5 Often-Asked Questions when Preparing for a Remote Service Transition

Cloud

October 6, 2020

These are unprecedented times and the norms of social distancing led by the COVID-19 pandemic have changed the way businesses operate. These changes have also pushed us to reinvent the way we function while ensuring our productivity and performance levels are kept intact.

Organizations worldwide have encouraged their employees to work from home and are likely to continue operating in this manner for months to come. As companies navigate and adapt to this new normalcy, IT Service Providers will also need to prepare to execute a seamless service transition with remotely working teams.

Hexaware’s touchless service transition offering, TRANSX, ensures complete knowledge transition and business continuity within today’s travel and co-location constraints. Let’s check how TRANSX can improve your transition process by leveraging efficient tools and methodologies.

When preparing for a remote Service Transition, the most often-asked question is ‘What will be different in this Transition’? Let us take a moment to understand this aspect.

The 2nd most often-asked question is ‘What are the additional tools we intend to leverage’? Let us take a moment to understand this aspect.

The 3rd most often-asked question is ‘What are the key touchless transition-related risks that you envisage? Let us take a moment to understand this aspect.

#	Risk	Mitigation	Probability	Impact
1	Ability to collaborate seamlessly given remote & geographically distributed teams	Leveraging whiteboarding platforms, tools to transcribe meetings, always-on video-enabled meeting rooms will ensure clear & effective communication among team members	Medium	High
2	How will we ensure there is adequate learning?	Prior to start of the transition, we will plan for multiple sessions similar to the transition initiation meeting to ensure both teams have complete clarity on how this transition will happen – Do’s & Don’ts, Tools & Platforms, Roles & Responsibilities, Timelines & Day in a Life. During Transition – transcribe meetings, record SME sessions, plan for multiple playback sessions & assign contextual assignments to ensure team members have sufficient learning.	Medium	High
3	How will Assisted Phase sessions happen?	By leveraging screen-sharing capabilities of Web Conferencing Software to ensure SMEs can explain to our teams on how a certain resolution was provided or in some scenarios also guide them to provide resolution.	Low	Medium
4	Connectivity & Internet speed issues	Ensure all team members have a backup to offset connectivity & speed issues. Teams can also reach out to Hexaware’s System Technology Group (STG) team to expedite troubleshooting of such issues.	Low	High
5	How will security & compliance be maintained?	Leverage VPN & Secure Desktop products. Also leverage Information Rights Management capabilities of MS Office to ensure only the required people have access to that asset.	Medium	High
6	How will we ensure inter-team discussion & resultant learning?	Setup online wikis where knowledge can be collaboratively updated & viewed. Plan focused sessions for the teams to discuss learnings and issues around a topic.	Low	Medium
7	How will we ensure that the externally hired candidates are setup in a timely manner?	Incrementally over the last quarter, all support functions in our organization have successfully transitioned to a work from home model. In the process, we have also pivoted our HR processes to ensure the associate to alumni journey is completely online. Induction kits, laptops & data cards can now be home delivered to a new joinee.	Medium	High

The 4th most often-asked question is ‘What would you need from us?’ Let us take a moment to understand this aspect.

The fifth & the most pertinent question to help them decide is ‘Where have you done this before?’ Let us take a moment to go through one of our recent proof points.

This touchless service transition was carried out in Q2 2020 with the COVID-19 situation at its peak. The entire transition was executed remotely with zero travel across globally distributed teams. This was made possible by the unwavering commitment from the leadership team coupled with unstinted support on the ground from support teams at both ends.

Contact us to learn more about our TRANSX Touchless Transition Service Offering or how our Application Management capabilities can support your business objectives.

About the Author

Manish Mehta

Manish Mehta is a Solutions Director with Hexaware’s NextGen Application Managed Services practice. He has close to two decades of experience in the IT industry, has held various leadership positions in Application Management Services. Deep experience in Client Acquisition, Applications Managed Services, Solution and Transition Management, Go to Market strategy, Program Management and in leading high-performance teams.