Your shared accountability and experience with your clients are critical to not only their success but your success as well. You can present scorecards to your clients that make it easier for them to understand your proposed resolutions addressing their concerns without having to present complicated proposals to them.
Providing clients with digestible information, without the time-consuming data analysis, manual data collection helps deliver recommendations that will drive clients forward. Engage in regular meetings with customers to discuss their goals and challenges.
In order to develop an effective IT plan, it is essential to have an up-to-date inventory of all IT assets. Assets can be classified as:
Critical - a business cannot function without these assets
Important—assets that are used at least once per day
Unimportant—assets that are used less frequently than once per day
When engaging in regular meetings with your clients to discuss goals and challenges, consider using these best practices when using Scorecards.
Include IT infrastructure areas of concern and highlight areas of success
Showing both areas of concern and success are good indicators to a client that a) progress is being made b) not everything needs to be actioned and c) it’s a reminder of the value and reliability you deliver.
Include DMI overall scorecard when presenting Scorecards
Adding the DMI overall scorecard establishes a common language and shared accountability for improving the technology outlook of clients.
Highlight items that fall outside of agreed lifecycle standards
As clients grow, their technology requirements will adjust, and the services and solutions provided should adjust to match their goals to continue showing value by adjusting or expanding your solutions.
Provide estimated costs relative to the impact on the potential loss of productivity or revenue
This is a great way to reinforce the impact that critical or important assets will have on the client.
Use Scorecards to have conversations.
The scorecards can be a great tool to generate a conversation between you and your clients.Discuss their goals, challenges, business issues, and frustrations.
Track past and present Scorecards with Versions and History
Compare previous and current scorecards using new Scorecard Versions and History.
Assess whether the client's environment has improved or not. Refer to areas for improvement, propose client actions, and discuss with the client to see what has improved or hasn’t in their environment.
Reviewing past and current goals
Establishing and measuring goals allows you and your client to gain better insight into past performance and how to improve in the future. Measuring against aligned goals simplifies return on investment discussions.
View past versions and history of Scorecards
Refer to previously made assessments areas for improvement, proposed client actions, and discuss with the client to see what has improved, or hasn’t, in their environment.
With value beyond upkeep services that improve operational productivity and uptime, clients are not just receiving services from a third party, but also increased value.
Goals you might want to track include:
Replacing 10% of outdated workstations per quarter
Guaranteeing workstation/server uptime by specific percentages
Clearly define disaster recovery plans
Identify both critical and non-critical assets as part of your disaster recovery plan.Recovery Point Objective (RPO) - the maximum loss of data that can be tolerated by a client (such as a loss of an hour of data, a loss of 5 hours of data, and a loss of one day of data).
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) - a timeframe in which a client can tolerate the loss of normal operations following a disaster (such as within 20 minutes, 3 hours, or 8 hours).
Reduce software subscription lapses by 50%
You can show your clients the value of your services by using performance metrics based on the goals you and your client set. This keeps meetings focused on what is relevant to the client and their business goals, without straying into other areas that don't match their goals.
Client needs are constantly evolving, and failing to monitor them risks critical misalignment.