With the increasing reliance on technology, organizations across diverse sectors are encountering several challenges in managing their IT operations. A robust IT Service Management (ITSM) platform is the need of the hour, as it streamlines and standardizes IT services throughout the length and breadth of modern enterprises.
The Synoptek Platform is one such solution that offers a set of standard processes and systems and enables a common experience for Synoptek customers across all practice areas for planning, project implementation, business management, and technology management and support.
To understand how the Synoptek Platform accelerates business results and maximizes return on investment, we got in touch with Tim Becker, VP of Architecture and Deployment at Synoptek. As an IT strategist and change evangelist, Tim has constantly demonstrated the ability to create sustainable competitive advantages for Synoptek’s customers through innovative solutions, process change, and effective leadership.
Using the Synoptek Platform, he has established several initiatives that have positively impacted the IT and business strategy of customers.
1. How does the Synoptek Platform address common challenges that customers encounter in their IT operations and service management?
While serving hundreds of mid-enterprise customers, what we have found over the past two decades is that most face the same problems. The executives charged with leading the customer’s IT organizations often find it challenging to:
- Keep pace with changes in technology,
- Hire, manage, grow, and retain talent,
- Expand capacity efficiently to meet the needs of a growing business,
- Manage increasing compliance and security risks, AND
- Plan and optimize their IT budgets
all while helping to drive business results for their company.
What all those executives realize is that it is a laborious, expensive, and high-risk endeavor to put the people, processes, and systems in place that will provide a solution to those challenges. They need an experienced partner with an established, flexible platform already in place to address those operations management challenges so that they can focus on growing and transforming their business.
So, to return to your question, what is the Synoptek Platform, and how does it address our customers’ challenges?
The last ingredient in the Synoptek Platform recipe is our experience as a managed service provider for over two decades. We have translated that experience into a continuous cycle of platform evolution – tweaking processes, adding automation, and investing in new technologies. We also constantly acquire new skills so that we can continue to streamline service management and deliver consistent, high-quality results to our customers.
2. Could you highlight a successful instance where the Synoptek Platform had a significant impact on overcoming challenges for a client?
Sure. A behavioral health services organization faced many of the common challenges we discussed earlier. In their own words, they were “struggling to maintain a stable technology environment for employees.”
- Poor system performance and frequent outages hindered their employees’ ability to perform their jobs.
- There were some serious security concerns.
- Their internal team was working hard but lacked the skills needed to support their infrastructure and applications.
- Most of their efforts focused on maintaining their legacy systems, as their previous attempts to modernize them were unsuccessful.
- As their costs increased each year, the customer knew that their ability to compete successfully in their industry—let alone thrive—was at risk.
First, we employed the Synoptek Platform immediately as a part of our customer onboarding process and initial round of assessments. As our team got in place and deployed standardized processes, we immediately began seeing immediate improvements. Within 90 days, their IT capabilities as an organization improved from a level 0 organization to a level 2 organization. That immediately resulted in better support for customers and employees and a more stable infrastructure.
Second, we started to work right away to replace their legacy customer care model. Our professional services teams partnered with the customer to identify and then implement a cloud-based platform under which behavioral health best practices and a greatly improved end-customer experience could be deployed. We integrated that solution with the customer’s existing CRM, EHR, HRMS, and financial systems. The result was a vastly streamlined care delivery system that enabled their staff to focus on their work and not be forced to work around the problems of the old system, causing employee morale and productivity to surge. The customer estimates they have enjoyed increased productivity of over 160 hours annually for each of their care providers.
Finally, while many benefits can be realized early by deploying the Synoptek Platform, even more benefits come over time through repeating our Envision. Transform. Evolve approach. This approach, especially when coupled with our IT Leadership (vCIO / vCISO) services, delivers high-quality strategy and design capabilities and results in even more efficiency, stability, and lower costs over time. Measured over the first 3 years of working with Synoptek, the customer achieved an 188% ROI and a total benefit of $9.1 million. Ever since our engagement began in 2016, they have continued to grow and achieve successful business outcomes.
3. In your role, how do you foster innovation within your team and encourage a culture of continuous improvement, particularly concerning the Synoptek Platform?
That’s a great question. A part of my operational excellence team is almost exclusively dedicated to continuous improvement. Specifically, we are charged with:
- The documentation, training, execution, measurement, and enforcement of ITIL-based processes. AND
- Facilitating two of our critical governance processes – both of which provide valuable input to the ongoing evolution of the Synoptek Platform.
- The first is the PPG (Program Portfolio Management) process, which is responsible for working with leaders from across the business to identify those strategic initiatives across Synoptek that are essential for us to achieve our business objectives each year. As those initiatives are identified, we provide the forum to track progress on the initiative’s execution and, most importantly, to monitor the achievement of the stated business objectives to ensure we are on track.
- The second of our critical governance processes is the EAC (Enterprise Applications Committee). The EAC provides a forum for anyone across Synoptek to identify process or system “gaps” and bring potential solutions to leadership. After vetting the gap, proposed solutions, and potential benefits, decisions are made to prioritize and potentially fund those solutions.
4. What key features of the Synoptek Platform differentiate it in the market?
That’s simple: Over 20 years of experience as a managed service provider allows us to understand and optimize the processes that underlay the Synoptek Platform. Our global scale provides us with the resources to deliver the platform efficiently, and great support from our investors helps to ensure we can plan and execute any system improvements we need to continue our success going forward.
5. Can you discuss a recent update or enhancement to the Synoptek Platform?
We made several significant systems upgrades to the Synoptek Platform in 2023. And we have plans to do even more in 2024.
- CRM – Synoptek has an extensive, successful Microsoft Dynamics practice. In 2023, we engaged that practice to design, develop, and deploy a Dynamics CRM solution custom-tailored to match our sales and marketing needs. In 2024, we will expand that solution’s capabilities by integrating it with a leading CPQ solution from one of our partners – ExperLogix. We’re excited to build upon the success we had this past year with CRM to make the front end of the Synoptek spear even more effective.
- PSA – Likewise, Synoptek has a large, successful ServiceNow practice. In 2023, we engaged that practice to design, develop, and deploy a ServiceNow solution to manage our professional services business better. This is leading to better project execution, better resource planning, and better resource utilization. We will continue to incrementally improve those processes to deliver better results for both our customers and Synoptek.
- ITSM – We also started the replacement of our ITSM system with ServiceNow last year. That project is still underway, but we are seeing promising results in lowering our average handle time on both end-user cases and incidents for the customers migrated to date. This translates to better efficiency for Synoptek AND faster resolutions for our customers. We will complete the ITSM project in the first half of this year and begin to look at putting other enhancements into play in the later part of the year.
- Generative AI – In 2024, no discussion can be complete without Generative AI. Synoptek began making serious investments in 2023 to build expertise in this area. We’ve executed a few customer projects in this area and are now shifting our focus to ways to use the technology in our internal systems in the Synoptek Platform as well. Many of the process enhancements we have on the 2024 strategic initiative list are tied to implementing generative AI enhancements to our existing systems.
As organizations continue to increase their investments in modern technology tools and systems, the Synoptek Platform can help unlock genuine and sustained value. Explore the three pillars of the Synoptek Platform and learn how you can leverage our ITSM solution to drive exceptional results.
About the Author
Tim Becker is Vice President, Architecture and Deployment at Synoptek. As a senior technology executive with 33 years of experience, Tim has constantly demonstrated the ability to create sustainable competitive advantages for businesses through innovative solutions, process change, and effective leadership. As an IT strategist and change evangelist, he has successfully established initiatives that have positively impacted the IT and business strategy of every organization he has been a part of.