At Kinetic Data we’ve been talking for years about Service Integration and Automation (SIAM) and building software products to enable Service Providers to deliver at scale. Understanding the SIAM concept has real value for enterprises looking to achieve successful delivery where service models are distributed across fulfillment silos, and customer experience is of paramount importance.
For Shared Service IT organizations, most have an understanding of the 
brokering concept with respect to infrastructure delivery. In this context, the brokering concept is often referred to as the Hybrid Cloud infrastructure model. In this model, Corporate IT is typically the central provider of infrastructure services, while the actual components making up deployed technology stacks live both internally (corporate data centers) and externally (partner provided, Cloud-based data centers). Often, Corporate IT may involve many back-end partners in providing those infrastructure components.
At a high-level, the Service Brokering concept appears to solve challenges associated with delivering enterprise IT service in the complex world of today’s global economy. In this model, services are made up of component functions where fulfillment tasks are sourced to provider-partners responsible for delivering their individual part. While this may seem like a broker model, the reality is that if you view things from the customer’s perspective, the “Service Broker” concept doesn’t make sense at all.
When I think about my experiences with brokers, some are great and some are not. Regardless of how good the broker, I’ve ended up (as the customer) having to directly interact with downstream providers to resolve issues related to the service I’ve procured. I’ll spare the gory details, but offhand I can think of examples with healthcare, investments, house-buying and home repair that make up my experiences.
Each time an issue came up in the delivery of a complex service (home-purchase) and I had to get involved in solving them, it was time-consuming, costly and frustrating. More than once, I decided that regardless of how good the broker was in my initial interaction, I would not use them for the same service in the future as it was easier for me to handle things directly with the downstream provider. That’s an anecdote for IT outsourcing if you are keeping score at home!
Ultimately, the underlying issues with all of any of these challenging “Service Broker” experiences I have lived were due to the difference between my perception and the reality of the service model I was procuring.
As a customer, I expected an experience where the service being provided was truly integrated end-to-end regardless of who was doing the fulfillment. What I got was a disparate and distributed service experience that was notintegrated and left me looking for an alternative provider for the future.
So, with respect to Enterprise IT and the idea of “Service Brokering”, think about:
- A customer procures (requests or buys) a service and expects delivery of it, not just “part of it”.
- That customer has an expectation (SLA) for that service with corporate IT. It’s not the customer’s responsibility to coordinate sub-contractor agreements (OLA’s) between back-end fulfillers that comprise the component Sub-Services, nor is it their interest to have any complexity added to their experience.
- They don’t care if Vendor A is responsible for Sub-Service 1, and Vendor B is responsible for Sub-Service 2. All they want is simple access to the service and a great experience in it’s delivery.
If there’s an issue with a downstream fulfillment by Vendor B, it’s ridiculous to expect a customer to care about a missed OLA or further, to get involved in the resolution of a stalled service. When they come to get service from Corporate IT, they expect a great experience by a Service Provider, not a Service Broker.
If you understand what goes into end-to-end service delivery where there is afocus on customer experience, Service Brokering is nothing more than marketing-speak. Another attempt by industry vendors to try to re-label what already exists and sell it to you as “new.” The multi-sourced delivery model has existed for decades. It is not new, and there are real Service Providers out there that truly understand the value of Service Integration in driving excellent customer experience!
Remember: What matters most is customer experience. Be a ServiceProvider NOT a Broker!
Cassy Lueneburg