We at IOTAP, aim to harness the true power of offshore outsourcing by means of global support model. Complete location transparency, that gives our clients cost and time pay offs, is our motto. We have hence carefully and cautiously designed our support process to suit your needs. We have studied the time-tested processes of large companies such as Oracle and IBM and designed our model similar to theirs.
Here is how a typical Application Support Process looks like, at IOTAP; though, we insist that you keep in mind, that we can always tune them to adapt and incorporate your needs and ongoing support processes.
Initiation
Any project begins with gathering all the data that our engineers would need: Our team in India receives all the pertinent information on the end product, like:
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Support Requirements
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Security Clearances
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Availability Requirements
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Training Documentation
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Existing Support Documentation (if any)
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Overall Architectural Documentation
Operational Planning
Once the features and requirements of the product are clear, you and we, would collectively set up appropriate hand off timing procedures, Issue Tracking Software, Call Routing Details, Escalation Procedures, and Auditing, Privacy, and Security Concerns. We often take care to incorporate support needs of clients while deciding this hand off, and hence have many times given our clients dual location support (16/7 support in India and 8/7 support in US).
Training
Needs: Clear!
Responsibilities: Established!
What Next?
Next comes the training of IOTAP Engineers so that they can deliver on the application. The coursework is designed in house, and stored on the Sharepoint Portal within the company. This helps us to rapidly deploy trained resources on the application for support it.
IOTAP has invested in the necessary infrastructure so that you can remain in touch with us, whenever you need. IOTAP is completely equipped and enabled so US and European customers can call toll free numbers to our call center and be our engineers can securely connect via VPN to customer documents.
On Going Support
Once our engineers are trained on the application, they can then provide on going level 1, level 2 and level 3 support to end clients.
The support engineers first
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Validate the customer level
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Log the issue
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Triage the issue
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Provide Fix or Route the issue to an escalation, where change orders can further directed to product management team
Quarterly Performance Evaluation
Our belief is that our responsibility does not end with the implementation of the project and an ongoing feedback. We have hence incorporated a quarterly performance evaluation as a part of our process delivery model. Customer and IOTAP management also do a joint performance evaluation, where key measures such as
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Support quality
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Support effectiveness
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Are discussed and analyzed for improvement potential. Hence, we work on a continual process improvement model, where we try to constantly monitor, evaluate and improve our processes.