What is Policy-Driven Self-Service?

By Dave Malcolm
published: Friday, November 07 2008

The IT Operations team has the primary mission and responsibility for delivering and maintaining business critical applications and systems in production for their users. The management emphasis is on high availability, performance, security, and tightly controlling change. This mission cannot be compromised because downtime has a significant negative financial impact to the business. However, another vital mission for IT operations is to provide systems and infrastructure to support the application lifecycle process, an activity which consistently takes a back seat to the mission critical production environment. These application lifecycle users often suffer due to the more pressing priorities of IT. This "service gap" between the needs of non-production "lifecycle users" and the support that IT operations can provide them due to the imperative to manage mission critical production applications is what we will label as the IT Service Dilemma.

In order to effectively address the IT Service Dilemma and fulfill both IT missions, a self-service solution that empowers lifecycle users is the answer.

Everyone is familiar with common consumer based self-service solutions such as the automated teller machine in the banking industry, "pay-at-the-pump" at convenience stores, self-service check-out at grocery stores and retail outlets, and self check-in kiosks as part of the airline boarding process... there are countless examples of self-service solutions. Given the tremendous and growing strategic investment in these types of solutions across many industries there must be a compelling reason for self-service. What is it?

The simple answer is twofold - enormous cost savings for service providers and a superior user experience for consumers. Very few paradigms can be implemented that provide such substantial value to both consumers and service providers; therefore, the argument for self-service is powerful.

Consumers demand instant response. Service providers save money on labor costs through the automation of processes and delegating these efforts to their consumers in an appealing fashion. Self-service empowers consumers and builds customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately providing incremental sales and revenue opportunities and is a significant value driver for businesses. With Policy-Driven Self-Service, IT professionals can improve service levels, maximize the utilization of resources and spend their valuable time on higher value efforts.

In order for a self-service solution to be applied to a given marketplace, the following conditions are necessary:

• Strong Business Case - It is important that there is significant economic benefit to the service provider. In most cases there are not only considerable cost savings over time, but also an opportunity for increased revenue. It is vital to understand the initial and on-going cost of the self-service solution to determine whether the ROI is worthwhile. A compelling business case will drive a service provider to offer a self-service solution.

• Automatable Process - The business process or transactions being engaged by self-service must be automatable. There must be a clear path for the transaction or process to be automated, controlled, and managed by technology. It is too expensive to provide a self-service solution if the service provider must be involved in every transaction. Business processes that require high levels of manual intervention do not provide the speed and self-sufficiency required by users and rarely achieve the desired ROI. For example, without a sophisticated robotics system that is not practical or cost effective, opening up a laptop and adding more RAM would not be an automatable process. Therefore, an automatable and controllable process is a requirement in order for a self-service solution to be feasible.

• Usable Implementation - The self-service solution must be easy to use when performing tasks within the system. For example, if a bank customer needs to deposit money into an automated teller machine and the system displayed a list of bank transaction codes without giving the customer any indication as to which transaction code represented a deposit, withdrawal, or balance inquiry, then the solution would not be usable for that customer. However, a bank teller may be able to effectively use the solution since they would be familiar with the transaction codes. It is true for all self-service solutions that they must be appropriately usable for their intended audience.

• Easy User Adoption - Self-service must provide a user experience that is superior to current approaches for a given set of users. The best self-service experiences are ones that do not create a large departure from normal human behavior patterns. User adoption is the key to successful self-service and so the experience needs to be such that consumers are willing and motivated to interact with the solution. During the dot com boom there was an online furniture retailer business that failed due to lack of user adoption. It was not natural to purchase furniture over the Internet without the ability try it out. This self-service solution wasn't natural for consumers to adopt. Therefore, the best self-service solutions make it easy for users to transition to and prefer the new approach.

• Service Gap - Self-service is highly productive for situations where there is a gap between what the consumer wants or needs versus what the service provider is actually capable of delivering. These situations create tension between the consumer and supplier which often result in dissatisfaction by both parties. In these cases, consumers want to be more self sufficient and the providers want relief from demanding users. Self-service is a mechanism to mutually address the needs of both groups - empowering users with self-service while simultaneously automating the delivery of a service by the provider.