Client Challenge
Our client, a multinational Financial Services organisation with more than 30,000 employees, approached Coeus as it needed to ensure its End-User Services (EUS) were providing best value to the business and able to meet the needs of a modern, forward-thinking organisation.
They faced a common dilemma that most large organisations face when considering their approach to End User Services: should they deliver them in-house or source them from a specialist third party provider? The in-house approach normally achieves better customer satisfaction and can typically provide a more ‘hands on’ approach informed by local knowledge and the political idiosyncrasies of large organisations. Whilst an outsourced provider can typically drive down total cost of service and can bring a wealth of technical expertise to accelerate the delivery of technology transformation.
They had initially attempted to approach the IT service provider market to establish if they could source services from an external provider, in order to assess if this would present a commercial benefit and improve End User Services for the business.
The attempt to assess the market failed as they could not collate the data and construct the models necessary to evaluate the options. This was coupled with a lack of capacity and engagement from the stakeholders within End User Services to fully participate in the sourcing evaluation.
The importance of optimised End-User Services
EUS (or as it is now more commonly referred to, Workplace Services) represents a key component of the Digital Transformation journey. If it is not optimised, it can restrict a user’s ability to fully interact with systems, which usually stems from service design or underlying infrastructure issues. These limitations can result in:
- An inability to support a flexible working model;
- A loss of business productivity due to users not being able to complete all activities;
- Integration problems caused by incompatibility issues from diverse devices;
- Increased downtime of key corporate and business systems; and
- Day-to-day poor performance and stability can affect staff satisfaction and even retention.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, end user devices have become the lifeline which connect staff to their customer, colleagues and teams. They have morphed well beyond a tool to do our jobs, into collaboration and communications devices that allow companies and teams to continue working effectively from thousands of disparate remote locations. Put simply, without robust end user services, a company would fail to operate in a global pandemic. It has become clear that remote and flexible working will become the new normal, even after the Covid-19 restrictions are rescinded, the dependencies of performant and reliable EUS will only continue to grow.
How were poor End User Services impacting the client?The end user devices and underlying technologies had been underperforming for a number of years. The service desk and customer satisfaction data showed that whilst the EUS teams were very effective at resolving user issues / incidents, the underlying technologies and parts of the service just weren’t meeting the needs of the organisation.
Some symptoms of this were: several minutes to boot a laptop, several security layers, numerous usernames, passwords and highly convoluted steps to connect remotely which had become more critical during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dealing with the impact of a previous, failed EUS procurement
The procurement team, in conjunction with the EUS team, had previously attempted to approach the market to assess if the services could be provided better and more cost effectively from external providers. However, they struggled to collate the data and requirements to be able to effectively engage with potential service providers to assess if this approach would alleviate the issues and reduce operating costs.
In parallel to this, the EUS services team were focused on establishing and delivering a EUS modernisation programme which would seek to alleviate the performance issues.
The organisation was struggling to co-ordinate and prioritise these two activities and there seemed to be a dichotomy in the two approaches. Due to this the organisation failed to collate and structure the information required to affectively assess the market, this eventually led to demise of the EUS procurement.
The impact of this failed procurement was that the organisation was left in a state of flux regarding their strategic approach and desired operating model for EUS. The organisation needed clear and definitive direction to establish if EUS outsourcing was the correct path.
The Director of End User Services and the procurement team reached out to Coeus Consulting as a trusted and experienced partner who could cut through the complexities and bring both their procurement / sourcing and EUS experience to the working group.
Coeus’ independence ensured an impartial assessment of end user services whilst our sourcing experience and benchmark data provided insight into the marketplace and potential commercial offerings.
Coeus' Approach
Coeus assessed whether services were sufficiently high quality and good value - or if it would be more efficient to source services from market providers. We also applied tried-and-tested data driven models, providing an independent, objective evidenced-based set of recommendations. Our approach to the engagement was as follows:
- Completed a data capture and current state review, covering; current operating model, financial breakdown, structure and head count, supplier / contract information, performance data, strategy documents and planned transformation initiatives;
- The Coeus assessment included: our observations and recommendations, a review against industry domain models, a maturity & value calculation and finally sourcing readiness assessment; and
- Following the data capture and assessment, we developed our recommendations which included. actions to improve each sub service within EUS on quality and or cost, strategic options, cost benefit analysis, a high-level business case and executive summary.
Outcomes
The CIO stakeholder group welcomed the insight and commented that they had not previously seen such clarity or transparency of EUS within their organisation.
The approach aligned the services to an industry model, which supported benchmarking against other similar sized organisations for cost and quality. In turn this was used to provide a market assessment and potential benefits of externally sourcing services. It delivered a clear evidence-based value assessment for the organisation.
The work clearly identified areas for; service improvement and opportunities to accelerate transformation initiatives which could expedite benefits realisation and cost reductions. Coeus’ industry knowledge and direct sourcing experience of EUS provided insight into the potential sourcing options, their feasibility, and the financial and non-financial benefits of each. This provided the organisation with the insight and guidance needed as to whether they should outsource EUS or focus primarily on internal delivery and service transformation.
Our EUS Services
Coeus Consulting have a range of capabilities across EUS. A few examples of areas where we have supported clients are:
Modernisation and Transformation
- Advice and strategy on workplace technologies and how to adopt and implement these
- Guidance and Support with implementation for major transformation programmes
- Service adoptions and transitions
Operating Models
- Design and implementation of operating models for EUS in highly complex organisations
- Service integration, consolidation, and optimisation
Maturity and Value for Money Assessments
- Service maturity assessment and benchmarking to similar organisations
- Total cost of ownership collation and analysis
- Value assessment and market benchmarking
Sourcing
- Independent market insight and assessment
- Support and management of EUS sourcing events and subsequent service transitions
Read more about our Sourcing capabilities here.
