The growing maturity of cloud has been a key driver in multisourcing activity. Cloud can be consumed as a service, making it visible and flexible. Reversibility is pivotal. It is easy to start and stop services and change providers. With this agility, however, comes complexity.
MSI more often than not requires dealing with geographical differences and country-specific compliance and regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), import of record (IoR), local and regional billing and taxation.
In addition, we now see global enterprises’ business units, whether they are equipped with IT support or not, contracting directly with cloud-based services. Contracts are dispersed with no single repository, which can make it difficult to control costs, standardize services and enforce security management. Such an ad hoc approach can open up the back door to security risks, for example.
In many instances, these lead to business issues in terms of lack of accountability, processing and compliance gaps, duplication of supplier overheads, additional service management and tool costs, heterogeneous service reporting and a total lack of transparency.
A clear picture is paramount
The reality is that more coordination and collaboration is required between the service providers in a multi-sourcing environment in order to provide customer-focused service. Otherwise, delivery silos are created where service providers only focus on their own service status levels and objectives, which may be to the detriment of other services.
In this context, Orange Business, as a carrier-grade service integrator, can provide solutions that directly address and simplify these issues by offering MSI governance and contract execution services. This covers governance, management, integration, automation, assurance, coordination, reporting and measurement functions critical to the success of IT service delivery and management across different service towers and multiple geographies.
We enable global enterprises to manage their internal and/or external suppliers in a consistent and efficient manner through the implementation of Service Integration and Management (SIAM) methodologies to provide unified global-local, dubbed “glocal,” governance across the globe, IT services and various contract types. This offers up effective cross functionality, cross processing and cross provider integration.
The approach directly leverages our established partnership agreement network, providing enterprises with cost clarity, controls and committed and continued operational optimization. This offers increased visibility of IT service providers’ performance and guarantees end-user performance through customized performance management, visibility delivered as a service, end-to-end service level agreements (SLAs) with end-user experience measurement.
A different approach
We have developed a unique concept and methodology to capitalize on the many IT service providers and vendors that we have integrated worldwide, called MSI Gallery.
Through the use of an existing portal, application programming interfaces (APIs) and established order-to-bill process “bricks,” it provides a modular, standardized service delivery and end-user experience. It also links up with customer-specific catalogs of services and pricing schedules together with a management dashboard that can be accessed securely from various devices.
In addition to MSI Gallery, we have specifically designed our MSI governance and contract execution to be global to deal with the complexities inherent in worldwide operations. We can provide consistent contract governance, change control, service integration, solution lifecycle management and customer data privacy, together with continuous service improvements, across all geographies and aligned to local regulations. It also includes the implementation of best practices.
Turning third parties into one community
Complete visibility is central to our approach. Together with our MNC customers, we can create a single service and pricing contract catalog, providing a complete overview of all contracts. This can easily be managed through an online web ordering tool. This simplifies and harmonizes contracts, while reducing costs at the same time.
This adaptive and systematic relationship style ensures flexibility and avoids dependency on single individuals and duplicated supplier contracts. In essence it puts the control of usage-based services back with the enterprise but in a way that it can be understood and managed.
For a deeper dive into the features of MSI, read our MSI whitepaper, and read what analysts say about Orange in this IDC analyst report on our MSI offering.
Eric Haïssaguerre is General Manager of Greater China for Orange Business and is responsible for leading the expansion of Orange’s digital transformation vision into key markets of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Eric has over 20 years’ experience in Asia-Pacific and his remit has notably covered professional, integration and managed services for complex network, security, unified communications, cloud, IT infrastructure management, and vertical-specific M2M solutions.
Today, through injecting global innovation and delivering flexible ICT services & solutions, Eric focuses on helping customers fully optimize their IT environment and guarantee a successful and sustainable digital transformation.