The rise and extended impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have profound change implications across the social, political, and economic spectrums for the world’s population and businesses. This is the fifth in a series of briefs that offer our perspective on how things will change for companies in the services and solutions business, along with considerations on what will differ from current practices and approaches.
Overview
This is the fifth in a series of “Remote / From Home” work briefs offered by the Executive Leadership Team at The INSIGHT Group. The following brief, as well as others in the series have been published and are available at www.insight-group The objective of these briefs is to present a series of best practices within the new remote/from-home work environment. Prior briefs included:
- (Brief #1) Rapidly Adapting to the 'New Normal' in Services & Solutions
- (Brief #2) Selling Services & Solutions Remotely
- (Brief #3) Developing a Remote Worker Policy
- (Brief #4) Cultivating Best Practices for Remote Marketing & Market Management
In this brief, we will focus on best practices for developing and delivering services and solutions offerings remotely.
Developing and Delivering “High Value” Services and Solutions Remotely
Not all services and solution offerings can be delivered remotely. However, with the infusion of innovative, user-friendly technology into media tools, highly collaborative work sessions are now within reach, enabling many additional services lines to be engaged remotely.
Looking at the Services and Solutions offering continuum, these new customer engagement enablers have dramatically shifted the ability to deliver projects remotely. Exhibit I below depicts the four major generally accepted service lines that offerings generally fall into. The first of the four services lines; “Help me figure out What to Do” (Far left) consists of high-level consulting offerings delivered by highly skilled subject matter experts. These offerings coupled with the new virtual media connection capabilities are ideal for remote delivery. As you move further to the right of the continuum, however, more of these offerings include assets as well as experts and in some cases require on-site delivery. Nonetheless, with the growth of Digital and IT Infrastructure plus the desire to provide XaaS offerings, these also can now be delivered remotely. Many if not most of the Hybrid Cloud migrations will be delivered remotely in the future… there are a few firms that offer this type of migration offerings today.
What changes are required to enable your offerings / capabilities to be delivered remotely?
- Delivery Impact
Clearly, there will be less travel and therefore more time available for actual delivery. This should positively impact professional utilization, travel costs, documentation / contract administration time, and potentially facilities cost for each professional connected to the engagement. There will also be changes needed to update delivery and pricing methodologies. These changes should result in a better price value proposition for your clients. Another trend we see on the “What To Do” and “Help Build” side of the continuum is a greater utilization of non-local resources being brought into solutions, where one of the previous key considerations was the ability to provide local (face-to-face support) in front of the customer.
- Offerings Development Impact
Each element of the Offerings Development & Launch process will need to be customized to take advantage of the higher value proposition offered by remotely delivered services & solutions, particularly the Business Concept, Business Case, Offerings Launch, and Lifecycle Management phases.
In addition, an evaluation must be employed upfront to decide which offerings are suitable for remote delivery and which are not. Even those offerings that are not suitable for remote delivery may have some elements that can be delivered remotely.
- Other Areas Impacted
There is another dynamic that is affecting delivery and development; expert systems are reducing the need for people for delivery and maintenance. AI will become increasingly important to the overall value proposition of every offering particularly in the area of diagnostic tools to provide/ suggest solutions that rely less on human interaction. These will require collaborative capabilities utilizing multiple sources. Security will become even more important when delivering and maintaining environments remotely. Today, banks and the government are requiring services providers to perform a very stringent security audit before allowing the ingestion of any data. Some of the “Help Run” offerings, (e.g. call and contact center offerings) will require more focus on security, balancing these protective measures with current key criteria such as lower cost and higher service levels.
"There is another dynamic that is affecting delivery and development; expert systems are reducing the need for people for delivery and maintenance. AI will become increasingly important to the overall value proposition of every offering particularly in the area of diagnostic tools to provide/ suggest solutions that rely less on human interaction."
Other changes will be required to align the marketing, talent management, and business development (sales) functions as well. These have been highlighted in prior INSIGHT briefs (see links above).
Perspectives / Insights
We hope these “Best Practices” Briefs on enabling a predominantly remote operating environment can help you and your organization accelerate this transformation and drive future success. We continue to receive positive comments on the value of these briefs. We, the Executive Leadership Team, continue to welcome continued feedback as we all navigate and innovate within the ‘new normal’ of business. With our extensive experience managing and developing effective best practices for remote and at-home work coupled with the feedback we are receiving, we plan to outline our capabilities to help clients become more competitive in this area over the next several weeks.
Our next brief, The Case for Collaborative Leadership, will focus on the continuing need for effective collaborative leadership in these new and uncharted times. It will help identify additional important considerations and challenges that accompany the remote work environment.
Reiterating; this pandemic is tragic. It will result in step function changes in the Service industry for all geographies. Companies that quickly understand and accommodate change will find new avenues for growth and profitability, and each successfully adapting company will contribute to the overall economic stability and security for all in the 'new normal'.
Let us know if you or your firm would like to share your thoughts, issues, and/or discuss additional insights on this topic. We would be happy to set up a short web session. Drop us a note at esposr@insight-group.com.
