Today, most businesses operate like tech companies. Software is central to most business functions. For instance, their website or smartphone app will often be the primary customer interaction channel. From information querying to purchases, order management, secure transactions, and service cycle management, customers will rely on digital platforms that the business offers to support their needs. Similarly, enterprise applications are the backbone of most operational workflows too. While the digital experience is much appreciated by customers and employees alike, it also comes with the need to maintain resilience and meet the performance expectations of these users.
Studies show that nearly 17% of all customers will leave a business with just one bad experience and nearly 60% will leave with just a couple of negative experiences. Keeping this in mind, companies need to ensure that their enterprise applications perform well in any situation. These applications may be customer-facing self-service channels, internal operations management applications, or field, or POS management applications. Irrespective of the application type, enterprises need to ensure resilience, high performance, and zero downtime for their digital assets.
This is possible only if they have a robust enterprise application support practice to keep applications running. In other words, businesses must have an application support practice that is proactive, professionally managed, and geared toward overall profitability.
The support context here refers to the ability of the business to get its core digital assets back to working at full potential in the wake of any disruptive event or incident. It also refers to the ability of the users to always extract the maximum value out of these enterprise systems with proper guidance, handholding, and knowledge transfer from a support center. The support may be availed either directly by end customers or by business teams within the workforce who leverage different digital systems to handle operations.
So how can this be achieved?
4 ways to supercharge application support for better business value
Let us explore 4 ways to deliver better business value through an efficient application support practice in any organization:
Centralize support operations
The quickest way to ensure optimal support and maintenance of IT assets is to streamline processes to improve the accessibility of application support services. To enable users to always use the applications appropriately or to recover quickly in the wake of a disruptive event or technical issue, IT support must get involved immediately. Every user must know where to reach out for support instantly. If support services are distributed, then the onus will be on the user to find out where they must report an issue, follow up with multiple stakeholders using different mediums, and so on. Time is precious hence the need for a help desk dedicated to IT support organized at a central level. Every department or business unit should have a direct link to the centralized application management and support ecosystem. Any support ticket raised should be managed with transparency and visibility to ensure timely resolutions.
Streamlined support workflow
Help desk teams at the L1, L2, and L3 levels of support can be organized within the central team and assigned tickets based on the severity of the incident or problem reported. An optimized workflow must be implemented in the centralized support system, which facilitates easy exchange of information, and support communication between the users and technical specialists. For an end user who may either be a customer or an employee, the only effort should be reporting an incident or issue to the help desk. The centralized application support service should be able to direct the incident ticket to the concerned specialist team, initiate follow-up requests, and update the progress centrally. The user should be able to track and monitor all updates on progress in a single location where they reported the problem in the first place.
Implement efficient tools and processes
Companies need to establish well-defined tiered support systems that can cater to requests faster and more optimally. Such systems require minimal complexity to ensure faster progress and instant response. Having tiered support services also allows the business to leverage the full capabilities of powerful tools or platforms to streamline IT service requests from users. These tools can perform quick and proactive monitoring of the enterprise application ecosystem regularly, conduct performance and security audits, enable easy re-launches after issue resolution, and manage support ticketing effortlessly. They must also provide transparent reporting capabilities so that decision-makers can evaluate the overall performance of application support practices from time to time.
Document and standardize support procedures
Eliminating the re-occurrence of technical issues is a critical metric that enterprises must strive to achieve support excellence. Even enterprise systems that have been around for years will encounter new users at an operational level from time to time. Irrespective of the expertise of the user, problems need to be resolved quickly, and historical references to solutions must be readily available. This is where the creation of knowledge bases and the provision of self-service options can play a major role. Every issue resolved must have a log in the organization’s service history for future reference. It will save time and effort when similar risks occur again.
A reliable partner is the best option
We have seen how proactive and professional application support practices empower better performance for a business’s digital infrastructure. However, building and managing a dedicated support practice for IT assets can prove to be a Herculean effort for companies burdened by the load of a slew of core activities. Besides, the need to hire and upskill IT resources, investments in technology used for managing evolving digital assets, etc. will also cause severe pressure on IT budgets.
The best option for businesses to ensure a proactive and efficient application support ecosystem is to collaborate with a technology partner like Trinus. With world-class experts, proven processes, and well-defined SLAs, our managed services will ensure that your digital assets always run at the optimal level. Get in touch with us now.