Picking the best service model to keep your solutions running smoothly

Requirements for run services differ and not all service models are suited for all solutions or situations. But what characteristics are key in defining the best model for your organization? 

In my experience, the following two characteristics provide a very practical way to distinguish run service models for business solutions: criticality of incidents and velocity of change. 

Criticality of incidents means how big a business impact potential incidents have and how fast the impact escalates, defining the time to provide resolution. Velocity of change relates to the volume of continuous development after the use of the solution is started, implying how fast the response time can be and how it should be organized.

Combining the above two characteristics, we’ve come up with a 2x2 matrix that can be used as a starting point for identifying a suitable run model for your business solution. 

The Vincit Care model builds on top of these four different requirements.

Vincit Light is a run model for business applications that aren’t critical and where development is not continuous. Here a good option is a lead consultant-based model, where the customer has a contact point for a person or persons who know the solution, but no immediate actions are expected. Governance can be handled in biweekly/monthly meetings where developments and incidents are followed up. A Kanban-type framework is typically used in this model. The Light model is a cost-efficient and flexible alternative.

Vincit Continuous is suggested when development is continuous but incidents are not super critical or the resolution time requirement isn’t very narrow. An example of such a solution could be operative reporting. Although the information is important, resolution can take some time without a major business impact. For the Vincit Continuous model, agile models like Scrum work well. Incident and other maintenance work is estimated as part of the sprints and prioritization done between development and support work. The Vincit Continuous model provides a flexible model without additional bureaucracy to handle issues within the same team.

Vincit Fast is for when the solution is very critical, but development happens only from time to time – for example, integrations between systems. There, traditional Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes provide a very efficient framework for agreeing on the service objectives and service level agreements (SLAs), especially the maximum time for response and resolution for different tickets. Vincit will ramp up and maintain the service team required to fulfill the service objectives. The Vincit Service Desk is typically the first point of contact during regular service hours, and a 24/7/365 response can be provided through the on-call Platform Team.

Vincit Proactive is the most comprehensive model for solutions that are continuously under development and are business critical, like customer portals, commerce platforms, or ERP systems. ITIL can provide the base here as well, but should be extended with services like end-to-end monitoring, test automation, 24/7/365 setup, release management, and innovation and usability services.

There is a huge shift in the market from customer-specific on-premise solutions towards cloud-based multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) applications. These provide benefits for solution providers and customers through lower platform and development costs and faster innovation cycles. 

While SaaS solution providers are responsible for their solution availability, there’s an increased need for service integrators like Vincit to orchestrate the whole customer landscape of different solutions. Service work however should move from handling incidents towards proactive planning, analyzing the new innovations and their impact, as well as release and change management. The goal is to move towards more proactive models on the landscape level.

The global marketplace and always-on digital service touchpoints (customer portals, eCommerce platforms) require companies to consider how they can run their business systems 24/7/365. Much of the emphasis in critical environments needs to be placed on proactive maintenance, housekeeping, and test automation activities. 

However not all situations can be prevented, and for the inevitable critical incident situations, global players can provide a “follow-the-sun” type service, where the support is handled within normal working times around the world. This typically requires a large pool of experts and might not be a viable option for many small or medium-sized enterprises or very niche solution areas. 

Vincit Care provides a more flexible and cost-efficient hybrid model of a local on-call platform support team and experienced solution experts through the “Best Effort” model. The Platform Team can analyze the incident situations and use predefined libraries of instruction-based remedies to solve most situations. The additional Best Effort expert team works through the defined emergency call process, where the employees are well rewarded for taking up any critical issues outside normal working time. This has worked well for us and our customers and we’ve been able to help and solve most situations even outside normal working hours. 

Requirements for run services differ. Trying to solve all service needs with a single run service model is either costly or inefficient. Our framework provides a good starting point for considering your requirements. Vincit Care models work as building blocks that can be used to build the best and most comprehensive service for your unique lifecycle requirements for different solution areas.