Application Support Effectiveness

Application Support costs can go way over the IT budget of the organization if not handled properly and herein comes the concept of lean which is about eliminating the waste from a process. Cost incurred in the Application Support area can far exceed project cost because it is continues for a much longer duration, hence there is a bigger risk if support process are not handled efficiently and effectively.

Application Support consists of providing resources to execute and manage the following types of services: 

1. Incident and problem resolution
2. User requests / queries – Answer questions about the operation of the system and provide planning services to customer
3. Scheduled services such as planned enhancements to add capabilities or provide custom one-time access to information

Points to be considered when planning a support cell include: number of resources required to handle the activities, taking into consideration time when there are spikes in support which may happen due to addition of a large user base, are the support activities beneficial or just routine work, are the applications providing the desired value to business. A lot of support tasks are shorter in duration and require in-depth knowledge of the system or time-consuming analysis and research. Hence it is important for resources being assigned to support to be Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) so tasks can be analysed and resolved quickly

Let’s look at some of the challenges encountered by support teams:

1. Scheduled support activities can be interrupted by incidents, critical bugs that take priority over routine support.
2. High priority incidents / issues need quick resolution and hence the need of skilled staff that has the required knowledge to execute the activities.
3. Motivation to support staff to carry on as they may find routine support activities as a burden and a hindrance to their growth in the organization
4. Focus on application support is much lesser as organizations are more oriented to accomplish strategic initiatives, hence support may become neglected.
5. Logging of support tickets that have been verbally communicated over the phone. Focus may shift to user making the most noise rather than ticket that deserves more priority
6. Lack of a knowledge base to document resolutions due to which any similar incidents occurring in the future may require analysis from scratch

Some methods to address the above challenges and improve the value of support are as follows: 

1. Prioritize and log all requests / incidents into a Service Desk
2. Maintain a knowledge base to document current and future solutions to incidents
3. Track time taken to resolves queries so that spikes in the future can be handled effectively
4. Define metrics to measure success of support activities and staff so that management can get a better understanding of the value provided

Proper planning and staffing is a key requirement to the effectiveness of application support. Skilled resources and proper management of support activities also plays a vital role in adding value and reducing unnecessary costs. It is essential that the organization focuses on support as it does for other strategic projects so that the value is not undermined.

About Author:

Onkar Lalla is a Consultant and an important part of the Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd.  think tank. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at onkar.l@spluspl.com