Keeping with Elanco’s theme of “once in a lifetime” opportunities, we are presented with yet another chance to innovate a truly revolutionary customer service experience. It may be commonplace for organizations to deliver support via a handful of vendors all executing upon interpretations of the same core service management processes. But how often is an organization able to start fresh by merging its guiding principles with best practice and leading industry trends, then work in conjunction with the entire collection of intended support vendors to build a mutually beneficial partnership with one single common Service Level Agreement? How often can an organization yield a consistent experience to its customers across all applications and services, regardless of the combination of vendors required to deliver the support?
We’re in a fortuitous position of simultaneously reaching the climactic contract negotiations with three founding vendors intending to begin supporting scores of Elanco services in the coming months. HCL will run our Tier 1 IT Service Desk, all IT End User services as well as a handful of software and hardware asset management responsibilities in ETS. CenturyLink is our Managed Network Service Provider ensuring reliable network integration and performance around the globe. Finally, Infosys will provide Tier 2 specialized support for over 80 application services.
From October 15-17, delegates from each of these vendors will converge in Indianapolis for an IT Supplier Integration Summit. They will be hosted by their respective workstream leads as well as representatives from Elanco legal, procurement, and finally by a handful of principal Supplier Integration and Management advisors from our SIAM partner, Alcor, who have been tasked with incentivizing the value and cohesion of our IT vendors. We will first present the expected support structure into which all current and future vendors will integrate. We will drive adoption and collaboration from the vendors by advertising this model as a differentiator and value-add to their future engagements, should their involvement yield a successful outcome. Using a “carrot rather than a stick” approach, we intend to reward the positive behaviors of our vendors, rather than focus on punishing behaviors we deem undesirable. We will incentivize vendors to trust each other and work together in delivering a seamless end-to-end service to our users, rather than focusing on their individual SLAs. After breakout sessions for clarifications and negotiation during this summit, our objective is to exit the week with contracts ready to be signed, as well as a clearly defined support pattern which we can apply to all future vendors entering the stack.
This task will not be quick or easy to achieve, we believe we have selected forward-thinking vendors that will embrace this new approach, but still anticipate a level of healthy cynicism that we’ll need to overcome to drive this mindset at all levels within their teams. Like all great things, it will take time to fully mature and blossom before the value will be truly realized. On the contrary, our vision is straightforward in concept: Enable a low-touch, scalable, autonomous service management model that maximizes customer satisfaction while minimizing the effort of the end user. We often hear the term “cognitive era” used to drive and accompany the forward momentum of modern IT organizations. In actuality, this era has already come and gone.
We are at the dawn of the effortless era, where problems are resolved before you know they exist, and your needs are addressed before you ask. If we are to differentiate Elanco through IT, we must first begin with ensuring our business partners trust, rely on, and recognize the value that IT brings to the table. This is our first step toward a true IT-as-a-Business capability – a chance to shift us from a cost center to a profit center.
Our enterprise architecture strategy compliments the ITIL framework which teaches us that loyalty results from the recognition of value. If our desire as an IT organization is to secure the loyalty of the business, it is critical that our value as an enabler of their processes and a contributor to innovation be recognized immediately. To take the first stride from the starting blocks we have focused on incentivizing the behaviors we value as a company. To do this successfully, we will need your help!
We ask primarily for your patience, guidance, and flexibility as these vendors traverse an unfamiliar landscape alongside us. Only through the faith, perseverance, and legitimate support from the broader organization will this effort find success!
Please stay tuned for the results of this historic step toward the next generation of service delivery,
With very best regards,
Adam Fussey
IT Global Operations Lead
Ben Nuthak
Enterprise Service Management Architect
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to gather wood and put them to work.
Instead, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupיry