A 24x7 delivery model is a common approach to support. It is convenient and covers all time zones or working hours by default. But it's designed to cover peak workloads and has rapid idle time - To put it simply, it's often unnecessary and incurs enormous costs.
In times of constantly rising prices and where savings are a top priority, this is especially painful. Therefore, it is critical to perform an assessment of your needs and requirements against the cost drivers and components of 24x7 support.
24x7 support is certainly convenient, but it usually comes with high costs. Depending on how it is structured, it ensures quick turn-over time, short pick-up times and a user friendly end-to-end solving time as it is operated via a three-shift model.
However, to operate it under stable conditions, some components must be clearly addressed and adjusted accordingly. This must take place with the consideration that a reinforcement/increase will bring very strong price increases, as the following are strong price drivers:
Moving away from a convenience driven to a demand driven support model can decrease costs. It requires an evaluation of needs, risks, and costs. Balancing those factors upon a clearly defined decision matrix can allow to lower costs and keeping core functions operating.
One factor which can drive up costs is language service. Especially when operated in an international, multilingual environment IT support is confronted with tickets in different languages. One goal is to provide an as convenient service as possible to end users (easy opening of tickets, describe a topic in your own language, etc.).
If L1 support is operating in the same language as the user (e.g., via a local service desk) a huge number of tickets can be solved right away. For those tickets, which need to be transferred to L2, a potential issue can arise: translation.
If L2 and L3 are operated by an external service provider, a so-called language service/translation service is often part of the offer. This is very convenient for the local service desk, but increases the costs. In terms of cost, time also plays a critical factor. With translation between the end user/service desk and L2 and L3 support, an additional layer is added to the process.
Therefore, some possible solutions exist:
Decide which languages are necessary, which of them are optional, and for which there is simply no language service needed. Structure local support desks in a way that the solving rate is increased. This reduces the need for translation right from the beginning. Then evaluate if it is possible to move translation to L1.
On call service is a good option to reduce the costs for true 24x7 support. Instead of having a team working 24x7 in front of a workstation to support you day and night, you could evaluate the option of a reduction to a shorter, full support, time range (e.g., 16x5).
In order to better estimate the required time coverage, it is highly recommended to evaluate the distribution of tickets on an average working day. This makes it possible to immediately see whether 24x7 support has a fairly balanced workload throughout the day or whether there are spikes and peaks.
In case the distribution is not even balanced, the support is provided for non-critical applications, etc. a priority-based system can be developed.
Through this system, the typical three-shift system can be reduced to at least two shifts. Further reductions are still possible if the days are also limited, e.g. elimination of Saturday and Sunday. Then, the high-priority tickets are processed via the on-call service.
The on-call support agent only gets active when a ticket with a defined priority is issued. Otherwise, the agent will not start working. There are several ways to handle this:
There are of course relevant use cases for 24x7 support which underpin the relevance of it and justify a full-scale support. This is especially true for highly critical applications (customer facing, high impact on revenue, etc.). Important is, to do this categorization after an assessment with transparent criteria:
If the output of the assessment justifies true 24x7 support, have a look if there are other applications with the same technology stack and also a need for 24x7 support around. If yes, take advantage of it, group them and route them to the same support team, etc.
A key factor of cost composition for support is based on the delivery location. Some common termini within IT service provisioning are Onshore, Offshore, and Nearshore. It defines the location of a support agent or team.
The location of the support influences the balance sheet – it can reduce or increase costs. A good mix is in general beneficial, but anyway a demand driven purchasing with transparent categories offers the greatest level of benefits.
This requires of course a certain maturity level of the vendor management office and a purchase process which supports it.
The difference of shared vs. dedicated support can have a huge impact on the cost side.
Category |
Detailed Description |
| Dedicated Support |
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| Shared Support |
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Of course, each model comes with pros and cons. An evaluation with a clear matrix and scheme can allow to make a guided decision to reduce costs.
Costs are rising all around the globe!
Read our guide and find out how to reduce costs overall, increase planning certainty and reduce effort required to produce the same results.
Included in this guide:
One topic especially true for American based companies who are seeking support from offshore is time zoning. Searching for a location with lower costs than nearby in the home market directs many companies to India:
With all these advantages one cornerstone is often overlooked: time zoning.
Supporting American companies in their day shift requires Indian personnel to work on the night shift – which is not highly liked across the world – the IT support sector in India is no exception here.
Skilled persons with experience try to avoid this which means that those people are often come with higher costs or are simply not part of the support team during the relevant hours.
For development activities which are done to a fair degree independently - in the background - this is not that big of an issue, if there is no alignment needed, requirements gathering, bug fixing, etc. But out of a sudden, one is directly part of the tricky issue to schedule meetings early in the morning or late evening.
One possible solution for this is probably near-shoring which offers a greater overlap of working hours.
Nearshore can be a good alternative for Onshore when working hour overlap needs prohibit true Offshore delivery. For European companies, there are plenty of nearshore centres around
What all those countries have in common is a complete or high overlap of working hours during the day shift and cheaper daily rates compared to Western Europe. Nearly all of them have a labour force which is used to speak English or even has English as mother tongue (e.g. South Africa).
Another plus point is, that those Nearshore centres offer support in other languages, relevant for the multilingual environment in Western Europe (French, Spanish). Also, India has a fairly overlap of working hours with Western Europe, although it is not Nearshore but Offshore instead.
For American based companies, Nearshore Centres are often placed in some Latin American countries (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico). Some of the biggest international support service providers are operating support centres there.
Familiarity with English is a must-have within those environments, time zone overlap during the working hours is there, educational level is (depending on the country) above world average.
An additional advantage is, that support teams can provide support in English for all users, but for a growing number of Spanish speakers in the US they are also able to directly communicate in their shared language.
One common issue within the industry is a shortage of skilled resources – labour markets are dense, costs are high, inflations is even making it harder to hire new people. Service providers with a huge labour force can ease this painful issue. Especially those which are operating on an international scale and supporting large multinational corporations.
Those companies are supporting a wide range of the technology stack where economies of scale can be leveraged on.
This can be a good option to ease the hiring backlog – but it requires smart vendor management, a clearly defined concept, a pricing model which is based on delivery instead of resources, etc.
An assessment of the technology stack, the currently engaged service providers, the kind of appropriate support, etc. is a good starting point.
Evaluation is key – get to know the demand first. Question it, challenge it and afterwards use it as a baseline for decision making and definition of next steps.
Costs can be reduced, and needs met at the same time when the support model is chosen and constructed smart.
