Vitality Supplier and Partner Awards 2021

Revo recognised in Vitality Awards for “going above and beyond” to help client

Revo has been highly commended in the Service Provider of the Year category in the Vitality Supplier and Partner Awards 2021.

The UK-based health and life insurance business contracted Revo to implement and support 4me’s service management platform.

At the awards, which were held at The Soho Hotel in London, on March 15, Vitality said that Revo was small team that went “above and beyond to help Vitality deliver strategic projects”.

Charles Bresler, CTO of Vitality, has said: “The (Revo) team is constantly with us to drive success and it is wonderful for me to be part of that. We feel that passion and it comes through. They want to drive my vision and that’s what I appreciate.”

Revo was nominated in a number of categories in the 2021 awards. It is not the first year that Revo has been recognised by Vitality for the work it does with them. Last year it was highly commended in the new Supplier of the Year category.

If you would like to learn more about what makes Revo different, please download our latest eBook:

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Why size does not matter when it comes to SIAM

How SIAM has evolved to enable better service collaboration for all

Niche is now mainstream

Service Integration and Management (SIAM) has been growing in significance in recent years, but it is still, perhaps, seen as useful or accessible only to large organisations.

This growing awareness of the ability of SIAM tools to help businesses control their internal and external service providers and to move to a more dynamic and selective sourcing model, means that many software providers have developed SIAM bolt-ons to their software toolkits.

Complexity of the tool and consultancy efforts can make the cost prohibitive for smaller organisations. But what really makes a difference is a tool that has been built to offer SIAM from the start. This will make the scalability and collaboration capabilities of SIAM affordable for all.

If you would like to learn more about what SIAM offers to both small and large enterprises, please download our latest eBook Why SIAM matters.

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Managing the cost of service management

A complete view of Service Management costs

How to look beyond the toolset and those who use it to get a full picture

Looking beyond IT

The cost of service management has long been firmly allocated to the IT budget. As the demand for service has increased and morphed with the process of digital transformation, this cost has steadily increased. In most cases it is still part of the IT budget, perhaps with licence costs allocated to departmental budgets or business centres across a geographically dispersed organisation. The key to greater transformation is to understand not only how the organisation can improve the way that it works and the way it manages processes, but also how much all of this costs.

Costs for ITSM and ESM teams go beyond the license and staffing level, and must also include how much is spent on servicing technologies, assets, people and processes across the business. This includes service being received from third parties such as suppliers or business partners.

3 cost centres

There are three main service cost centres that we need to consider if we are to get the full cost picture. These are:

  • Time
  • Assets
  • Outsourced services

The information needed to get the full picture of costs within each of these areas is usually available, but not always easily accessible as it is often not consolidated or available in a quick and easy-to-digest way.

Revo can help you to track all service costs in 4me and give you the complete view of service costs within your organisation.

To learn more about these service costs centres and how to get all the information you need to understand your service management costs, download our eBook How to get a complete view of service management costs:

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How to survive switching ITSM solution

how to survive switching ITSM system

Managing the perceived pitfalls of changing to a new Service Management toolset

how to survive switching ITSM system

Struggling with inflexible, costly or slow ITSM?

The majority of organisations with a significant requirement for IT infrastructure and support services will already have an ITSM solution in place. In many cases, this system was originally purchased to cater for ticketing and managing support workflow. Typically, as the organisation grows in size and complexity, the ITSM tool will begin to struggle to cope with demand. The key strain placed on an early ITSM system, and the team that is using it, will be related to changes in organisational structure and the more complex processes that come with it. Older and more basic toolsets simply do not have the flexibility to grow with the wants and needs of the modern organisation, resulting in the dumbing down of support and service capability. This frustrates both the providers and, more importantly, the consumers of the services needed.

So what are the barriers to change?

ITSM tools are only as good as the processes configured to take care of customer enquiries. Tools are often limited by the extent of the knowledge of the person or people setting up these processes. Service can quickly come apart when customer demand shifts or a new issue arises.

ITSM tools use knowledge bases to automate and adapt service. The team operating them uses knowledge data to help with new and existing customer issues. But the right knowledge can be hard to access and difficult to automate, preventing fast and efficient service from call handlers.

Let’s talk about the cost of ITSM

In reality, the cost of an older toolset will be greater than more modern, agile and SaaS-based ITSM solutions. SaaS ITSM delivers more flexible pricing, user account deployment and device-to-device availability than older, on-prem counterparts. SaaS ITSM also offers an easier path to the scalability that many organisations are searching for. In many cases, the problem is not the cost of per seat or overall licensing, more the cost of the consultancy or implementation hours needed to switch the ITSM to how the business requires it to work. Legacy projects are often associated with high consultancy costs and painful and drawn-out projects that always take longer than expected and, indeed, deliver more pain than expected. In reality, it is a time is money issue, where the consultants and configuration time needed to deliver a new ITSM system prevent organisations from switching.

Breaking down the perceived barriers

Although not all modern ITSM toolsets are the same, there has been a significant switch in recent years to more agile, flexible and easily configured systems that solve key project time issues. Revo’s experience with such toolsets has enabled us to significantly reduce our time-to-deploy and cut the overheads that customers need to pay when switching. This is the way it should be, with the consultants’ time focused on where true value is added – integrating the solution to best effect across the business and often enabling digital transformation beyond the project scope.

Value is a key phrase here. We often see businesses that are focused on the toolset and its capability and not on how great an impact the right toolset will have on other areas outside of IT.

A little time can pay huge dividends

At Revo, we are confident that if you are using another leading ITSM toolset we will be able to remove the pain you may be experiencing and also improve your service management processes – all with 4me. We appreciate that switching ITSM or taking time to truly assess the limitations of your current system is a big, and often scary, ask but it will reward you with clarity, control and cost saving. Please reach out to us at any time and we will be happy to run through how switching with Revo can benefit your business.

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3 reasons to combine ITSM with UIM

Why is User Identity Management important for ITSM

User Identity Management is not necessarily the most pressing priority for businesses when it comes to their IT Service Management. But there are three very good reasons for moving it up the list.

User Identity Management is:

  1. Good for the user
  2. Good for the IT team or department
  3. Good for the company

The User

Most employees need access to numerous apps just to do their everyday work. Once they have logged on to their computer/laptop/tablet or even smart phone, they will often need to spend time logging into these individual apps when they are needed. This will require different passwords and perhaps usernames for each.

Maybe your employee’s role changes, they get a promotion or start working in a new team with new requirements. They will need to ask and wait for new apps to be downloaded into their system and new access rights to be approved. All this takes time out of the employee’s day.

Installing a good user identity management tool, such as OneLogin, is a small step that can make a big difference. Each employee will have a single login point for all their apps. This means they have access to all the apps they need as soon as they log on to their desktop. If their role changes, the new apps can be added instantly at a touch of a button, including access rights, and will appear when the employee logs on next.

The IT Team

Security is a big hurdle for IT. Helping employees to stay connected to what they need, without have to spend time installing and changing access and passwords for multiple apps on a range of devices is time-consuming. Passwords being shared to enable faster access to apps is a real security concern. And if employees bring in their own laptops, how can the IT team ensure that the apps they are given access to are secure outside of the office? If an employee leaves the company suddenly, IT needs to remove access immediately.

Again, this is where User Identity Management can help. It can streamline the installation for new starters and add and remove apps from individual users at the touch of a button, whichever device the user works on. IT will not have to waste time providing new logins for new apps or recreating new passwords to replace those forgotten or shared.

The Company

For all these reasons, User Identity Management is good for the business as a whole. It makes the company more secure, more efficient and more effective.

Please let us know if you would like to learn more.

Connected ITSM – Personalised Service

Can your ITSM tool properly serve individuals and learn from each interaction?

Let’s take a minute to look at OneLogin and how it can unlock greater ITSM performance.

Personalised service is becoming the norm, whether you are an employee of a mid-to-large organisation or a customer seeking help with a product or service. At its best, most people won’t notice that their enquiry is being handled in a step-by-step process. They will simply feel well taken care of and, hopefully, receive the information or resolution they require.

The limitations of knowledge in ITSM

ITSM tools are only as good as the processes configured to take care of such customer enquiries. Typically, tools are limited to the knowledge of the person or people setting up the processes within the system. Service can quickly come apart when customer demand shifts or a new issue arises.

ITSM tools have long utilised knowledge bases to automate and adapt service. The team operating them typically uses knowledge data to help with new and existing customer issues. But the right knowledge can be hard to access and difficult to automate, preventing fast and efficient service from call handlers.

Delivering personalised, targeted knowledge with OneLogin

This is where an identity management solution – combining your service management tool with OneLogin, revolutionises the collection and delivery of accurate knowledge and improved service. But this is not just the management of user logins, it is the ability to match and assign Active Directory users to services and to then enable the creation of a more agile service structure where knowledge can be properly stored and accessed. Services are more personalised, knowledge is more targeted and the system is able to grow and adapt. This means the need to rethink tool processes and engage in time-consuming and expensive maintenance is removed. In addition, this has the benefit of increasing user adoption. Agents find the system easier to use and customers receive a better, more automated experience.

How can Revo help deliver this?

Revo helps organisations to deliver a more joined-up, collaborative and personalised service management capability. 4me – takes care of the service management; OneLogin – deals with user identity management; and Revo connects and integrates other applications for improved service performance. We call this joined-up approach Business Service Management, and we would love to demonstrate its capabilities. Please let us know if you would like to learn more.

4me Auto Translation

4me launches Auto Translation to remove language barriers that impede collaboration

4me has just announced that its Auto Translation feature has been released. This feature is intended to remove language barriers that may hinder collaboration. Not having to hire support specialists who speak multiple languages can significantly drive down the support costs for service providers. It also eliminates a problem for organizations that operate in countries such as Canada and Belgium where they are legally required to give their employees the ability to work in the official languages of those countries.

4me’s Auto Translation feature can significantly improve efficiency by allowing enterprise employees and the experts who support them to work in their preferred language. This feature works in 4me for all requests, problems, releases, changes, change tasks, projects and project tasks. When someone opens one of these records, the Auto Translation feature starts by detecting the language in which each note is written. Any notes that are written in a language other than the user’s language are then translated for the user.

Cor Winkler Prins, CEO at 4me explains:

“Users already had their language registered in 4me. This ensured that 4me’s user interface is presented in the user’s preferred language. Now 4me automatically translates any note that is written in a language other than the user’s preferred language. We have also made sure that multilingual users can turn off Auto Translation for any additional languages they are comfortable with. When releasing an exciting feature such as this, we endeavor to make it as easy as possible to use. That is why Auto Translation also works in the 4me App and 4me Self Service. That allows end users and support specialists to all work in their preferred language.”

4me’s Auto Translation feature already supports 20 of the world’s most spoken languages. It is free of charge and already available for all 4me customers.

 

SITS19 VLOG

4me, Business Service Management and collaboration in 2019 and beyond

VLOG – watch Martijn Adams and Simon Martin discuss 4me, Business Service Management and how the service industry is being transformed.

While attending SITS19, Martijn and Simon took time out to discuss the Service Management industry and how 4me and Revo are helping customers to transform their businesses and the services that they offer to their customers.

Martijn Adams on the market today:

“These days, you see that the services that companies provide to their employees are no longer just delivered by the company itself, they have many different service providers. Research shows that the average company has 13.5 service providers helping them to deliver services. The problem that we see is that you need to be able to collaborate, to monitor their performance and to track their SLAs. “

Simon Martin on how technology can help:

“On our journey we have been looking at different products and we selected 4me due to an alignment with both the market need and our own vision – to make delivering service better for our customers.

“You need to be sure that your vendors are giving you the support that you are paying for at the same time that your customers are getting the support they are paying for. 4me allows you to take that chain from end to end, measuring it and producing real-time reporting to help you to manage and know the support that you are being given and that you are giving.”

 

Business Service Management

Refocusing Service Management for the whole business

Delivering service management is no longer just the responsibility of IT

As the needs of the business, its staff, customers, partners and suppliers grows, so too do the demands on service provision. In a stripped back and simplified way, IT has been able to deliver quality service management to company staff and even customers. The problem is that as the number of groups requiring service has grown, the complexity of the requirements themselves has increased. Repackaging the service desk as a one-size-fits-all strategy will not lead to satisfied customers and will undoubtedly lead to a perception of inefficiency.

The pitfalls of delivering service to more and more people

Service management has been presented in many guises to cater for the increasing demands – Help Desk, Service Desk, ITSM and Customer Service Management to name but a few. The problem has always been that vendors have repurposed an existing approach to IT service and rolled this out to other business functions or departments. For example, if HR wanted to offer services to staff, IT would deploy a version of its existing tool with logging, self-service and so on. This would usually involve a separate instance of the tool, which may not be integrated well with the IT instance. The results are obvious – increased complexity for the management of the tools and increased costs to the business.

It is important to highlight that none of this is IT’s fault. Vendors have not made it easy for the IT team to solve complex service issues and instead have been repurposing existing approaches and technologies. What business needs is a more connected and integrated approach.

Removing the barriers to collaboration

Having a service management tool that enables internal, external and supplier collaboration is great, but different departments and individual staff will be using other tools to communicate, collaborate and share data on a daily basis. Using apps to improve collaboration and the overall service experience helps but there are often issues with security and access. Attempts to integrate these apps can be tricky and costly. This can often lead IT to limit the apps that staff can use, making the department unpopular and stifling collaboration and productivity.

Business Service Management is one approach to solving these issues. BSM is not a single product, it is a unification of the best technologies to support the whole business through service management, integrated apps and user security. For example, Revo combines its service management tool, 4me, with the Revo Integration Platform to help to manage all the app integrations that your organization will need. These are accessed via OneLogin, to provide a high level of security. All the apps and integrations are managed and controlled centrally and accessed by users through a single login.

When delivered correctly, BSM enables internal, external and supplier collaboration rather than stifling it.

Go beyond Service Management and ITSM by offering open service delivery with BSM.

 

Cloud, on-premises or hybrid?

Cloud vs on-premises vs hybrid – which is best?

Service technology solutions can be deployed in several different ways. But which is right for you and which offers the security you require?

At a high level, there are usually three different options for service technology delivery, either locally hosted, or private or public cloud or a mix thereof. Here we explore the basic principles of each option and look at the security considerations.

On-premises

Generally speaking, on-premises solutions are physically located at an organisation’s office site or in a hosting location of their choice. The application in use and all the data associated with it is stored on a server or a private cloud in this location. This enables the organisation choosing to deploy in this way to fully control their own security and access to the data and application. This also means, however, that the company is responsible for maintaining the hardware the application is being delivered from and maintaining security and access to that server location.

Cloud SaaS

Cloud or SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions are hosted and delivered via an off-site cloud system, typically accessed via a desktop or mobile browser. All data and configuration is held in the cloud and does not reside on the client site. Updates to the application, along with all security and availability, are usually the responsibility of the vendor who is delivering the service with no upkeep of physical servers to be considered. Cloud solutions are usually also subscription-based and involve a monthly or annual fee for use. Vendors provide cloud services via backbone providers such as Amazon Web Services or Rackspace, and often offer 99 percent plus uptime guarantees and the ability to load balance in region for optimal speed and performance delivery.

Hybrid cloud

A hybrid cloud solution is one where an organisation uses a mix of on-premises private cloud and public cloud services. It can offer flexibility as it allows workloads to shift between the two when capacity and costs change. Sensitive workloads and data can be hosted in the private cloud, with less critical workloads hosted in a public cloud. If a company has regulatory requirements for data handling and storage, then this can be provided in the private cloud. Or perhaps an organisation could host its e-commerce site within a private cloud and their corporate site within the public cloud. Public cloud services such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services provide scalability, giving an organisation the ability to pay only for the resources it consumes. The important thing is to have the technology in place to allow the two clouds to connect and interact.

Which deployment option is most secure?

There really is no simple response to this question, as it greatly depends on the security of the application you are using and how access to the app is maintained and secured ̶ no matter which option you choose. It could be argued that on-premises solutions are the least secure, as they are entirely reliant on the security of your own infrastructure and your IT team’s ability to keep everything patched and up to date. Maintaining the application, and the operating system of the server it resides on, becomes the sole responsibility of your organisation. You also need to consider your network security and how users will access the server application.

While cloud SaaS offers a cost-effective solution to many of the on-premises software issues, it is vital to remember that not all cloud SaaS is equal. Check how the vendor application is delivered and that it supports a high level of security such as TLS encryption. It is also important to learn about how the cloud service will be delivered and by which service provider. This will affect both the security and the speed of your chosen service.

Hybrid cloud can be seen as the best of both worlds, offering both robust security and scalability. It is, however, a more complex and therefore expensive alternative to cloud SaaS. It is also, due in most part to the ability to provide cloud bursting, a solution that will appeal to a smaller group of organisations that could truly benefit from such technology.

Which deployment method is the best for you?

As has been demonstrated in this brief overview, which delivery method is best for you will depend on your use case scenario, the sensitivity of your data and the size of the budget you have at your disposal. With increasing threat levels to data security, it is vital that you fully explore what is involved in each of the delivery options offered by vendors. Look at the way in which they deliver cloud and also how secure it is, as not all services are created equal. Also remember to factor in hardware and staff costs if you are considering on-premises options. Having all the facts at your disposal will ensure that the decision you make is the right one for you and your business.

If you would like to learn more about ITSM and IT security, please day.