Page 575 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

4-106 CRC Handbook of Modern Telecommunications, Second Edition

the elevation process to completion. In case of a contract breach or application of a penalty, tools
can integrate with other systems (such as billing and CRM) to ensure that the correct follow-up
activities occur, such as adding credits to an invoice. Tools can even trigger a round of contract
changes and associated approval process.

4.5.5.2 Selection and Setup Issues and Concerns
When automating contract management, a few important caveats apply. The ability to map the con-
tract documents and terms into a tool depends greatly on the quality and structure of the contract
documents and the degree of detail in the terms. If the contract is so large that it defies understand-
ing, is confusing, or uses ambiguous terminology, then translating it into tool-friendly form will be
challenging. Tools force definition, so it’s easier if the contract is clear and precise from the outset.
Even with a well-laid-out contract, taking the information from the contract and entering it into a
tool can be a time-consuming effort, affected by the number of documents involved and the number
of sourcing contracts administered. Tools can help ease the process based on the quality of their inter-
faces, but considerable setup time is the norm. On the bright side, this initial investment is quickly
repaid with improvements in contract administration through the life of the outsourcing engage-
ment. Furthermore, the data entered for contract management purposes—from SOWs, SLAs, and
metrics—is also used for setting up service catalogs and performance measures, so once it’s entered it
can be reused for multiple purposes.

4.5.6 Summary and Trends
Two primary factors drive the need to a more open approach of delivering managed services to custom-
ers. The first is that not all solution providers can deliver all managed services to all customers. As a
result, they will need to partner with other MSPs, and those partnerships cannot be limited to MSPs
that happen to be running the same managed services platform. The second is the diversity of the MSP
community, which will require integration with services provided by telecommunication companies,
value-added resellers, and retail chains. MSPs are not going to be able to dictate terms to enterprises that
are typically the multiple of their size. Standard organizations, such as OASIS (Organization for the
Advancement of Structured Information Standards) or the WWW (World Wide Web) Consortium
are helpful to integration, but most likely too slow. In the meantime, MSPs would be well advised to look
for solution alternatives with a large amount of flexibility.
Given the growing demand of customers for services more tightly aligned with their internal business
requirements, it was only a matter of time before customers began pressing managed services providers
for services built with their needs in mind, rather than the one-size-fits-all approach. The challenge this
presents to the providers is the requirement to build a service that appeals to one customer while still
being applicable to other customers. If so, MSPs can derive additional business opportunities for the
required technological investment.
Managed services in combination with software-as-a-service will guarantee great flexibility for enter-
prises. Besides flexibility and market agility, enterprises may save capital and operating expenses.

Acronyms

BI Business Intelligence
CM Configuration Management
CMA Carve-Out Merger Acquisition
CIO Chief Information Officer
CRM Customer Relationship Management