Are your software applications struggling to keep up with your growing business? It may not be as exciting as developing brand new software, but keeping your existing application suite running and up to date is just as — and occasionally more — important. Partnering with the right support provider keeps your business operational and can offer significant advantages in pulling ahead of your competition.
We’ve compiled the top three questions we think all CIOs and CTOs should be asking to evaluate their current application support needs and help them decide whether they require a change.
1. Does your current application support offer value for money?
Choosing the wrong application support provider will lead to significant, avoidable costs in the long run — just ask anyone who has had a bad experience. You don’t need a provider; you need a partner.
All support contracts come with a service level agreement (or SLA) which stipulates exactly what the service provider will do each month. If the SLA is met in less time than the retainer allows, most providers will simply bank that time and redeploy their team to support another client. This means that application support customers almost always overpay for what they’re getting, month after month.
Amdaris, an Insight company, takes a different approach. We use all available support time to continually enhance and improve your software. If our team spots a recurring problem, we will allocate any unused time to find a permanent solution. As recurring issues are eliminated, Amdaris partners have the option to reduce the number of monthly hours they require or, alternatively, invest in making further upgrades to their system.
With Amdaris as your application support partner, every penny counts.
2. How can application support partners best avoid single points of failure?
One of the biggest operational risks facing companies everywhere is an over-concentration of software expertise in a single employee or contractor. While this might work in the short-term, relying on them to stick around indefinitely is the purest definition of putting all your eggs into one basket.
An application support partner eliminates the danger of over concentrating expertise by deploying an entire team to offer support. That being said, most providers create a new problem in the process…
When the providers have thousands of support staff serving hundreds of clients with hundreds of applications each, they are in no position to start developing expertise in any single system. Without experience and expertise, nobody is able to identify system problems in your applications as they develop. Support staff at larger providers often work from manuals on applications that they have never seen or worked with before. This approach focuses on finding the quickest, easiest solution instead of implementing long-term fixes.
Amdaris offers support in a better way. We build teams of dedicated support workers that we call ‘pods.’ Each pod will be large enough to avoid single points of failure, but small enough to provide continual support. As pods develop and familiarise themselves with your applications, they become capable of identifying enhancements to work on using available time each month. These pods are also highly flexible, meaning that they are able to react to your changing needs as a business. As your company grows, we can expand the size of your pod to keep up with your growing service needs quickly and easily.
3. How can you eliminate transition risk when changing application support providers?
Finding the right managed service partner is essential, but what if you make the wrong decision? Making the switch to a new provider is a step that many companies are unwilling to take.
No matter how unsatisfied a company is with its current support partner, it’s vital to ensure that they understand the shortcomings and where things can be improved. The process of switching over might not be smooth, but a more pressing issue is making sure that the new provider is not as bad — or even worse.
Amdaris has a proven track record of managing transitions with new partners smoothly and efficiently. Our experts will work with your existing providers to guarantee there are no gaps in service when our team assumes responsibility. We will also come in with fresh eyes to look at your existing application estate and work to eliminate the major risks associated with transition.
How Amdaris has a different approach to application support
Keeping your software running is the core of any application support contract, but at Amdaris we are not content with just meeting the terms of an SLA each month. Instead of seeing your SLA as a target to hit, we view it as a threshold to reach before we can start enhancing and streamlining your systems.
We do this while eliminating single point of failure risks, and without spreading our expertise too thinly. We will be there as your company grows and as its needs change over time, keeping your applications relevant and useful for as long as possible.
Amdaris is your application support partner, not provider. Together, let’s imagine the impossible with your support requirements.