Can you provide an overview of your role as the head of service delivery at Brightsolid?
As the head of service delivery, I ensure Brightsolid effectively delivers products and services while meeting customer expectations and agreements.
I focus particularly on service strategy, ensuring we’re meeting business objectives in terms of how we deliver that. I lead the Cloud, Service, and Data Operation teams. So, a lot of team management, leadership, and mentorship is involved.
Also, there are the more standard service OPS-type things around continuous improvement, performance monitoring, reporting, etc. My role is to ensure that all those things line up.
How do you foster a culture of continuous improvement?
Although I am the head of service delivery, we incorporate service delivery in everything we do. Anytime we deal with an outcome, person, or deadline, service delivery comes into play. I have found that continuous improvement tends to happen naturally if we have the right things in place. I am a firm believer in leading from the front. When I actively participate in the process and demonstrate growth, others tend to follow suit. It is amazing what a difference this can make.
The key to continuous improvement is to keep it simple and sensible. For instance, I believe there are no bad ideas and that open communication is important. I encourage everyone to share their ideas, strategies, and tools, as this can make a significant difference to our company. While not every suggestion may be suitable, the ones we use can have a transformative impact on Brightsolid.
One of my biggest achievements has been my ability to connect with people and understand their goals, strengths, and areas of improvement. I have created a unified plan that benefits individuals and the company by aligning their aspirations with our strategic vision.
In the world of service operations, it’s common for people to need help in grasping the bigger picture. Teams, especially those in the tech industry, often become siloed, and individuals may feel confined to their roles. This can lead to high attrition rates. It’s important for people to understand their growth opportunities and how they contribute to the overall strategy of the company.
What new technology have you adopted since joining Brightsolid?
We recently acquired ServiceNow, which is a massive change for the team at Brightsolid and how we do things. But it’s a change for the better!
ServiceNow’s customer-facing portal allows customers to take control. With self-service options, customers can log their tickets, view updates, and keep up to date with the progress. This feature lets our team focus on resolving issues, freeing up valuable time and resources.
Implementing ServiceNow will help reduce the time it takes to resolve tickets and improve the overall ticket life cycle. I also expect it to enable self-service announcements and other features that can be delivered more efficiently and effectively.
How do you ensure the services provided meet or exceed agreed-upon Service Level Agreements (SLAs)?
SLAs are an integral part of any service delivery function. They are the basis for measuring every service, whether you provide it to an internal or external customer. An SLA is essential to ensure the service meets the expected standards and requirements between the parties.
To establish Service Level Agreements (SLAs), you must first clearly understand the service being provided. Without a well-defined service, it becomes difficult to measure whether the service is being met. Therefore, the first point is to establish, define, and document the service.
The Service Level Agreement (SLA) is the point of reference when determining the quality of service provided. As an MSP (Managed Service Provider), we set the SLA. However, achieving the metrics outlined in the SLA requires collaboration between us and our customers. We set reasonable deadlines but must also be flexible and open to compromise.
All SLAs require constant monitoring to ensure A, whether you’re meeting it, which is the key one, but B when you’re not meeting it.
A concept that is more advanced than SLAs is XLAs, which can be considered the modern-day alternative to SLAs. XLAs focus on the overall experience of the delivery and how it is perceived. This includes considering how the customer felt about it, how the delivery impacted the relationships and other similar factors. The approach is more holistic in nature. Meeting an SLA doesn’t always guarantee a happy customer. Whereas an XLA is a far more organic way of measuring the success of a delivery. With XLAs, you can determine whether you are getting a positive response.
How do you ensure that our service delivery aligns with the latest industry trends and advancements?
With professional networks like LinkedIn, it’s much easier to keep track of global happenings. By communicating regularly with our vendors and staying updated on their activities, we can better align our objectives. Understanding how they operate and what it means for them helps us to work together more effectively.
We regularly check our internal technologies to identify outdated or inefficient technology stacks. This helps us create a technology roadmap that we can follow as we move forward.
We also pay close attention to customer feedback to understand how they receive our products and services. We note what our customers say to us, including feedback they may have heard from other companies they deal with. We keep track of industry leaders’ publications and blogs to stay in touch with the latest thought leadership and industry trends. By engaging in these practices, we can stay on track and move forward as technology evolves. It’s important to remember that the technology world moves incredibly fast, so staying current is crucial.
Right now, the most obvious and significant advancement is AI. AI has just made an enormous leap forward. AI has progressed significantly over the last 12 to 18 months. Surpassing its previous role of proofreading emails and suggesting language revisions. It can revolutionise the way you do things and the way you automate.
From a service delivery perspective, the inclusion of ServiceNow in Brightsolid’s tech stack aligns well. ServiceNow has incorporated a significant AI component that helps discover network elements, retrieve information, and create roadmaps and hierarchies. This will significantly alter the way we interact with it. Currently, this process is highly manual and involves several different pieces. Whereas ServiceNow’s AI can centralise it and provide a quick and deep comprehension of the information we are examining.
How do you leverage data and reporting to communicate performance to internal stakeholders and clients?
Consistency is critical when utilising data and generating reports. It’s important to ensure that we’re drawing data from the same source for the same period each time. This is especially crucial when tracking trends. Keeping the data consistent will help us accurately measure and track progress.
One of my biggest frustrations is when people present metrics without context. Simply displaying a number on a screen and claiming it proves success is meaningless. If I show someone a slide that says SLA is 94%, they may not know if that’s good or bad. How does it compare to previous months? What is the trend, or what is the target? Context is crucial for understanding metrics and their significance. Unfortunately, we tend to say in the service delivery industry, “Yes, we’ve met SLAs because it’s at 98%.” This only raises questions like: What’s the 2% we’re missing?
Besides standard KPIs, are there specific metrics or performance indicators you consider crucial for measuring the success of service delivery?
When discussing service delivery, people often overlook quality – which is a crucial factor. This is because quality can be subjective and depends on individual opinions.
In the past, organisations measured the performance of service desks by the number of tickets they processed within a specific time period. However, this metric does not indicate the quality of the service provided.
One way to measure the quality of work is through quality assurance (QA), which AI-powered tools can aid. Tools can capture data on various metrics, such as grammar, literacy, tone, empathy, resolution time, back-and-forth interactions, and customer engagement. By integrating them into IT Service Management Systems (ITSMs), organisations can ensure that their output quality matches quantity by measuring these metrics.
This evaluation method emphasises the actions taken instead of the quantity, resulting in a more thorough and meaningful assessment.
Can you share a professional challenge you faced and how it contributed to your growth as a leader?
I used to work for a large company that processed millions of transactions for customers dealing with stocks and shares.
Each company has a unique 3-letter code to represent it. Two companies’ codes were very similar, differing by only one letter: PHI and PHL. At first glance, they looked almost identical, making it easy to make a mistake. I processed a trading transaction for the wrong company which resulted in incorrect trading transactions.
Undoing all the transactions was a very tense, manual process. It was also done through a command-line interface, so I had to write and code everything. I had until a specific time the next day to get it done before that company went live. Otherwise, it would become a much bigger and more intense problem.
As a leader, I now look for accountability when things happen. I expect my team to take full responsibility for their mistakes and explain what happened. I also try to empower my team to learn from their mistakes and grow from them.
When I started in IT, one of my mentors told me that mistakes are rarely beyond fixing. It might take work, time, or other teams, but you’ll rarely do something completely unrecoverable. Tools and systems are built specifically to prevent or capture mistakes so that we can roll back or recover.
If you could go back and give advice to your younger self, what would it be?
It may sound cliché, but I believe it to be true and applicable: accept and learn from your mistakes. You should not fear failure. When starting in tech, I realised that every mistake I made felt like the end of the world. I thought I might have to change careers or jobs because of them. However, I now understand that making mistakes is a normal part of the learning process.
In the early days of the tech industry, there was a lot of blame culture. If someone made a mistake, they were criticised and blamed for it. This only made the feeling of failure worse. It made people reluctant to speak up and share their ideas.
Looking back now, I see how far I’ve come. I realise it’s okay not to know everything; making mistakes is part of learning.
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