Optimizing Business Processes with WaaS

Lee Penning, CIO, Collab Works

IT services refers to the application of business and technical expertise to enable organizations in the creation, managing, and optimization of or access to information and business processes.

Technology's New Role at IT Services

The best example of technology's new role for ‘IT Services’ is the transition to SaaS apps running in the cloud. Literally every application you are currently running locally is available in the cloud.

We are a “bring your own device” company and use SaaS for all critical systems (product development, problem tracking, virtual meeting services, document/ information sharing, and servers like Dev, QA and Prod) in the cloud. Many of our workers are using Microsoft Office 365 which allows you to have the latest version of the Office apps which you can run on your laptop/desktop, iPhone, and iPad to review, update, and share documents anywhere you are and share them with your team using “Cloud Storage” resources.

Technology Challenges and Solutions

Security is a very big issue since workers can setup connections to cloud-based applications very easily. Company data can be moved to the cloud by anyone and it is difficult to track or trace if you are trying to protect data or to delete obsolete data.

WaaS, can help CIO’s determine which services to outsource and which to keep in-house to obtain the best value and most effective use of talent for the dollars spent

Suppliers must be able to share data between their products and other supplier’s products in order to allow the customer to use the “best” solution for their individual companies. Also there has to be some type of tracking mechanism showing where the company data is stored. Currently these features are difficult to obtain.

Technology Trends and their Impact on IT Services

We are a startup but we anticipate the data collected by our “Work as a Service” process will be shared across the company and possibly with other companies as the WaaS concept gains wider acceptance. The ability to access and process that data in a timely fashion from any device will be critical. Current solutions are difficult to use and costly to share.

Use of talent services such as Upwork and other ‘pay for services delivered’ companies will allow us to maximize the value of the work performed by the people that we have working for our company. Less valued work can be performed by the other ‘pay for services delivered’ workers on an “as needed” basis.

Advice to the Vendors of IT Service Solutions

I would tell them they should plan to deliver technical services in a more specific fashion. That is their workers will not be contracted for 40 hours a week, they should be contracted to complete a specific service or set of services without regard for the time required to complete those services, a pay for service completed concept rather than a per hour worked concept as we have now.

Advice to CIO’s

I would tell other CIOs to begin think about the services their customers (internal and external) need and use, then begin to look at ways to deliver those services in the most cost effective way using both internal workers and external workers to maximize the use of the worker’s talent. Products like our WaaS, can help CIO’s determine which services to outsource and which to keep in-house to obtain the best value and most effective use of talent for the dollars spent.