Perficient’s Take on Traditional v/s Digital Managed Services

Traditionally, Managed Services Providers (MSPs) have focused on areas like IT, Network, Infrastructure, Cloud, Security, and third-party vendor software management. But with the rapid digitizing of the global economy, Digital MSPs are fast emerging with service offerings designed for Digital Experience Platforms like Acquia/Drupal, Sitecore, Shopify, Adobe Cloud Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Optimizely and Salesforce Commerce.  

World over, consumers are moving towards digital consumption. Brands, businesses, and enterprises that own and operate business applications, digital experience assets or brand websites, now realize that traditional MSPs and their service models may not be suitable for digital consumer platforms. While traditional MSPs services remain limited to the ongoing management, maintenance and support, Digital Managed Services go beyond the SLA-defined support model and deliver significant Business Outcomes.  

Digital MSPs like Perficient, bring together years of Digital Consulting, Technology, and Implementation expertise for these DXPs. Through its Digital Managed Services offerings, Perficient delivers an outcome-driven Managed Services for its customers that go beyond the traditional SLA-driven support model. Outcome-driven managed services, while it provides all the necessary reactive maintenance & support services for business continuity, focuses heavily on proactive work planning and business outcomes.  

Perficient’s Outcome-Driven Digital Managed Services  

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We use a combination of three-pronged approach to achieve and maintain top DXP health KPIs that drives strong business results. 

1. Technical Maintenance: Under this category of work, our consultants plan and list out all aspects of site maintenance that can be proactively measured, monitored, and maintained in order to keep the websites in top shape. Every DXP and its underlying tech stack, hosting/server, the APIs and third-party software, site customizations present a unique challenge and opportunity for our consultants. We consult with our client to hash out these proactive work plan and create a proactive maintenance playbook.

Below are examples of some proactive work plan, parameters, and site KPIs we work on. 

• CMS & Third-Party Module, Plugins Updates: We will monitor for new and stable version releases for the CMS and Third-Party Module/Plugins and proactively patch the CMS as and when needed. This is time sensitive work and extremely critical for overall site security, stability and availability. 
• Page Loading Time & Core Web Vitals: We proactively measure, monitor, and optimize the site to obtain and maintain optimum page load speeds for the entire site and healthy core web vitals scores. This is an ongoing activity and is done proactively with necessary approvals from the client. 
• Website Technical Audit: We will periodically audit the whole website to ensure its overall technical and functional integrity and compliance with best practices. Areas like Coding best practices, UI/UX, SEO, Functionality Testing, and Load Testing are usually covered in these audits.
• Security Testing/VAPT (Vulnerability Analysis & Penetration Testing): We proactively perform manual pen testing (Dynamic Application Security Testing) to test for any security vulnerabilities in the site. This can be done either monthly/quarterly or at any other frequency as approved by the client. 
• On Page/Off Page SEO Optimization:  Our SEO experts routinely check the sites’ compliance with the on page technical SEO parameters and best practises. This helps the site to remain on top of Google’s search engine related updates. 

2. Ongoing Development Support: This category of work is taken up at the request of clients through ongoing tasks/tickets and work backlog items. Work like site enhancements, changes and functionality development constitutes this work pipeline. The availability of Multi Skilled Digital engineers who can really deliver winning solutions is key to providing ongoing development support.
3. Website Success & Growth Support Plan: This category of work is designed and taken up in consultation with the client. The objective of this approach is to ensure we work and enable the website to achieve its business goal (Growth). Primary areas where we work with the client are:

• SEO (dMaaS/Digital Marketing as a Service): This track or program is carefully curated by a team of digital marketers and SEO experts in consultation with the client. The scope of services could range from Advisory/Consultations to on/off page SEO optimization and a range of other work to boost site traffic, keyword rankings and conversions (revenue). 

• Web & Digital Analytics: This track of work will enable the client to successfully design, implement, and leverage web & digital analytics to generate more insights about the site for making business decisions. Perficient Analytics practice has a depth of expertise to offer at the request of a client.
• User Experience: This track of work solely focuses on bettering the UX of the site so it can directly result in more engagement, conversion and repeat business.

While focusing & delivering on the outcome is essential for Digital Managed Services, it is also important to have the enabling environment & process defined set–up to ensure engagements are successfully delivered. 

Engagement Success Metrics 

1. Ticket Happiness Rating: Clients can share their satisfaction and rate us on completed and closed tickets.
2. Issue RCA analysis: For Production Issues with P1 and P2 priority, the team will do an RCA analysis and share the findings with the client. This will help mitigate and remove critical bugs from production.
3. Weekly Status Meetings: These meetings with the client team and Technical Lead & Service Delivery Manager are done to ensure the weekly sprints are planned, executed, and delivered well. These include Open Ticket Discussion, Backlog Analysis, Sprint Backlog, Pipeline discussion).
4. QBR (Quarterly Business Review): These quarterly meetings with the client engagement owner and Perficient Support Services Delivery Head helps to review the overall engagement and client satisfaction. (Engagement Review, Service Delivery Quality Review, Customer Satisfaction, Grievance Resolution Plan).
5. Defined Escalation Matrix: A clearly defined escalation path is shared with clients to help them raise concerns at right time with key Perficient stakeholders and get resolutions on time, should the in-built check and balances fail to provide satisfactory outcomes or resolutions.
6. SLA-defined Service Delivery: Perficient’s Digital Managed Services come backed with very aggressive response times and service SLA for all categories of work requests.
7. 24/7 Global Emergency Support: Our team of L1 & L2 support Engineers operate round the clock and are just an email or phone call away. Monitoring applications, business-critical workflows or site outages, we cover all incidents.

To summarize, traditional MSPs do not want to go outside their comfort zone, which is providing playbook-driven support services. But when it comes to digital applications and experience platforms, the traditional approach cannot deliver business results which is what these digital assets are meant to do for organizations. Digital Managed Services that deliver Business Outcomes are the right Managed Services model that companies need to adopt to give them the power of a winning team and fully leverage the benefits of their digital transformation. 

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