6 Benefits Of Managed Services Automation

Most IT business heads would agree that automated managed services are impacting enterprises. Of late, there has been a big thrust to deliver IT service automation.  
 
What does Automation of service management mean? 
 
Automation is a software application that can execute repeatable tasks and processes with minimal manual intervention or simplify mundane work. And, of course, the benefits are self-evident. Automation replaces work humans would otherwise have to do at its most superficial level. 

Automation reduces overall costs and completes tasks and requests far more quickly. In contrast, Manual intervention is time-consuming, and cost affiliated with it. 
 
Given the nature of, Automation is to a certain extent, outsourcing a managed services deal. Improving Automation efficiency and coverage has become a key objective and driver for outsourcing and collected services deals ever sold. 
 
We are seeing businesses seeking service provider partners with deep expertise in delivering Intelligent Automation for quicker, efficient, and optimized delivery.  

 Automation is more than just lowering costs: 
 
Apart from the general outcome of lower costs, we think there are two key areas where customers should focus - Lock in significant productivity gains over a contract term for Automation in a managed service deal. 
 
Service providers should commit to a progressive pricing reduction over the agreement term as Automation is increasingly implemented and continues to be extended and augmented over that contract term. The evolution of Automation in the ecosystem would eventually correlate with the pricing curve during the RFP process. With sufficient models in place to compare different pricing curves for various scenarios generated 
Secondly, Expectations towards improving performance are underwritten by corresponding service level commitments. 

For example, with Automation in place, the service-level dynamics will change at various levels like reduced failure rates, improved response rates, faster ticket resolution, and reduced turnaround times. 

This allows competitive service providers to commit to high-quality service levels backed with full-service credits. 

In addition, Intelligence wrapped around Automation succeeds in achieving a shift left, as the industry calls it, smart resolution of tickets with minimal manual intervention without escalation. Such benefits of Automation and the advanced toolsets deployed these days have a greater capacity for proactive actions to avoid failures and instances before they even happen. 
 
Customer's role in Automation: 
 
There is always some integration between the service providers' automation tools and the customers' tools. Think of platforms such as ServiceNow. There can be significant integration development work that should not be underestimated. Typical process integrations and changes are also needed to achieve and maximize Automation. Some tasks can be replaced entirely with an automation script. But other tasks and types of tickets will only be partially automated, which reduces manual work and intervention. They ask for existing processes to be modified to reflect the steps that can be automated. 
 
A good example is a customer's change management and approval process, which will always have some degree of manual intervention. Essentially, you must partner with your service provider, identify the strategies and the work that can be automated, and start with a good list of the staff in the contract, but then continually add additional Automation throughout the term. 

1. Lowered Operating expenses: 
Adopting managed services and Automation can reduce your operating costs, either by reducing the number of errors or decreasing your staff. 
 
2. Saves Operations Time: 
Time is a vital factor, especially when it comes to scaling your business. Automating standard labor-intensive, manual processes and lakhs of mundane routine IT tasks daily reduces the wastage of both time and resources. 
 
3. Optimize Resources, Higher Productivity: 
Developing and running a process workflow that optimizes all available resources in the most efficient way possible was always a significant challenge. Automation allows you to automate and support many remote data centers from one NOC. 
 
4. Fixing SLAs: 
Meeting SLAs improves customer experience. The quality of service improves when Automation of your minor tasks, such as monitoring, is taken care of. Auto-assignment and auto-routing can help assign the tickets quickly to the right person who can provide a quick solution. 
 
5. Better Control: 
Automating tasks does not mean giving up control. One can embed human decision points within the workflow process with the right Automation. 
 
6. A proactive approach: 
Customer experience is an essential factor in retaining the customer. MSPs should adopt AI-powered Automation that understands the language of IT and can provide quick resolution with partial or no human intervention. 
 
Automation serves as a path for Managed services to streamline Businesses' overall operations and nurture growth perspectives through higher customer satisfaction and improved profitability. 

Future of Managed Services 

Considering all the above benefits, by 2023, two-thirds of infrastructure-managed service providers across the globe will gain at least 50% of their revenue by managing their clients' digital touchpoint environments with the help of cloud service automation (Source: Gartner).