IT Application Support – A Sustained Value Add

For an organization to be able to make efficient use of its applications and extract sustained value, it is important to have right application management strategy in place. IT Application support and maintenance has a key role to play for the success of this strategy.

Mentioned below are some key areas through which right value can be realized from the Application support:

• Alignment and benefit realization: The support operation should be aligned with the business and IT goals. It is important to identify the criticality of business and the key areas that needs a support focus. Service model should then support the business and improve the value over time at an affordable cost. For e.g. an ERP implementation that is taking care of the company’s operations would be extremely critical and any disruption in that might result not only in heavy losses but also a bad customer experience. Thus identifying the right focus areas would be give better cost effective solution.
• Cost optimization: There is always a tradeoff between service cost and the risk involved. Challenge is to find the optimal balance between cost and risk. The manager needs to weigh the cost that is associated with the disruption (risk) and the cost involved in support to mitigate this risk and take an informed decision on same.
• Processes: Adopt best practice and processes resulting in efficient and effective application management. People should be well trained and uniformly comply with all the outlined practices. Also it is important to identify key challenges in the support management like prioritization, lack of documentation, failure to fix recurring problems, right communication strategy, handling of peaks, etc to make the team efficient and extract best value from the same.
• People: Once the key areas of focus is identified by the management, it is important that based on the findings, right mix of people should be provided to the support team with required knowledge and available at right time to support and enhance the system. 
• Tools and Technology: An able and motivated team can perform to its best only if right infrastructure is available to enable them execute the defined processes efficiently and within the time. The tools and technology used must be assessed regularly to identify the gaps and provide necessary support for that.
• Governance: Right policies and controls must be defined with appropriate structures to make sure these are enforced and followed. Regular process audits should be conducted to ensure that the controls are in place and process is seamless.
• Performance Measurement: Key metrics should be identified to measure the performance and effectiveness of the support team. These key metrics must align with the business/IT goals. Support framework should evaluate progress against each required parameter regularly and identify the areas of improvement. The framework should be flexible to encompass any change that is required as per evaluation. This would ensure that all the risks are mitigated and make the framework robust.

An ideal application management strategy would encompass all the service and cost objectives to optimize a support model. It should leverage effective processes, resources and technology to deliver efficient and effective solution on time.

True value can only be gained from an application if an organization has an effective application management strategy in place with right model of support and technology. The focus areas must be identified based on the business goals to make sure the system is cost effective at the same time.

About Author:

Mohini Bhandari is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at mohini.b@spluspl.com