We recently spoke to Ian, our Head of Managed Service here at UP3, and gained some really valuable insights into the work he does, as well as the strategies he’s put in place to maximise how we support our customers. So read on to learn what makes UP3’s ServiceNow Managed Service so special.
Can you tell us a bit about your role as Head of Managed Service for UP3?
As Head of Managed Service, I am responsible for delivering in-life services to all of our contracted customers who have taken out Managed Services with UP3. Included in that Managed Service: we’re looking after their day-to-day needs, resolving incidents if and when they occur, actioning any requests, handling upgrades and patches, and managing their platform. And if a customer’s business evolves, and their needs change, we support them with platform enhancements to make sure their ServiceNow instance is providing everything they need.
I also help guide the proactive maintenance that UP3 provides and is such a valuable part of our Managed Service. Whether it’s monitoring platform health, looking for opportunities to add automation, or root cause and process improvement, I make sure we’re doing everything we can to support our customers on their journey with ServiceNow. Ultimately, it’s my job to make sure our customers are happy.
Why is it important for there to be a Head of Managed Service Position? What value does it add for UP3’s customers?
UP3’s Managed Service is what defines us as a business; it’s our anchor product. It differentiates us in the UK ServiceNow partner ecosystem. When the business was founded, our founders, Matt & Ruth, identified an opportunity to provide a distinctive and unique ServiceNow Managed Service. Customers were looking for it, and this level of support for ServiceNow wasn’t available. To give Managed Service the focus it deserves, it needs ownership and representation, and that’s my role.
Customer satisfaction is incredibly important to me and so I prioritise it in our Managed Service. There are lots of different metrics I focus on to make sure UP3 provides a premium and prestigious service, but the ultimate focus is on the customers’ needs, and meeting them even before they ask. As a result, we have excellent customer retention, and great customer feedback.
Can you paint a picture for us of your Managed Service team set up? What does that look like?
We have a great team, a dynamic team. It’s 100% UK based, which is not typical of the market. After engaging and consulting with customers, we found having UK-based support came out as something important to them, and thus began our journey to move towards 100% UK-based. And when we did our own analysis, we found that the cost-saving of having off-shore support versus being UK-based wasn’t big enough to matter. We realised we had more control over the quality of the service we provided, as well as providing better career prospects to our team, and improving our ability to retain people, which brings its own cost-saving and advantages to the service offered. Our team have a deep understanding of our customers’ businesses, and we can quickly identify ways to support our customers because we already understand their needs and can deliver using a wide pool of expertise.
We also take pride in giving people the opportunity to start or progress their career in ServiceNow, and working with our Managed Service team gives our people an unrivalled opportunity to develop skills and knowledge. This is because our Managed Service offers such a breadth of opportunities for our customers to consume the service; what I mean by this is that we don’t just reactively fix things, we proactively provide upgrades and enhancements to continually develop their ServiceNow instance. What this means is, the team get exposed to a wide range of requests and customers, having a variety of responsibilities; one day you could be writing a script, and then the next day you’re running a workshop with a customer. This has allowed us to build a really varied team in terms of skills, experience, and capabilities, ranging from brand-new to established ServiceNow experts. That breadth of knowledge and skills means we can deliver a really well-rounded service.
It’s also interesting and exciting work for the team, which means we have people stay with the business for a long time as they continue to develop and learn, sharing all of that new knowledge with customers.
What do you enjoy about the role?
The main thing is I’m lucky as I get to have lots of engagement and interactions with customers, which is really enjoyable. That allows me to get genuine feedback on the services, what we’re doing well, and where we can improve. I can also learn how customers’ needs are evolving so UP3 can evolve alongside them. We don’t expect our Managed Service to ever become static, we will always be trying to improve it, always making things more efficient and effective, using the new technologies and skills available to us, and sharing these with our customers. Dynamism is important to me, and that every day is different.
Tell us about your experience in the Managed Service space? And why is ServiceNow your platform of choice?
I’ve worked with Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for the last 23 years, always working with Managed Service providers. I really believe in the concept of a Managed Service, and it’s most valuable when you have engaged customers with long-term relationships, a partnership, where the objective of the Managed Service provider is for the service to be flexible and broad enough to meet all of the in-life needs of the customer.
ServiceNow is the leading player, it’s so much more than a single application; it’s a business platform. And because ServiceNow has such a wide variety of capabilities, there’s something in there to help every organisation, and that allows us to provide this Managed Service that caters to all of the needs of our customers. UP3 has the expertise to find new opportunities and provide support. The opportunities are so broad, we bring really valuable knowledge and expertise to ensure our customers are fully supported by the wide variety of capabilities ServiceNow has to offer.
Thank you so much to Ian for taking the time to share his thoughts. We’re really proud of the ServiceNow Managed Service we provide at UP3, and Ian has done an excellent job of summarising how we maximise our customers’ investment in ServiceNow and support their digital transformations. If you’d like to learn more, check out our Managed Service page, or if you want to talk about how we can support your business, please get in touch.
