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Managed Services Overview

Not too long ago, I wanted to undertake a small home renovation project. I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do, other than to fix the leaky bathroom and an overall update to my basement.  At first I planned to do the work myself, having binge watched a host of home improvement shows, so I felt more than ready for the task at hand.  I started the work but quickly realized I was not well equipped. It took WAY more time than they showed on Netflix and I didn’t even come close to having the right tools.

Before I got into too much trouble, I chose to call in a small renovation company to do the work.  They had the experience (and the tools) and provided a lot of suggestions (such as upgrading the electrical service to make sure it can support present and future needs) and the end result definitely met my expectations.

What does this have to do with the topic at hand?  Just like a home renovations, Managed Services Programs offer a viable option to those that may not necessary have the expertise or tools to deliver results!

What exactly is Managed Services?  The more textbook definition described it as a service that allows companies to outsource specific operational processes and functions to Managed Service Providers (MSP) who possess the necessary expertise for a fixed subscription fee – like your gym membership.    Essentially, it is a program designed to offer a variety of services as needed.  There is no specific scope of work
to be delivered, like a project,  and it differs from a “retainer” type arrangement, in that the subscription is not based on time spent.  Like your mobile phone plan, you can use as much or as little given the specified period.

Many MSPs provide support on a specific toolset and at Summit, our program offers a range of services specifically designed to support the Intelex customer:

• Issue Resolution
• System Enhancements
• Operational Resource
  Support
• System User Training

As you can see, the services do not need to focus on system implementations but rather focus on extending the capabilities that will help keep your operations humming and usability that helps drive user adoption.

Some of the notable benefits of subscribing to a Managed Services Program include:

Predictable Costs

While it is not always about the cost of the program, one of the practical benefits is the predictability of costs.  To know what your costs will be for a desired level of service at the onset is a blessing for everyone involved, including your Finance department.  This cost certainty allows you to allocate your budget more effectively and the peace of mind that you have the level of service you require. One benefit we have observed is that it eliminates the “how much time do we have left” conversation and moves it to discussions on overall system improvements.

Flexibility in Services

Unlike projects, that typically require a defined scope of services, a managed services program offers (or should) the ability for the provider to work on a range of activities. A good MSP should be able to offer varying options as part of their offering and be able to define the work at a relatively high level.

In-house Resource Availability 

By subscribing to a managed services program, you are making better use of your own staff, by giving them the time to focus on activities that will make better use of their skills and time. You wouldn’t hire a surgeon to cut your hair (but I bet it would be pretty precise) so it only makes sense to hire system experts to troubleshoot system issues or to update an application.  Leveraging outsourced experts is a simple way to get the most from your money.

Like delivering on a home renovation, a well-designed managed services provider can provide both the personnel and expertise to get your jobs done right!

If you are interested to find out more about Summit’s Managed Services program, visit our website or contact us at, info@summitehsq.com

Free 1-on-1 Consulting Session

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down and is creating concern and uncertainty for a lot of our clients and connections.  We at Summit wanted to find a way to support the Intelex community during this time and pleased to offer up free consulting sessions for any Intelex customer.

For those that may not know us, Summit EHSQ Inc. is an Intelex Partner that is 100% dedicated to designing and implementing optimized business solutions for the Intelex Customer leveraging the Intelex Platform. With over 20 years of direct Intelex experience across our senior consultants and leadership team, we have the proven experience across hundreds of engagements.

The Session

The free one-hour session is an opportunity for Intelex customers to speak directly with one of our senior consultants to discuss specific topics related to your Intelex solution.

The session will be facilitated through a GoTo Meeting session and will be scheduled for up to an hour. We encourage the use of GoTo Meeting’s screen-sharing feature to enhance the discussions. 

The focus of these sessions will be to support customer-specific applications – custom applications that are purpose built to address a customer’s needs.

Potential topics of discussion may include:

• Ideation – an idea for a custom Intelex app, but unsure how to start
• Design – discuss solution design of an Intelex app
• Configuration – technical questions around best practice configuration
• Best Practices – more general discussion on best practices when considering building a custom app on the Intelex platform

Considerations

Please keep in mind that we can provide our recommendations, based on hundreds of engagements and years of direct Intelex experience but without a proper discovery, we can only advise and recommend.  As well, we will not make any changes to client systems. 

In order to make the most of the time, once a session has been confirmed, we will look to get some details prior to the session.  We will not ask to get login access, but information that can be provided in advance, will allow us to have the best Summit consultant available for the session.

Getting Started

We will be setting aside a few 1-hour timeslots each week for the month of April to accommodate as many customers as possible.

If you are interested, please reach out to us by booking a time slot using this link.

Or reach out to us, at info@summitehsq.com with a brief description of the specific challenge and we will contact you to schedule a session.

Top 5 Tips For Implementing an EHS Incident Management Solution

An investment in technology requires careful considerations to ensure maximum value. As an EHS Technology Consultancy, Summit has had the opportunity to implement Incident Management solutions for a number of organizations and based on this experience, we have come up with a few tips to keep in mind when implementing your solution.

Understand The Regulatory Requirements. One of the most important things to keep top of mind when implementing your solution is the need to understand and meet your organization’s regulatory reporting requirements. Depending on the industry of your organization, you may have requirements from agencies such as such as OSHA, MSHA, WSIB or any number of other jurisdiction / industry-based agencies that will be critical to address. Based on our experience, the configuration of your solution to your company’s specific needs is critical to ensuring that those requirements are met. Even seemingly unrelated implementation decisions such as Org Structure layout can facilitate (or create a barrier to) ease of regulatory reporting. Since this is one of the fundamental reasons organizations invest in an EHS Incident Management system, it is critical to have a detailed understanding of all of your regulatory requirements at the onset of your solution design process.

Understand Your Organization’s Workflow. As you undertake the design of your Incident Management system, it is good to remember that the outcomes you will realize will be a direct reflection of your processes and workflows. By reviewing and documenting all of your key workflows during the solution design activity, it will ensure all key scenarios are being addressed. We always encourage clients to strike a balance between trying to accommodate “the 1%” that will stretch the design of any process and finding opportunities to simplify (perhaps even to automate) how the majority of incidents are handled. By understanding (and documenting) the details, your Incident Management system can be configured to best meet the needs specific to your organization. Unfortunately, when this hasn’t happened, we often see legacy systems that fall short in their ability to deliver true business value back to the customer.

Consider The User. Summit believes one of the true measures of a successful implementation of an Incident Management system is User Adoption. If a system is too complex or cumbersome to use, a user may be less likely to use it to report an incident, which leads to all sorts of implications and risk to the organization. The solution should be designed to be intuitive, realistic in terms of the data a user must input, easy-to-use, and easy-to-remember to use.  By taking the varying levels of users into consideration as you design and implement your solution, you will increase user adoption and ultimately, a more complete dataset will be realized.

Strike A Balance With Notifications. Notifications, for an Incident Management system, create the connection between an incident and an individual that must take some form of action. By sending out notifications that guide the user to the specific action required, it makes it easy (i.e. Increased user adoption). Be careful though…care should be taken to not configure your solution to send out too many notifications. Sending out too many often results in notification fatigue, where a user is inundated with emails to the point where they dismiss them and take no action when one is needed.  As you think through your workflow and solution design, be diligent in including notifications where necessary to maximize their value to the overall solution. Furthermore, consider batching the common “FYI” email where no action is required into a single daily or weekly report that is sent on a predictable schedule.

Begin With The End In Mind While the main motivation for an Incident Management system is tied to its ability to efficiently meet the regulatory requirements for an organization, it is also important to consider the other data that can be recorded and leveraged within the system. Starting your project with a clear understanding of your KPIs and their inputs helps to avoid the dreaded realization at the end of the project that a key input is missing and will still require someone to keep a side spreadsheet. While many Incident Management systems come with standard, pre-defined KPIs, they often need a mechanism for data input in order to generate. For instance, most organizations capture hours worked as a basis for a number of KPIs. With proactive solution design, this datapoint can be captured through integrations with other systems, or a recurring workflow task can be automatically generated for a user who is responsible for the data entry if an integration is not feasible.

Whether you are looking to make updates to your existing solution or procuring a new EHS Incident Management technology, take the time to plan your implementation to achieve the desired results.

Over the coming weeks, we will be digging deeper into each of the tips above, so be sure to follow our LinkedIn Company page.