The IT Operations team has the primary mission and responsibility for delivering and maintaining business critical applications and systems in production for their users. The management emphasis is on high availability, performance, security, and tightly controlling change. This mission cannot be compromised because downtime has a significant negative financial impact to the business. However, another vital mission for IT operations is to provide systems and infrastructure to support the application lifecycle process, an activity which consistently takes a back seat to the mission critical production environment. These application lifecycle users often suffer due to the more pressing priorities of IT. This “service gap” between the needs of non-production “lifecycle users” and the support that IT operations can provide them due to the imperative to manage mission critical production applications is what we will label as the IT Service Dilemma.

Surgient believes that in order to effectively address the IT Service Dilemma and fulfill both IT missions, a self-service solution that empowers lifecycle users is the answer. The Surgient Virtual Automation Platform™ provides a full self-service solution with a patented and architected approach called Policy-Driven Self-Service™ that meets these requirements. The Surgient Platform effectively transforms IT Operations into a cloud computing provider for non-production users. Implementing the Surgient Platform enables compelling business benefits such as reducing operating costs and capital expenditures, improving productivity, and increasing business agility.

In order to support this claim, this whitepaper will describe the importance of self-service and when it is appropriate, a description of the IT Service Dilemma and how IT is attempting to address the issue today, the market requirements for self-service as it relates to IT, and how the Surgient Virtual Automation Platform™ with Policy Driven Self-Service addresses these requirements.

Why Self-Service?

Before understanding the concept of Surgient’s Policy-Driven Self-Service as it relates to information technology, it is important to understand the value of self-service solutions and approaches in general. Most everyone is familiar with common consumer based self-service solutions such as the automated teller machine in the banking industry, “pay-at-the-pump” at convenience stores, self-service check-out at grocery stores and retail outlets, and self check-in kiosks as part of the airline boarding process… there are countless examples of self-service solutions. Given the tremendous and growing strategic investment in these types of solutions across many industries there must be a compelling reason for self-service. What is it?

The simple answer is twofold – enormous cost savings for service providers and a superior user experience for consumers. Very few paradigms can be implemented that provide such substantial value to both consumers and service providers; therefore, the argument for self-service is powerful. Let’s take a look at the benefits for each group in more detail:

Consumer Benefits

In today’s fast-paced lifestyle where self-sufficiency reigns supreme and time is the most important commodity, consumers want to be empowered – they expect value, choice, and speed. They want to choose when to engage with suppliers on their own schedules and therefore need easy and flexible access. They don’t want to be bogged down waiting for service… consumers demand instant response. As an example, a busy working mother can shop for her kids’ clothing online late at night after she has put the kids to bed – Internet shopping is a form of self-service. Self-service provides consumers with the experience they are looking for – easy and widely available access, an engagement method that makes efficient use of time, and self sufficiency to maintain some level of control in a world where demands on our time can be overwhelming. Simply put, self-service empowers consumers. In the case of IT and the enterprise, the application lifecycle user (consumer) needs controlled access to IT resources without placing an additional burden on already over-taxed IT personnel.

Service Provider Benefits

The primary driver for implementing self-service solutions by service providers is financial. It is the promise of saving vast amounts of labor costs through the automation of processes and delegating these efforts to their consumers in an appealing fashion. There has been much written about the cost savings of implementing self- service solutions. One example is the self check-in kiosks for airline boarding. In this case, the industry’s average cost savings is 95% over agent based check-in procedures. In addition to the huge savings in labor, self-service solutions may increase revenues by gaining access to segments of the market that were not previously served, such as the case with Internet shopping. Companies that implement an online storefront can generate increased sales from untapped customer bases. As described earlier, self-service empowers consumers and builds customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately providing incremental sales and revenue opportunities. In summary, self-service is a significant value driver for businesses. With Policy-Driven Self-Service, IT professionals can improve service levels, maximize the utilization of resources and spend their valuable time on higher value efforts.

Necessary Conditions for Self-Service

In order for a self-service solution to be applied to a given marketplace, the following conditions are necessary:

• Strong Business Case

  It is important that there is significant economic benefit to the service provider. In most cases there are not only considerable cost savings over time, but also an opportunity for increased revenue. It is vital to understand the initial and on-going cost of the self-service solution to determine whether the ROI is worthwhile. A compelling business case will drive a service provider to offer a self-service solution.

• Automatable Process

  The business process or transactions being engaged by self-service must be automatable. There must be a clear path for the transaction or process to be automated, controlled, and managed by technology. It is too expensive to provide a self-service solution if the service provider must be involved in every transaction. Business processes that require high levels of manual intervention do not provide the speed and self-sufficiency required by users and rarely achieve the desired ROI. For example, without a sophisticated robotics system that is not practical or cost effective, opening up a laptop and adding more RAM would not be an automatable process. Therefore, an automatable and controllable process is a requirement in order for a self-service solution to be feasible.

• Usable Implementation

  The self-service solution must be easy to use when performing tasks within the system. For example, if a bank customer needs to deposit money into an automated teller machine and the system displayed a list of bank transaction codes without giving the customer any indication as to which transaction code represented a deposit, withdrawal, or balance inquiry, then the solution would not be usable for that customer. However, a bank teller may be able to effectively use the solution since they would be familiar with the transaction codes. It is true for all self-service solutions that they must be appropriately usable for their intended audience.

• Easy User Adoption

  Self-service must provide a user experience that is superior to current approaches for a given set of users. The best self-service experiences are ones that do not create a large departure from normal human behavior patterns. User adoption is the key to successful self-service and so the experience needs to be such that consumers are willing and motivated to interact with the solution. During the dot com boom there was an online furniture retailer business that failed due to lack of user adoption. It was not natural to purchase furniture over the Internet without the ability try it out. This self-service solution wasn’t natural for consumers to adopt. Therefore, the best self-service solutions make it easy for users to transition to and prefer the new approach.

• Service Gap

  Self-service is highly productive for situations where there is a gap between what the consumer wants or needs versus what the service provider is actually capable of delivering. These situations create tension between the consumer and supplier which often result in dissatisfaction by both parties. In these cases, consumers want to be more self sufficient and the providers want relief from demanding users. Self-service is a mechanism to mutually address the needs of both groups – empowering users with self-service while simultaneously automating the delivery of a service by the provider.

These five factors summarize the primary conditions for the implementing a successful and compelling self-service solution. Now that the case has been established for the exceptional value of self-service solutions for both service providers and consumers, we will explore self-service as it is applied to IT operations within large global corporations.

Read the rest of this whitepaper from Surgient to find out more about Policy-Driven Self-Service.