Why You Need Managed Services for Your IBM Content Manager onDemand (CMOD) Solution
Several analyst groups, including International Data Corporation (IDC), have been looking into the value of Managed Services. IDC polled several hundred organizations, looking for the key business challenges that these organizations faced.
While each company polled had varying priorities, almost ALL stated one common challenge: their most valuable and knowledgeable technical people are too wrapped up in administering their systems, including their IBM Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD) systems and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. These companies expressed a need to free up these highly skilled and typically expensive resources to focus on more strategic corporate initiatives.
The next challenge these organizations face is how to manage their rapidly growing infrastructure and reduce their associated costs. This equates to maintaining and managing their up and down time for IT services.
Those organizations using a Managed Services firm experienced much higher-quality IT services, with only 1 ½ serious incidents per year. In comparison, the organizations managing their own systems described having a typical experience of 10 to 12 serious incidents per year, and unplanned downtime was costing them upwards of $50K per hundred users annually in user productivity. If you are a larger organization with thousands of users, unplanned downtime is extremely costly on your user productivity - this is where Managed Services can help.
What are Managed Services and How Can It Help You?
When you have a dedicated team administering the solution they're solely focused on, it will always be a better model. However, most organizations do not have the luxury of dedicated resources, and that's where Managed Services comes in. In one sentence, Managed Services is a comprehensive end-to-end remote support administration for your IBM Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD) system, including on-premise, cloud or hybrid deployments. Managed Services offers a single point-of-contact (SPOC) for all issues regarding the platform, the admin portion, and/or the end user interface.
Support, monitoring, reporting and administration – these are the key components to any complete managed services offering, delivered by experienced, certified, and highly skilled engineers.
Managed Services is not meant to replace any of your team, but rather compliment them. For example, you may have a database administrator. This person might not necessarily know about the IBM Content Manager OnDemand Solution, but they will know all about your database(s). A Managed Services provider will work closely with this person to ensure your CMOD application, and any associated workflows, captures, or transforms are operating the way they're supposed to in order to meet your availability and business requirements.
Using a Managed Services provider for your CMOD solution also improves customer service, allowing subject matter experts (SME) in all areas to be available to address the needs of the company. With access to deeper skills and more resources, Managed Services provides you with the capabilities you need.
Additionally, Managed Services providers tend to have a variety of customers across all industries, such that when a company wants to introduce a new technology, more than likely that Managed Services provider has done it somewhere else before and has the experience to work through any challenges. Most importantly, Managed Services can result in lower costs, as the Managed Services provider is able to find the appropriate amount of staffing, the right-size infrastructure and they know exactly what is needed to meet and exceed the requirements.
enChoice is a Leading Managed Services Provider for IBM CMOD
enChoice has been providing mission-critical support through a helpdesk service to ECM systems, including IBM Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD), for over 25 years. enChoice has over 1,200 customers and provides Managed Services to over 800 of these customers. enChoice has a dedicated US-based staff of engineers providing Mission Critical Support 24X7X365 with a one-hour response time. We have adopted a philosophy of hiring very experienced and deeply skilled people - our average experience base in our team is over 15 years. Every one of our accounts has a defined primary and secondary support engineer, and their mission is to know you and know your system(s). Since 2003, we have averaged a 9.5/10 customer satisfaction rating.
About five years ago we made a significant investment in our entire infrastructure for service management, and we are now ITIL compliant, which is the industry standard. We pride ourselves in being very platform agnostic. A typical question we get regarding the CMOD application is “Do you have skills?” The answer is yes - and we also help support mainframe clients. Whether that's via remote System Monitoring or some other service, enChoice can help.
If you are looking to access needed skills, improve customer service, mitigate new technology risks, and lower costs associated with your IBM Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD) system, contact enChoice for more information on Managed Services.
About the Author
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Michelle Christensen is the VP of Enterprise Report Management (ERM) practice at enChoice. Michelle possesses a 25+ year track record in IBM software in the US and Worldwide and is a certified MVS Systems programmer. Prior to enChoice, Michelle served as the CMOD program manager and Worldwide sales leader for IBM ECM. She was honored as an IBM Champion for her commitment to the IBM ECM and CMOD solutions, and Michelle is also a published author and recognized ECM Expert. Michelle is currently serving as the Vice President for the IBM CMOD Users Group and is an active contributor to the CMOD User Group forums.
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For more information on Managed Services for IBM CMOD
Contact Art Richard at 480-889-5944, [email protected]