiveness in application assurance program through best-practice and process improvement techniques like six sigma and lean methodologies
• Re-focus scarce IT resources on enabling core business rather then blocking them in ongoing maintenance activities.

To address these challenges, one solution which comes into my mind is contracted application management with service level guarantee for user satisfaction and business value, also known as ‘Managed Application Services’. This kind of engagement model delivers a cost effective service with access to application support without the commitment to run in-house maintenance operations. It also ensures that organization retains the control over service delivery even after outsourcing their application management.

Typically, managed application services is offered as a bunch of ‘A la carte’ services by offshore vendors. This engagement model has evolved after years of application management work and incorporation of best practices in many areas including SLA mapping, incidence management etc.

It not only saves CIO’s key resources from the distraction caused due to routine maintenance operations but also helps them focus more on core business areas. It is more of a custom tailored program which takes full accountability of IT service delivery to reduce TCO, drive innovation, create sustainable business value and facilitate organizational change.

But application management is not just about supporting applications. It’s also about adapting these applications as the business evolves. This requires a greater understanding of the organization and business. This is why I feel the success of an engagement for application management depends a lot on partnership between the service provider and the organization. Considering vendors as a business partner will no longer remain as pleasantry discussed in lounges but a long term business relationship.