With uncertainty ahead and analysts stumped predicting post COVID-19 future growth, one thing is for sure, businesses who are adapting to be future fit will be the resilient ones and emerge stronger in what will no doubt be a more competitive market. Gartner has a great resource ‘2020 Gartner CIO Agenda: Resilience During Disruption’, based on feedback from 1,070 CIO’s across 64 countries their guidance is not to use ‘wait and see’ or ‘defensive cost-cutting’ strategies to see through adversity and emerge in good shape. In summary, Gartner calls out three core areas 1) Alignment: Great leader ..read more

Vendira has been fortunate enough to work with Alert Logic and various UK Service Providers in helping accelerate productisation of their MDR services into new Managed Service offerings. Here is our view of the benefits of Alert Logic for IT service providers, and the top things to consider when defining your managed service offering. Let’s start with a brief look at the “why”, “what” and “how” of Alert Logic’s Managed Detection and Response services. Why…. Ultimately businesses need to be confident that they and their customers are protected from today’s ever-evolving cybercriminals. For som ..read more

At Vendira we are passionate about helping service providers be more successful. We believe that in order to achieve sustainable success in such a fast-changing industry, it’s imperative to have well-armed and enabled sales and pre-sales teams. We also recognise that all change should be cognisant of service delivery to cash and client solution life-cycle management. Making a successful change to improve only comes after someone recognises that the “norm” is not good enough and focuses their energy on the “why you can and must change”, rather than a whole heap of reasons why you can’t. It als ..read more

Something a colleague once said always stuck with me “to improve our client service, we need to fix the front! Let’s get sales selling the right things in the right way”. I later realised after traversing my career to the front end just how much pre-sales needed to be better enabled in order to succeed in an ever-changing, more demanding and competitive IT services sector. For the purpose of this article, I am referencing “client engagement” rather than “customer service or experience”. "Engagement" is more applicable with sales, and "client" is more appropriate than "customer" which is more ..read more

Why the Product Management Process should be something that Service Providers really 'go to work on' Here’s a cheeky little statement dedicated to all those business process cynics out there: ,"It should be a given that the application of a good quality, end-to-end, product managemet process is fundamental to commercially successful managed services, for any service provider." Vendira and I agree that everything about this statement is one hundred percent bang on the money – true and accurate. We also agree that it is way easier to say, than to do! But, a ‘good quality, end-to-end, product ma ..read more

Improving in whatever it is we do it’s always interesting to observe and learn from others, especially those that are close to what you do. I thought that many of us in the technology services industry will find this summary of Atos investor day transcript informative. I have focused on the more interesting elements relating to technology managed services and hence not included anything to do with the Worldline payment processing business. Useful data source links including the full transcript are included at the bottom of this blog summary. Gilles Arditti states that Atos set out in 2009 to ..read more

Having spent the last few days digesting an informative report from Pacesetters.pinsentmasons.com on Advanced Manufacturing and Technology (AMT) businesses. It made me step back and think about many businesses, how they partner and every aspect of our lives. We are certainly living in the era of services, those that are successful in commercialising value-adding services look to prosper. It is great to see that AMT businesses are predicting that services will generate more revenue than products in the future. Bring on “servitisation”, opening up new ways of monetising your capability and deli ..read more

Selecting the right Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) solution is a big decision. Getting it right results in a great return on investment. CPQ should be a real enabler for the business, a platform that allows for efficient and innovative scaling while better enabling your people to serve clients, ultimately helping improve the bottom line. Before we begin let’s be clear what we mean by CPQ solution, it’s essential that “CPQ solution” is seen as a wider than just a system. At Vendira we work on the basis that a CPQ solution is a combination of the following 4 elements: Portfolio for products &am ..read more

With the increasing pace of innovation resulting in an improved choice of products & services available in today’s market, it is not uncommon for technology focused service providers to be challenged in managing their vendor catalogues. Poorly maintained Vendor catalogues can turn into a error ridden nightmare for procurement, product and sales teams, worst case resulting in inefficient and error prone quoting. This can result in significant profit leakage coupled with delays, rework and frustrated people. It’s important for business leaders to have a fit for purpose Vendor catalogue stra ..read more

As product managers we understand the different hats that you need to wear when developing and life-cycling services. Services may need to be differentiated and should be designed to best monetise the opportunity to maximise service revenues and help successfully win new business. Successful service providers will have a comprehensive, current and relevant portfolio of products and services that they can advise, design, deliver and manage in providing solutions that meet and even exceed client’s needs. With this comes the challenge of product & service life-cycle management which include t ..read more