TSP Talk Ep47. Understanding the Internal IT Team's Perspective

[00:00:03] Hello everyone, it's James Davis from the Pax8 Academy again and this time I've got James from Ganda Service Management. How are you doing James? I'm good thank you James. How's life with you? It's a busy start to the year. No doubt impacting you as well. Oh yeah, absolutely.

[00:00:33] I hear a bit of an accent. Where are you located? I'm located in Auckland, New Zealand, originally from the UK. Being over here for about 16 years now. Nice. Well, it's always good to get different people from around the world to share their

[00:00:50] perspectives and I think you'll bring an interesting one from what you do and we're going to talk a lot around the internal IT teams and how they operate and how we need to work together and collaborate better with them as a team to get better results for organisations.

[00:01:07] I thought I'll ask you an easy one. What do you see out there in the industry? How will do internal IT teams and outsourced IT work together? I'm going to sound like a real consultant now. It depends. I have seen some organisations

[00:01:31] work really well with managed service providers when they both treated as a partnership. It's not just a supplier-customer relationship. I have seen some work really badly where I don't want to say whether it's one part or the other's fault because generally it comes

[00:01:51] down to a bit of both but I've seen it not work where the customer makes some wild assumptions about what the service provider is going to bring but they've never actually voiced those assumptions especially not during the initial negotiations and where the service

[00:02:14] provider maybe thinks this customer doesn't really know what they're looking for so we can sit back and build them for doing very little. Both of those approaches don't work. The ones that really work are where it's a partnership and the service provider sometimes

[00:02:35] needs to guide the customer into what they should be doing to get a better service. And I suppose there's a lot of... it makes complete sense. I think that I'm assuming the majority sit there somewhere in the middle on that spectrum on success. Curious from that,

[00:02:54] the companies that do have internal IT, why do they typically have them? Where do they have IT or why do they have service providers? Why do they have the internal IT team? Sometimes it's just historical and the CIO has had bad experiences of outsourcing previously.

[00:03:16] Sometimes it's because they've got people in house who understand the business so it's not just about knowing the tech it's about knowing your business, knowing the people. I used to work for a system integrator. I've contracted in managed service providers as

[00:03:35] operations managers so I've worked on both sides but things like service desk I think personally are teams that should remain in house because you've got that understanding with your user base. They know what's going on, how people are using things, what's important,

[00:03:57] what isn't important, the language that is being used and while I have seen it work really well with some service providers delivering service desks they tend to be the smaller service

[00:04:10] providers who can really focus on the customer and get to know them as if they are part of the department and sometimes it's I suppose it's just easier if you've already got people in house.

[00:04:27] You don't need to put an awful lot of thought into keeping them there and maintaining the status quo as long as things are working. A lot of CIOs or IT managers just don't want the hassle of

[00:04:41] thinking about should I get somebody else in to run this for us or deliver this for us? How do I know I'm getting the right people? It's a lot of work and when it's done well

[00:04:53] it's really worthwhile but when it's not it just creates a lot more headaches for those senior managers. That's a very interesting perspective and I'm very curious from an outsider's perspective of what are the CIO and IT managers, what are they actually responsible for in

[00:05:12] the typical organizations that hire these kinds of people? Well again it really depends on the organization. You don't have seen just as I have some organizations advertising for an IT manager and really it's just a

[00:05:27] senior sysadmin where it's hands-on doing the work. But a lot of the organizations are wanting somebody who can look at the strategic direction from a technology point of view for the organization

[00:05:44] so does it align with what the organization is trying to achieve? Giving input at the C level to what technologies are out there that can enable the business to move forward and then just being accountable for the delivery of that IT service and making sure that

[00:06:07] nothing really creates a hassle. You can't remove accountability whether you've outsourced it or keep it in the house but knowing where you're heading, what you're trying to deliver, that you're delivering the right things at the right time, all those kind of things really.

[00:06:23] The same as any other officer trying to do but just sometimes on a larger scale. From your experience what does the sort of market look like for talent with CIOs and IT manager type roles? Are there enough to fill the positions?

[00:06:39] I would say there are enough to fill the positions within New Zealand anyway. I can't speak about anywhere else within the APAC region. Are there enough good ones to fill the positions? Possibly not.

[00:06:54] I think again within New Zealand we've got a number of CIOs who have only worked in the one place or the one sector for a number of years and they haven't necessarily looked at

[00:07:10] what else can be done. Conversely you also get people who've worked in the same organization or the same sector for a number of years and they're just jumping around from oh this technology

[00:07:23] seems cool and trendy we should head down that route and then two years later yeah well we'll forget about that and we'll head off down this direction there from what I've seen are good

[00:07:33] those who have a wide range of sectors and organizations, a wide range of sizes of organizations so they can tailor their thinking to what the organization is looking for and from what I've seen there probably aren't enough of those. We need to start bringing more

[00:07:57] people up from different areas within the technology teams into those senior management roles and make sure it's not just those who've done architecture or those who've been project managers. You need CIOs or IT managers of a variety of skill sets or ways of thinking I believe anyway.

[00:08:22] Well my sense is very limited like what you just described there the ones that are good to great sound like they probably have more gray hairs, have been around for quite a while they know what they're doing and it's probably much like the rest of the technology

[00:08:39] area we've got sort of a generational gap that isn't going to immediately fill them. No I mean I have seen some exceptionally good CIOs or senior IT managers in smaller organizations who've been given the opportunity to grow up into that and you know they're in their 40s

[00:08:57] they've got the right thinking and they're cutting their teeth in an organization the size and capability of which they are able to cope. They wouldn't be good enough to move into larger organizations yet but you learn by moving up in an organization size

[00:09:20] is of which suits your skills and then you move beyond that. So it's getting but I just don't think we've got enough good ones at the moment. That makes a whole lot of sense and that sounds like there's an opportunity for the right

[00:09:33] outsourced partner to fill those gaps as well. But you mentioned I'll play on the negatives for a bit where you started off this conversation you mentioned where things go wrong is when there's sort of a lack of clarity on what everyone's providing. Where does that typically come from

[00:09:53] and who's responsible for fixing that do you think? It comes from two places sometimes you've got the customer who's seeking an outsourced partner or a service provider and they've never really done it before or they've never really worked with a service

[00:10:12] provider before and so they have an expectation that it will work the same as if you've got an internal team. You know you can rely on a lot of goodwill you can rely on people interpreting

[00:10:28] your vague comments in such a way that it will just get delivered and you can't do that because even the best service providers in the world they are companies, they're businesses,

[00:10:45] they're there to make a money, that's like a grandma, they're there to make a profit and make money. So you quite rightly sit down with your potential customer and you understand what is there after

[00:11:00] and you deliver what they've asked for and yeah there may be a little bit of give and take where there's a bit of roughness on the edges but it depends how well the customer is treating

[00:11:16] the service provider as to how well the service provider will treat the customer. If it works both ways then the service provider is quite rightly going to say hey look that's not strictly in the contract but I don't mind us helping out here and

[00:11:31] you know we won't charge you any extra for that because it's just an extra little bit of work. Just like a server customer should be able to say yeah I know we haven't been doing what we said we would be doing.

[00:11:48] We'll work on sorting all that out so we'll do a bit extra just to get the relationship back on track it's got to be a bit of give and take where I think service providers can help out with that

[00:12:06] approach is being the bigger partner in the relationship. So when you recognize that your customer doesn't really understand what they're doing sitting them down and saying hey look the contract we've signed is very good for us because we can charge you for everything outside of this

[00:12:29] small bubble at a time and materials basis which is twice the price of what we would normally charge for a managed service but this is what I think we can do together to help this be

[00:12:42] more successful for both parties. I have worked with service providers who have sat back when they've realized that the customer doesn't really know how to hold them to account and so they do the

[00:12:59] bare minimum and that I've gone in as a contract office manager and pulled them up and they've gone well now you're asking us about it yeah we'll do it properly but nobody seemed to care

[00:13:10] before so why would we just click in the ticket and making the money that's no good for a long-term relationship as soon as you get caught out you you're not hiding to nothing. So being a good

[00:13:26] service provider I think means helping out those customers who are struggling to understand what they should be doing and helping them to get things sorted. I've fabricated on starting off topic from the question there. Well it's perfect advice for the partners just to be that

[00:13:46] be the professionals in the relationship lead them through. I think that's a perfect advice for this and as you're talking through that what sort of the question that sprung in my mind out

[00:13:58] of curiosity is how often are you seeing those sort of IT managers, CIOs wanting to be a partnership compared to maybe they're trying to manage their own things for selfish needs or that's what the

[00:14:13] organisation is directing and there's not this ability to make that partnership. More often than not I see that there is a desire for it to be a partnership that lack of desire tends to disappear

[00:14:29] if the reality or the perception by the CIO or IT manager is that the service provider is not pulling their weight, not making it a two-way partnership then it starts reverting back to customer and supply relationship and the word contract comes up in regular monthly or quarterly

[00:14:49] meetings and you everybody watching this or listening to this will know that as soon as the word contract is brought up in conversation then there's an awful lot of hard work to be

[00:14:59] done to get that word out of the conversation again because trust has been lost. But I think generally from what I've seen most CIOs slash IT managers want a partnership they may not necessarily

[00:15:14] realise it to start with but they see the value in a partnership and they want to maintain that. Do you think enough of them understand how to initiate that partnership stuff from their side

[00:15:29] to trigger the service provider? No because I think either I mean there are plenty out there who do know but where they don't it's either because they've never seen what a good partnership looks like so

[00:15:46] they're just running with memory of how it was before or they don't know how to have those conversations they think that here are my requirements is enough and maybe it should be enough because a good service provider should be able to say okay well we understand what your

[00:16:08] requirements are for this relationship this is what I think we can do on top of that to still enable you to have your requirements met but and don't say this part out loud but to build on it so

[00:16:25] that we can get more business out of you because a good partnership is going to mean that CIO or IT managers always open to exploring what else can we give you. That may be just a bit of a body

[00:16:37] shock hey look I've got three people off sick at the moment to be got anybody who can help out because I chased you to add the A's retiring next year can you take on that functionality as well

[00:16:51] we're taking on this new product and we don't have the skills in house are you able to look after that for us because once you've got that partnership relationship the trust is built up and

[00:17:04] and the CIO or IT manager is going to be more open to giving you more business but it's got to rely on the service provider to come to the party and say hey look yep we can completely do that and here's all the extra

[00:17:21] value add that we'll do and you pull that into the price but you make sure they understand that it is adding additional value because I come from the service management background and everything that we do is about value to the customer it's not about just doing it.

[00:17:38] Very much so and I think that that perspective is that you just provided us it's a very different engagement than say when a CFO or COO is coming to you and going we don't

[00:17:49] have anyone want to fully outsource it educate it you've often got a much more technical person sitting there and that's probably where I see a lot of that sort of friction start because the

[00:18:02] what you just said around a lot of the CIOs IT managers don't know how to engage with service provider so they lay out the requirements like they would look at it not how a commercialized

[00:18:14] operation will look at it that's often where the friction immediately immediately starts from that. Yeah but there was an awful lot of wiggle room there for a service provider to do the bare minimum

[00:18:37] and charge top whack if unless the CFO or the COO knows what they should be looking for so again that's where the service providers should be pulling on the the grown-up

[00:18:51] pants and saying well you've said you want all this but do you realize that means x y and z and either way you haven't thought about this that wasn't included because yes you can then

[00:19:03] come back to the party and say yeah well you didn't mention that in the contract that we that we drew up and you signed off on so that's going to cost you more by all means have those sections of the

[00:19:16] contract but do also go back to them and say do you want to include this part in more as well because you haven't mentioned that and experiences towards us you're probably going to need that.

[00:19:28] What should a good IT manager, CRO be holding the service providers to account with like we're talking the partnership there's give and take yeah what does that sort of good partnership look like with with that internal accountability. And regular communication is key so don't just wait for

[00:19:51] the monthly meetings or the quarterly meetings with the account manager have those regular touch points include them in the work that's being done internally if it is a hybrid model of internal and external so if there's project prioritization meetings or governance meetings

[00:20:15] get the service provider involved if there's regular stand-ups or weekly team meetings or whatever it is that the organization calls it get the service provider included in those because the service service provider world has so much more experience and knowledge than many internal IT departments

[00:20:39] no do so when the conversations come around of we've seen this happening the service provider should be able to go hey we've seen something similar with another customer we came up with an approach

[00:20:58] so let's sit down and work out how we can include that with you or when it comes to prioritization and governance you say you want to do this but are you aware there's also this other

[00:21:10] work that you probably should be doing first to enable that to be done more effectively. Here's a statement of work that enables us to do it for you quickly so that you don't have to

[00:21:20] delay the project by more than a reasonable length of time so the customer has to include the service providers in all conversations again it's a partnership they should be seen as part of

[00:21:37] the IT department not just an add-on and if you're not being included then knock on the door and say hey we'd like to get one of our senior techs to come along to these meetings is that okay.

[00:21:51] What happens to the service provider if they're not being led in that way from the CIO, IT manager, if they've got the walls up they're not willing to do it as a partnership what do you think the service provider should look at doing?

[00:22:09] Well there's only so far you can go with constantly knocking on the door saying hey we want to be your partner but I think little tiny things excuse me where you can maybe go along to that monthly or quarterly meeting and say we've identified all these recurring problems

[00:22:31] it may not be within the scope of the engagement we've got but we think some you should look at prioritising these because we can see how much extra work is being done by everybody to work

[00:22:44] around these and I honestly believe that even the most cold-hearted IT manager or CIO is going to start going oh yeah okay they're coming to us with good ideas and they're not even saying they will do it they're just saying we think you should look at these things

[00:23:07] and then people start thawing maybe or the walls get lowered in places so that you can then start being involved a little bit more so just those little value add things that don't take

[00:23:24] too much effort on your part as a service provider but can look huge to the customer if they're not already aware of it because the majority of internal IT departments aren't doing things like problem management very well they're not doing good governance of

[00:23:44] work and prioritising work based on value they're just reacting to what the wider organisation is shouting loudly about so being able to say with that benefit of an UB distance are you aware of these things or while one of our guys was helping out on this

[00:24:04] piece of work he noticed X so you should probably be aware of that and get one of your team to look into it we're happy to help if you need it but and eventually they're going to go well we

[00:24:19] haven't got time for that so that's when the conversation is well look here's a statement to work we could help you with if you're interested or we could do an amendment to the contract to say

[00:24:30] we'll also include X number of days of this type of work so we can just pick it up and do it without the need for a new purchase order it's interesting to hear that because a lot of the time I from

[00:24:45] my experience in talking talking to a lot of the service providers there are that's the there are walls up and you've highlighted the need for us to approach it differently that makes it

[00:24:57] that makes a whole lot of sense because we're coming service providers are coming from a different place to IT managers and CIOs I often hear a lot of service providers talking about they are

[00:25:09] trying to partner and they're giving these sort of recommendations to the CIO and IT manager as soon as they're gone the CEO CIO is coming to them and go why hasn't all of these things done

[00:25:21] why haven't you been telling us about these things but they've been passing that sort of information on and there hasn't been this closed loop so where's our where do you see that sort of responsibility from a service provider is it fully with just the relationship with the

[00:25:36] internal tech team or is it the wider organization and how do you sort of navigate that and so from my experience the relationship is with the tech team be that the IT manager the CIO

[00:25:51] whoever it is that you are engaging with to be a service provider and then start going to the CIO's boss about things that's dangerous that's where dragons lie because you're starting to be

[00:26:09] seen to or you could potentially be seen to be undermining the CIO I think good old-school minutes old-school miniting of everything that you talk to the CIO about if it's not a partnership

[00:26:24] saying no here's what is our recommendations that we've put forward you may be able to have that conversation with the COO or the CEO over a beer when you happen to bump into them

[00:26:36] or on the golf course where you just happen to bump into them because your sales guy knows which golf clubs that CEO's sequence but I think to be seen to be doing it formally is very dangerous

[00:26:52] grand unless it was the CEO or COO that got you in in the first place if they got you in there then yeah having those conversations is completely fair because that relationship is already established

[00:27:09] but if it isn't already established and that's that's dangerous and I like working with service providers when I'm in a contract an operations manager role but if I found out that the service provider was going above my head when there was no relationship there previously that would

[00:27:26] sour the relationship because how can I trust that they're working with us that would feel like they're working against me and my team it's a delicate position isn't it well yeah it is but then that's

[00:27:41] why service providers are paid the big bucks because you want to be all things to all people and you're trying to deliver what was required you're trying to get more business and the best way

[00:27:57] of doing that is to prove the value that you're adding and then hopefully the door opens a bit wider but trying to get more business by complaining about your relationship holder to their boss

[00:28:12] that's very dangerous ground just using an extreme example here yeah you know cyber security risk is is huge and service providers are taking that more seriously now yeah if they're working I've seen

[00:28:28] and heard of it where IT manager just doesn't get it and they're either they're either limiting their own beliefs or they've gotten internal limitations that the service provider isn't aware of huge security holes the service provider is trying to be a good partner trying to help it

[00:28:46] and it's just not going anywhere okay so in that kind of scenario yeah I wasn't necessarily thinking about that when you've asked the first question I think in that instance if your relation it no sorry if the relationship that you have with the customer organization is one where

[00:29:13] should something go bad from a security point of view and it's going to be your name in the press organization X outsource their IT to MSPY and security breach blah blah blah you don't want

[00:29:33] your name in the press associated with that so I think in those scenarios your chief exec having a quiet word with the chief exec or a board member to say hey look we've highlighted this to the CIO

[00:29:49] we're not seeing much traction but we think it's a significant risk that we're highlighting it further up I think that may be valid but if it's just we're not getting the partnership and we keep

[00:30:03] saying there's these improvements you can do in the CIO is not listening no don't don't take those at mother CIO but if it's a big enough risk where you are potentially going to be reputationly

[00:30:15] impacted because the customer hasn't listened to you then yeah why not and if the CEO still doesn't want to know well then consider your exit strategy I think those are some wide wise words

[00:30:30] and I think this is that what I'm picking up from this conversation is how key the relationship management part is and we're probably as service providers we're used to that we're used to having relationships they're just different this is it's probably more intense is probably over exaggerating

[00:30:46] it but there's more touch points than the the typical engagement for a lot of us and this is where we've got to price it into our contracts this is why the service delivery managers as a concept what triggered me just even in that conversation is probably most

[00:31:05] most service providers aren't actually built to engage with internal IT teams their whole structure their whole structure and delivery mechanism and their relationship management isn't made to have conversations with CIOs and it breaks the model okay that's interesting because

[00:31:22] all the ones I've worked with have been different where they're engaging at CIO level and maybe not wider so it's good perspective to see that that's and that's probably where a lot of these

[00:31:35] breakdown as well like if you don't have that service delivery manager type role that is engaging with the CIO and providing the the touch points and the reporting and that sort of

[00:31:47] internal accountability for the team it's where even if they do want a partnership it's going to be more difficult for them for the internal team to have that partnership as well yeah a good service delivery manager within the service provider is essential I mean when I'm training

[00:32:04] internal teams I say the service desk is your most important part because you get a good service desk it doesn't matter how bad the rest of the IT department is the wider organization thinks that

[00:32:16] IT is good because the service desk is good adversely if the service desk is bad but the rest of IT is awesome people are going to think this IT is bad and it's the same you can have an absolutely awesome service provider but if that service delivery manager

[00:32:33] doesn't give the customer the warm fuzzy feelings then you're going to go nowhere what are you looking for in that sort of service delivery manager the sort of type of person it doesn't bother me whether they are the always turn up to a meeting

[00:32:51] in a suit and tie and very 1990s professional or whether they rock up in shorts and jandals sorry thongs or flip flops or whatever terminology you're used to as long as they can have a relationship they understand what we're trying to do for our internal customers

[00:33:14] and they seem to be wanting to add value that's what I look for but if I get somebody who every time I talk to them says well I don't know I'll go back and find out that's not my responsibility

[00:33:30] I'll go back and talk to somebody it's like why do you even bother turning up to these meetings let's let's give somebody who can actually have a conversation at occasionally saying oh I don't know I have to go and talk to the head of our engineering team

[00:33:49] to find out about that that's perfectly valid but when it's constantly I'm just the front to this report and I can't answer any questions that's adding no value so I just want somebody who can actually work with me and also tell me when I'm being unrealistic

[00:34:10] and it can be done politely but you know the whole well hang on a minute James you've been asking for this for a while but we've also said to do that you need to do this and you've not

[00:34:22] even started that so can we stop having those conversations until you've done your part because just like everybody else humans forget things and you can work away in best intentions and then something else comes and smacks around their back of the head and you forget so it's

[00:34:40] IT right that's what we live with yeah but I realistically or not expect the service providers not to walk away and forget if I've asked them to do something and I follow up in a couple of

[00:34:56] weeks to say hey has that started yet or I haven't seen the statement to work or nobody sent me blur if it's for one of our wants yep that's humans if it's for long about a second time

[00:35:07] you start thinking Wang and what what process today they have in place to manage the customer relationship because again rightly or wrongly the expectation is that you guys know what you're doing we're struggling to survive because we've got all these things coming down from internal

[00:35:29] you're relying on you it may be very unrealistic I'm fair but that's what a lot of IT managers perception is I think that's key and I think what starts what I start thinking about

[00:35:45] is probably you want someone who's a bit more technical as your service delivery manager rather than probably a traditional account manager that a lot of service providers have because they don't know the ins and outs of the tech side yeah they don't need to be technically

[00:35:59] competent but they need to understand the technology that the service provider is providing I saw a wonderful thing on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago and somebody who I think they're in an account management role now but they went along to client meeting this is years ago

[00:36:20] they'd been given all the blurb about the product that they're providing but they knew nothing about all the supporting infrastructure so when this CIO said well how does this interact with AD

[00:36:34] he jokingly said what the after death and the CIO thought yes very amusing but come on time and they didn't know what AD was because nobody had told them about what the client infrastructure

[00:36:49] might look like so this person knew what they'd been told but no more and that doesn't look good so you don't need to be technical you service delivery manager shouldn't be expected to say or to have a conversation with a lead techie in the customer organization and

[00:37:08] sort things out but they should at least know this these are the services we provide this is what it means and if somebody asks me this or says that I can at least you're knowledgeable even while I'm

[00:37:24] writing it down thinking I don't really fully understand what they've said right sense so they sort of the other question off the back of that I have is like what sort of um what sort of reporting and transparency are you typically looking for as a CIO IT manager

[00:37:41] what's the balance between two technical and not technical enough for CIO very difficult one to answer because it all depends on the customer some people want to see a load of technical information because they share the report with the wider team

[00:37:59] and some people really don't want all that technical blurb they just want to three or four page management summary type based report based on all the services that are provided it's very difficult to do to answer that yeah you will find is that a lot of customers in

[00:38:19] the first we while of the engagement will say I don't know what reporting I want and they're relying on you as a service provider to provide them with something and unless you're a new service provider you've probably got some reports that most customers

[00:38:39] like the majority of yeah some customers will say oh can we also have this some customers will say I don't need to see that and then three months later they'll then three months later they'll both change and want it back in again but

[00:38:53] and I would say get a stock report or set of reports in your toolbox and in the initial discussions just say hey look we've got these reports that we provide on a whatever regular period excuse me if you need anything different let us know

[00:39:18] but here's something to start with we'll tweak it over time because though when I'm doing my consulting and you say to people do you currently have I don't know a process for how you do this

[00:39:33] and they go no you give them a blank bit of paper or a clean whiteboard and you say well let's knock one up and they just look how you're scared because they don't know what good looks like

[00:39:43] if you give them one that you've used elsewhere and say this isn't going to be good for you but we can tweak it it's easier to do that I mean think of the ITAL 4 guiding principles start where you are

[00:39:56] give them something to start with and know what you are comfortable providing don't start out with we can do this that and the other in the teams in the background you'll knock and sock

[00:40:12] and everybody are going can we oh are we going to do that start with the basics this is what our other customers tend to like and nine times out of ten your customer is going to go that's awesome

[00:40:27] and then just maybe want a little bit of a tweak but not much I like that approach and I think there's been a lot of wisdom in this conversation we could keep talking for ages on this on the subject and keep diving deeper yeah I'll need to go

[00:40:45] to see if we're going to do that I think people are getting sick of hearing my voice what do you want people to take away from from this conversation and if they are just starting

[00:40:57] out to look at working with IT internal IT teams or that they realize they need to change what are some next action steps they should take out of this as well so I think the key

[00:41:09] takeaways from my point of view is try and build that partnership relationship move away as much as you can from the transactional customer supplier relationship get a good service delivery manager or somebody who at least can actually in that role you may not be big enough to have

[00:41:33] a dedicated service delivery manager for all of your clients or for some of the clients I would suggest you probably need somebody who can do it focused on your big ticket clients because

[00:41:45] yes you want to build all the others up so you don't have a single point of failure so if when that's CIO changes and they go yeah I don't want to work with you I want to use the people

[00:41:54] I used in the master organization you certainly don't have to close the doors but do you try and have a good relationship from a service delivery point of view because that can make and break make or break a relationship help your customers if they

[00:42:14] don't know what they're meant to be doing help them they're not just outsourcing technical capability to you they're outsourcing an awful lot of trust in you to help them if he was just technical capabilities then the contract might just say I need people with these skills to work

[00:42:40] with us 40 hours a week and occasionally do on call and that's perfectly fine if that's what you need to do to get in the door with them but if they're outsourcing a whole load of service provision to you then you need to step up and help them understand

[00:43:03] what other value you can add so that they can look good in their company's eyes if they look good they're going to keep coming back to you if they look like idiots because

[00:43:13] of something that you have or haven't done whether they asked for it or not in the contract then they're not going to look fondly on you so it's about identifying where the gaps are and

[00:43:27] helping to fill them as the negotiations are happening I've worked I know we're trying to wrap this up but I've worked with organizations helping them to find new service providers

[00:43:39] and it doesn't come down to cost all the time it's about can I work with them and it's about oh yes they've said in their rfp response that they also do these things I never even thought

[00:43:55] about that that'd be good you could always put it as an appendix or an addendum to say we can also provide all this additional stuff if you want to talk about it but here's exactly

[00:44:05] what you asked for just so you don't get thrown out immediately by oh they're asking for 30 40 grand more than the other one but highlight all the additional stuff you can or will do because

[00:44:18] that's really where decisions get made that's some um that's some sage wisdom to um to throw out at the end and I think I'd add to to wrap up my biggest takeaway out of all this is it'll be

[00:44:33] geared the right way to work with internal um internal tech teams um what you just said there even with the rfps if you're if you're not used to working with rfps you don't have your sort of

[00:44:45] service delivery manager function it's a whole different um way of operating than what you used to so you've got to make a decision as a business and a strategic decision do do even pursue that

[00:44:59] is that where we want to head because if you are like what you just said you need to do it right then you need to build that partnership in a different way to our normal clients that we have yeah so

[00:45:12] it's been a fantastic conversation james I've learned I've learned a lot through it and I hope the listeners take away a lot as well and get better results with their partnerships with

[00:45:21] their clients and yeah no doubt we'll get you on in the future so thanks very much for your time no thank you for the opportunity