Outsourcing or technical support?

Preamble

Imagine that there is a certain enterprise. Of course, with business-critical architecture. Any simple - the loss of money. The network for the enterprise was built by an integrator. To the experts of the same integrator, the company's engineers are running for advice and moral support. Formally, there is no support contract. But there is interaction, also because the enterprise has time for budgeting every year and this is very good for the integrator when you are remembered. It is easy to assume that in a serious accident, which cannot be resolved in a reasonable time, it will not be possible to find the culprit (but you can punish the innocent and reward the uninformed!).

On duty, I periodically have the need to find the culprit in the accident on the network or identify the potential culprit before the accident occurs (to analyze, assess risks and distribute responsibility for the risks to the heads of departments). Of course, to find the ends is very difficult - everyone points at each other and into the ceiling, as a representative of a higher power.
Returning to the situation described, in the role of a guest consultant, I would suggest using either support services or outsourcing.

Technical Support Services

First of all, this suggests itself. What is happening de jure, formalize de facto. And starting with one company, you need to go to sell services to the rest. What should be done?

• 1. Develop a standard contract for the provision of technical support services (I think on the Internet you can find "fish" or something like "Technical support agreement for dummies"). Of course, with applications. Required with lead-time and prioritized, for example, critical / major / minor / tech cons.
• 2. Create a presentation and send Sale with a presale to visit a potential customer to tell about the benefits. Leitmotif - your problems fall on our harsh callused shoulders entirely. Show how much business is losing during idle times and how much money you are willing to solve the problem.
• 3. Depending on the response time agreed upon in the contract and the elimination of accidents (for example, 24 by 7, plus no more than 4 hours for full restoration of the service), a support department will be required. Attention! All attempts to circumvent this point always ended unsuccessfully. It is very important to understand that subscribing to 24 * 7 * 4, you will need at least two people, mainly engaged in support.
• 4. Consider the composition and location of spare parts. From a business point of view, a ZIP is a freezing of money, so if the sums are impressive, you will have to find a compromise.
• 5. Consider and arrange the procedure of interaction with the customer, including the web service desk or at least a separate email. Determine the form of admission cases for accidents. Determine the emergency support number (which will be carried alternately by two support engineers). Determine the timing and format of reporting. Determine the feedback option from the customer. Determine the procedures for interaction of experts with support engineers. "To issue a second line of support." After the most critical cases get ahead of the “Disturbance reporting” procedure.
• 6. With a complex customer architecture, in perspective, a solution can be proposed for monitoring and automatic generation of cases in support of abnormal values ​​of counters / indicators.
• 7. When increasing the number of customers, it is necessary to expand the support staff, and I highly recommend to single out an individual person, manager, support manager, who will interact with the customer, receive feedback and promptly resolve interaction issues.

This is a coarse grind. Add if something is important missed.

Outsourcing

Differs from the above with other text of the contract and other amounts. Ideally, those engineers who ran around the enterprise and called for support, come under your jurisdiction. They continue to do the same, but the interaction interface (service desk) is now between the customer’s employees and the integrator in the form of running engineers. Service Desk, as you understand, is vital, it is statistics and an argument in disputes. Of course, no process approach is out of the question, therefore, you will have to take on this activity as well.
Most likely, an outsourcing business case with one client may not converge. Of course, we must sit down and count. Then wind the tail of the seller to more actively sell services. Build your monitoring center or outsource Hindus (oh dreams, dreams).
If your long-term plans for outsourcing are calculated longer than two years, then you need to arrange infrastructure development in the contract. Yes Yes. We will have to create an IT development strategy for several years, protect the budget for modernization, etc.
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Conclusion

Both options are real. If I advised the customer-enterprise, I would recommend using support services. The first few years. When the contractor will know the customer’s network like the back of his hand (as, for example, the family doctor’s sores for the entire family over the past twelve years), only after that can he be outsourced. With the maximum number of control points prescribed in the contract. And of course, all this is true for a truly complex critical architecture.