Application management is considered a process involved in managing operations, versioning, maintaining, and upgrading an application in the entirety of its lifecycle. Application management services include techniques, best practices, and procedures that are considered essential in the deployed application’s performance, operation, and efficiency.
Businesses, over the years, have struggled to enable efficient business transformations because of the increasing costs, effort, and time that it requires to support applications’ landscapes. It cannot be denied that with recent developments in the industry applications keep getting more and more complex with newer versions emerging that can range from modern to intermediate to legacy environments.
That said, intending to evolve existing applications to modern platforms, application management has become more complicated and expensive. However, it cannot be denied that application management services have become an essential part of many businesses.
To get the most out of application development and maintenance services, there are certain things that you need to look into to ensure that you get what you want from an application management service provider.
1. Clearly Defined Managed Services
You should be clear about what type of services are being offered by an application management service provider. In fact, most companies would want a service provider to monitor and maintain web platforms so that it works all the time.
It is vital to look for application development and maintenance services that optimize cost and efficiency. That said, a service provider must be able to shift the technology spends from sustainment to growth.
You would want a service provider that can provide you with complete health monitoring and maintenance with a comprehensive helpdesk. A service provider must be able to keep your website running and not simply create more billable hours.
When choosing a service provider, you must check out the provider’s certifications, field experiences, the services and features being offered. It is also good to check out other service providers and compare the services that they are offering and choose which one would suit your business’ needs and goals.
2. 24/7 Support
Most technicians only work during the day. A reliable service provider should be able to support you 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It is ideal to have a service provider that offers a designated and provisioned support team with tools readily available to help you, especially if you experience application errors at night. Ideally, a service provider should have a network operation center that monitors your website and applications’ health and can work with you right away in case there are errors regardless of time.
3. Efficient Monitoring System
A service provider should be able to provide you with a proper monitoring system to ensure and enhance client and customer experience as well as reduce or eliminate any defects.
Proper monitoring would entail a combination of automated monitoring along with a human response. With such a type of monitoring system, conditions that can potentially lead to failure can be fixed promptly before they can impact business operations and processes.
You would want a service provider who watches these alerts and potential failures in real-time and fix them right away to prevent a complete failure from occurring.
When choosing an application management service provider, you can ask potential service providers about their monitoring systems and how they are alerted, and how they respond to ensure that these warnings are addressed. You would want a service provider to improve application availability, performance, and resiliency at all times.
4. Single–Point of Accountability
It is important that the service provider that you choose practice single-point accountability. You need a provider to ensure that your specialized technology providers can work together to resolve a technical situation.
Without a single point of accountability, various providers will point fingers blaming one another. When this happens, your technicians will be caught in the middle and your business will suffer. In such cases, business processes and operations will be affected until a solution is generated.
You would want a service provider with a single point of accountability. The service provider should be ready to bring the vendors together and formulate a resolution to quickly address the issue.
5. Team of Experts
An application maintenance service provider should have a range of individuals with specific skills and talents. This way, there is always someone available that has the correct skillset regardless of the type of problem experienced.
You should interview a potential service provider and make sure that they have a versatile team of certified technicians. This way, business operations will not be affected because one or two technicians are out and not available.
6. Reliable Ticketing Systems
Ticketing systems are considered a secure and organized method to help track issues in applications and websites as they happen. You should be able to see the helpdesk ticket queue at any time. In addition, your service provider should have a workflow that ensures that not one of these helpdesk tickets gets lost or delayed.
A ticketing system must be established that will allow you to submit a ticket and have an automated workflow in terms of triaging, prioritizing, scheduling, and escalating to the necessary departments.
When you choose an application management service provider, you should ask for a demonstration of their ticketing system and see potential efficiency in the delivery of resolution once a ticket is created.
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