MANAGED SERVICES SOLUTION

The CCS Managed Services Solution allows organisations to meet their IT needs without having to harbour the cost of a full time IT professional.  CCS’ offering differs from those of its competitors in the fact that CCS does not simply place an IT consultant on secondment to your company for a set amount of hours a month with no particular direction.  Instead CCS’ solution is broken down into five comprehensive phases.  Each phase of the solution provides CCS consultants with firm direction and a defined list of tasks to be completed. 

Phase I - Business Needs Definition

The first and possibly most important base of the Managed Services Solution is defining customer’s business needs.  In this phase CCS will conduct a meeting with the client’s key management to identify business needs and expectations as they relate to IT resources. From the information gathered in this meeting CCS consultants will fully understand what the client’s management expects from its information systems and will later be able to compare those expectations to what the systems in place can actually deliver.  This is a key task as all following technical work will refer back to this session to ensure that IT is in line with management’s stated objectives. Topics discussed include:

• Management Support Expectations

• Business Critical Systems

• Annual IT Budgets

 

Phase II – Detailed Review of IT Systems

When Phase-I is complete CCS will review the existing IT systems. This will include an audit of all hardware, network, telecommunications and software applications. The result of the review will be a document that identifies all elements of the customer’s IT systems.  Areas of the infrastructure that will be reviewed include but are not limited to:

• Network Review

• Infrastructure Service Review

• Server Hardware and Operating Systems (OS) Review

• Backup and Recovery Review

• Application Review

• Desktop OS Review

• Printing Review

• Administration Review

• Asset Management

• Security Review

• Change Control / Change Management Review

The review will report a summary of all components of IT systems, provide a brief description on how they are configured and will list any discovered issues.  Additionally, the review will provide a report of all findings and recommendations for change. This will include a list of ‘Immediate Required Actions’ a ‘Suggested Actions List’ and a ‘Gap Report’ to identify any areas where IT systems are not in a position to meet the business needs identified in the first session.

Phase III – Make Changes

This portion of the solution may or may not apply to a company that is interested in CCS’ MSS.  During Phase 3, CCS consultants would make any changes to the customers IT systems that have been identified as ‘Immediate Required action’ from the Detailed Review of IT Systems in phone 2.  CCS may also make changes to systems that fall under the “suggested actions list” if it is supported by customer’s management team.

Phase IV – Documentation

Documentation will be ongoing through the first 3 phases.  Once the systems are all in a position where they are ‘meeting the defined business needs’ and are configured and operating in line with ‘IT best practices’ the system will be properly documented in a detailed manner.  Additionally, a management report outlining all the findings will be compiled and presented to the MSS customer. This documentation will become the basis for ongoing change management processes and continual documentation moving forward.

Phase V – Support Plan

Tripod Support System
Part of the Managed Services solution is to provide our Managed Services customers with Tripod Support.  The Tripod Support system is simply having one lead IT consultant within a supported customer and two other consultants with similar skill sets as backup to the lead to cover for sick days, emergencies etc.

 

Under this service structure CCS would ensure that each consultant that is a part of this team would be given time to become familiar with the customer’s IT environment. Therefore, in the event they are needed they will be able to perform immediately.  This system will also allow for smoother transitions should there ever be a change in staff at CCS. 

Managed Services list

From the information gathered in the infrastructure audit we will create a Managed Service List.  This list will outline weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual tasks that should be completed in order to ensure proactive and continual support of the IT systems.
The Managed Service List will serve as an administration tool for the designated IT support staff. In order to track our progress CCS will provide its MSS clients with a monthly management report.  The report will identify all the tasks that have been completed that month.  Any tasks from the list that could not be completed will be flagged and a reason with a follow up action with be provided.
For more information on CCS’ MSS program, please click here to be put in contact with a CCS representative.