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PERSPECTIVES

Risk-proof Your IT Deals With These Contract Essentials – Part 6

Are your metrics measuring the business impact?

What you control is governed by the metrics you measure and report on. But are the right metrics being measured? Traditionally, the functional and back-office metrics have been linked to the respective functional areas and the linkage to enterprise objectives, if at all, may not be evident. The Business Level Agreements (BLAs) framework can help fill this vacuum and ensure that the reported metrics are linked to the business priorities.

Some of the typical BLAs used in F&A processes:

  • Accounts Payable: Error free payments, DPO, PO penetration
  • Accounts Receivable: DSO, Cash Application Time, Average Time to Bill
  • General Accounting: Days to close month-end, Reconciliation Cycle Time

A well thought out set of BLAs is a great mechanism for the support functions (and service providers) to see their impact on the business and the other way round. Enterprises are increasingly embedding these in the contracts to drive risk-sharing and partnership behaviours.

Transaction Based Pricing Model

This is an output-based pricing model wherein the fees structure is based on the transactions / Resource Units (RUs) handled. Buyers should consider this model in the following scenarios:

  • Fluctuating but predictable volumes with reasonable accuracy (availability of historical data to validate this and baseline is critical)
  • Buyer landscape has lower degree of customization, and the processes are largely standardized
  • Procurement has a positive experience of using pay-as-you-go models
  • There are no restrictions (regulatory or compliance related) in sharing resources as the providers may deploy ‘bubble’ teams across multiple clients
  • Relationship with the provider is strong and transparent and the providers have a complete visibility into the buyer’s demand funnel

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

SASE is an emerging technology and organisations must look at it as a journey rather than viewing it as a product. SASE converges the functions of network and security solutions into a unified, global cloud-native service. A SASE solution is meant to provide complete session protection, regardless of whether a user is on or off the corporate network.

The SASE solutions require investment in points of presence and extensive network coverage and on a maturity curve, only an absolute need to put security in the cloud should motivate to consider this as of now; the ecosystem is evolving very rapidly though.

Adoption of SD-WAN

SD-WAN allows for more agile ways of working and improves site availability through simplified and faster failover and relocation of traffic. It helps optimize costs as once implemented, it allows for better aligned demand and supply model to reduce underutilised assets and increase efficiencies as well as utilise a range of cheaper underlying connectivity.

While it offers benefits of technology-agnostic overlay and dynamic routing, without a clear strategy and transformation plan, many of the SD-WAN benefits can be limited or lost such as the ability to consolidate multiple network functions in a single platform.

Could a ‘Virtual Captive’ be your Panacea

Virtual captives are increasingly becoming an acceptable solution as they occupy a median position in a spectrum that is occupied by third party outsourcing on one end and captives on the other. For the mid-market enterprises, who end up experiencing a ‘small-fish’ syndrome with large third-party providers and captive remains a pipedream due to lack of capital/appetite, virtual captive offers best of both worlds. It is essentially a hybrid model wherein a local provider will provide all the necessary infrastructure (managed facility, hardware, connectivity etc), talent (sourcing, recruitment & HR), compliance and support services (accounting, compliance, IT operations) while letting the client retain full control of the operations.

Some of the specific advantages this sourcing model offers

  • Higher degree of control: This model allows the enterprise to have full control of the business operations while the back-office set-up and processes are managed by the local provider. The enterprise leadership can practically walk-in and focus on business without having to worry about the ‘operational’ and ‘compliance’ overheads on Day 1.
  • Transparent and Flexible Pricing Model: The most common construct is a cost-plus structure wherein the provider charges a mark-up on costs i.e., Talent (typically 70-85% of the costs), Infrastructure and Support function costs. Numerous as-a-service pricing models (GCC-as-a-service, Talent-as-a-service, Compliance-as-a-service etc) are also available for enterprises who may want to a bundled price or specific services.
  • Reduced time to market: Mature providers are able to provide a significant jumpstart to the timeline leveraging their well tested operations templates and readily available workforce.
  • Low Capex: Unlike a captive that involves significant upfront investments in infrastructure set up, this is a fully variable ‘Pay as you grow’ model. This is extremely useful especially for mid-market enterprises who can test the concept without necessarily having to block large sums of capital.

Be Mindful of Muddying the Waters

Contracts with remit ranging from managed services to supporting Digital Transformation need to clearly delineate the solution and the underlying people and commercial construct. The Capacity and Capability charters are very distinct and painting both with the same brush can lead to a less than an Optimum outcome for both parties.

Choose your COLA wisely

In this hyperinflationary environment, COLA, once a standard provision, is gaining increasing prominence. And rightly so, as a typical managed services contracts spans 5 years and a robust COLA mechanism/clause that protects the interests of both parties is critical to an equitable contract. It is also in the interest of both Buyer and Seller to include a Benchmarking clause that allows potential commercial ‘reset’ in an uncertain business environment.

Productivity Gains in Field Service / Onsite Support

Field Service productivity is impacted by SLAs and the underlying support model. The primary driver for productivity is strong emphasis on ticket elimination and “shift-left” of the issues. Productivity can be increased by reducing field service engineers’ intervention. In order to achieve this, service providers can consider strengthening the L1/L1.5 Support with tenured resources to maximize resolution at that level. Furthermore, providers can also consider leveraging following mechanisms to enhance efficiency:

  • Leveraging Inter vPro or similar solutions for remote troubleshooting
  • Tech Café
  • Vending machine for peripherals
  • Virtual kiosk/ Tech bar
  • AR/VR technologies
  • Digilocker

Service Desk Contact Volume by Channels

Typically, first gen outsourcing deals / legacy environments have calls and emails as predominant contact channel and proportion of calls and emails could potentially exceed 80-90% of the contacts. However, as service providers rationalize the workflow and implement chat bot and other tools, proportion of calls and emails gets reduced in favour of other channels e.g., chat and web with lower cost to serve. In an end state, service providers may have 60-75% of contact volume by web and chat and remaining 25%-40% by phone calls and emails.

Benchmarking and Industry Focused Peer Set

Our advice to enterprises and service providers is to leverage/ contextualize the benchmarks depending upon scope of services and not to have pre-emptive bias for or against any industry. Simply speaking, if scope is a horizontal such as a multi-tower infrastructure deal with its own baselines and environment maturity, then that should drive the benchmark reference set agnostic of industry. However, if we are talking about industry specific scope e.g., payer platform or trading platform support, we’ll need to consider industry specific benchmarks.

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