Section 6 - Step-by-Step: Take-on Process (Brief Overview)

Section 6.1 - Prerequisites

The prerequisites of the take-on process are predominantly defined and handled by the Sales Team. An Account Manager should inform the Service Transition Manager as early as is suitable about a new customer that will require on-boarding into Managed Services. A member of the Transition Team or Service Delivery should be involved prior to contract signature to determine the effort and resource required for on-boarding. If a new customer is deemed to be complex then Project Management resource may need to be invoked.

There are two sets of important documents that an Account Manager should provide at this stage:

• Contract – this is fundamental to understanding what the service provides and what is covered under a contractual agreement. This should document key details such as start date, end date/duration, contract value, service levels, incident count, monitoring, health checks and supported technologies.
• Supply Forms – any additional forms that are required/supplied at the sales stage of the cycle, such as financials, NDAs, security forms/questionnaires (e.g. ISO 27001).
• Connectivity Agreement – where possible, a method of connectivity should be pre-agreed before a contract is signed for ease of access and to ensure a more efficient start to the transition.

Section 6.2 - Transition Initiation (Kick-Off)

The "kick-off" will be an “introductory” period for all parties that will play some part in the take-on process. At this point, the actions and responsibility of on-boarding the new customer is passed onto the Transition Manager and their team from the Account Manager.

• Introductory Call – the Transition Manager / Account Manager / Service Manager / Principal Consultant (where necessary) will join an introductory call with the new customer to welcome them to DSP and summarise the steps that will be taken during the take-on process. Where necessary, an on-site meeting can be arranged instead of a call. Specific timelines may also be agreed.

On-going governance of the transition should be agreed on this call. 

• Automated Welcome Pack – an automated email will be sent to the main customer contact that will partake in the Transition. This is a two-stage process.

The first automation email will lead the customer to an online form to fill out their name, company name, preferred connectivity method, server list and contact list. If the new customer environment has been built by the DSP Professional Services Team, a cut down version can be sent as the servers will already be known.

The second automated email will contain documents as part of a “Welcome Pack” to help the customer get started quickly. These include:

• Customer Service Manual – a “quick-start” guide for the customer that includes details on how to log a ticket with the DSP Service Desk, key contacts, and out-of-hours processes
  
  
• Monitoring Setup Requirements – a basic document outlining the technical setup of the monitoring software
  
  
• Customer Escalation Process – a document that defines the standard operating procedure for customer escalations
  
  
• Connectivity/VPN Setup – the first significant technical requirement of the process is to discuss and agree a method of connectivity. As a default recommendation, DSP will encourage the use of a site-to-site VPN (this may be written into the contract) between sites to enable secure and efficient access. If the customer agrees to this, then a templated document is shared, completed and returned with both parties configuring necessary networking components:

The customer may opt for a different method of access, whether it is a client VPN (Cisco AnyConnect, Forticlient, Sophos etc.), web portal, screen share or other, which DSP can accommodate.

• Server/Environment Access – alongside the connectivity setup, the direct login access will be requested and tested to ensure the DSP technical teams can physically login to the servers in question. It is the customer’s choice as to whether personal accounts or a generic support account is supplied. If it is the former, then the Transition Manager should supply a list of users along with their roles in the company.

Section 6.3 - Familiarisation

A period of familiarisation with the customer’s environment should be carried out with the primary technical resource

• Review Build Documents – the customer (or DSP Professional Services) may provide useful technical build documents relating to server, database, or networking platforms. These should be reviewed and stored securely by DSP to validate and use for future support reference
  
  
• Review BAU Process Documentation – the customer may also provide documentation about their own internal processes as well as any regular patching, cloning, DR testing cycles

Section 6.4 - Document

Details of the new customer environment should be recorded for internal uses, and to assist the technical and service delivery teams to support the customer in future.

• Environment Inventory – as many details as possible about the customer’s list of servers and databases should be recorded in DSP’s CMDB. These details should include server names, IP addresses, database names, technologies, versions, usernames, passwords etc. It should also be noted that there should be a capability for a ticket to be logged against a configuration item that has not yet been added to the CMDB as DSP may be obliged to provide support before this activity has taken place. If monitoring is part of the contract, then the CMDB will automatically populate with servers containing the software.
  
  
• Technical Health Check – as part of the Managed Service contract, a technical health check may be included in the take-on process. This should be run and validated by a DBA, and the report shared back to the customer as well as being stored securely on DSP’s internal systems.
  
  
• Gap Analysis and Remediation – any technical issues that arise as part of the familiarisation stage or the technical health check should be addressed and can be done via a DSP support ticket. These actions will ensure a more stable environment is brought into support. Dependant on effort required, these remedial actions may be carried out via the use of banked days, or new commercials and an SOW.

Section 7 - Monitoring

If a customer has elected to have DSP monitoring installed as part of their Service Transition there are a number of steps the DSP Transition Team need to Perform -  

• Monitoring Hub Setup – a server/virtual machine is required to be built by the customer within the monitored environment that will act as the central hub that will send all monitoring data to DSP’s relay host. Cooperation, communication and buy-in is required from the customer for this step. Once this server has been created, and necessary firewall ports opened, the software will be installed by DSP’s Transition Team.
  
  
• Monitoring Robots Installed – once the hub is setup the robot agent is installed on each of the supported servers. This step is also carried out by the Transition Team. Part of this step will also require database level users to be created and this step should be clarified with the customer first.
  
  
• Alert Testing and Tuning – once all robots and hub are completed, the Transition Team will ensure that all OS and database level alerts are configured and tested so that data is being received to the central monitoring portal. As part of this process, and with the assistance of the primary technical resource (and customer), initial alerts will be “optimised / tuned” for a period of about a week. This will reduce the level of noise caused by the monitoring and remove any false positive alerts, as well as having the chance to switch off any alerts that are simply not needed.

Section 8 - The role of the Service Desk Practice

There are several small but important tasks that need to be completed within the domain of the Service Desk to ensure the day-to-day elements of support are met.

• Service Desk Admin Tasks – items such as customer creation, user creation, contract upload, SLAs and default contacts should be setup within the Service Desk system. Details of the new customer should be shared with members of the Service Desk and Service Delivery.
  
  
• Customer Portals – users should be created and validated for access to the ticket portal, Health Check portal and the monitoring portal if required.
  
  
• Service Reviews Scheduled – the Transition Manager should keep the Service Delivery Manager abreast of the status of the new customer take-on process so that initial service review meetings can be scheduled in with the correct contacts.
  
  
• Master Take-on Tracker (Internal)  – the Transition Team will keep the internal Master Take-on Tracker updated with all details of new and in-flight customers. The idea of the tracker is to have a central location of all new customers in transition, to display all fundamental details of said customers (contract start date, technologies in support, take-on owner etc), and a general task list of take-on activities that can be marked as complete/incomplete as the transition progresses. The DSP Transition Team then use the Master Take-On Tracker as governance in a fortnightly Transition meeting to ensure changes in service scope for DSP customers is known within the business. 

Section 9 - Go Live

At this point, there is an agreement that the full Managed Service support of systems that have been on-boarded are taken into a live service. This includes the full involvement of Service Desk, Service Delivery and technical teams. 

• Period of “Hypercare” – for an agreed period (governed by project complexity) of live service, teams will have heightened awareness with regards to the new system, including closer checks to ensure the monitoring is performing as designed, and additional care over response SLAs to ensure a high-level of customer service is met. A Primary Technical Resource is nominated as key contact for the customer to assist with quicker resolution of incidents.
  
  
• Implementation Sign-off – at the end of the take-on process, a sign-off document is shared with and signed by the customer, as well as the DSP Transition Manager and Account Manager.
  
  
• Customer in Full BAU Support – responsibility of on-going support is fully transferred to the Service Delivery team and customer becomes part of BAU support. Any issues, feedback, concerns and future plans should be discussed at future and on-going service review meetings.