Technology Services Industry Association Benchmark

[Jonathan Nikols (Jonathan_nikols)]

The Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) Benchmark Study provides companies with a readout to help them understand their offerings compared to other organizations in the technology industry. The comprehensive report we received from the benchmark of our Managed Services highlighted Polycom’s strengths, as well as opportunities for improvement.

This benchmark re-enforced the importance of focusing on the business outcomes and solving problems for our customers where we go beyond developing, implementing and onboarding a solution, but take it further by creating a relationship to truly ensure customer success. The main takeaway here is that we need to continue focusing on this customer service model.

The question we ask ourselves is, “How do we help customers drive back operational efficiencies and increase adoption while not only meeting their expected return on investment, but exceeding it?” This is how we drive customer success. Polycom does a great job here, in helping customers manage any on-premises solutions they may have while also helping them plan and navigate for the migration to more cloud-based operational systems.

Polycom, like many other managed services organizations, started out with a traditional deploy and support services methodology, but what we are realizing is that our customers are looking for a stronger business relationship. They are looking for someone who can work with them through the transition, who has experience, who has helped others facing the same challenges and knows how to go beyond the IT department to also address the needs of other lines of business across the organization. Many of our customers are both interested in and apprehensive of moving to the cloud, and we help them make the change comfortably.

We are also helping customers in various managed services situations. We tend to see a lot of requests for remote monitoring and management, but we’re also seeing an increasing number of customers interested in full private cloud and transformational models. In all these situations, we strive to provide the best experiences possible. We support interoperable solutions that work with various vendors’ equipment and solution ecosystems. For example, we regularly leverage Microsoft solutions like Office 365 and Skype for Business to support customer’s needs.

Polycom is an expert in the journey to cloud services. We focus on lifecycle management and help customers through the migration to cloud based solutions all the way through adoption and renewal stages and beyond. Our strategic initiative is to develop a holistic solution for our customers and to ensure robust capabilities that drive their success.

Taking the time to participate in this benchmark study shows Polycom’s willingness to open up for constructive criticism and feedback which will help us improve the Managed Services that we provide to our customers. Overall, we discovered that Polycom can always evolve to deliver better managed services that meet customer expectations and we are prepared to adapt to this rapidly changing industry. The TSIA benchmark was also helpful in validating Polycom’s current strategies and making us more aware of our successes in this area.