Featured Interview: Martin Gilday of Unisys Speaks Out on the State of the Industry

Martin Gilday has worked in the services sector for over 25 years. In his current role, he is leading the service delivery operations for "one of the primary divisions of Unisys," which, in itself, gives us a good indication as to how important services has become.

James: How have attitudes toward service delivery changed in recent years?

Martin: Service has finally stopped being viewed as a cost-only issue; organizations now realize that service is a business differentiator and an enabler for growth. Service therefore attracts backing and investment, so that development and continuous improvement are now realities.

Looking at our customers’ business, the service element of what they do now has to be an enabler for the business or provide a profit in its own right. The most common way that this is facilitated is through partnerships with service providers such as ourselves.

This is especially relevant when you consider that companies are expanding internationally, increasing their global footprint, and in this situation, it pays to have a relationship with a service company that already has worldwide capability. Our clients want to deliver the same level of service across the globe as they can in their home territories. Typically, this activity has been centred on the major markets of the world—North America, Western Europe, and Australasia—but new markets are appearing all the time, and many of our major clients have operations in over 30 countries around the globe. This expansion of business, attaining increased agility, and capturing new markets are the real drivers of outsourcing, not simply looking for cost savings.

James: Do you think that outsourcing gets an unfair amount of bad press?

Martin: The large deals that have problems get all the press, but there are many successful outsourcing engagements working as win-win partnerships between the supplier and the customer that are not being highlighted. There are a number of myths about outsourcing, such as fears of losing control and flexibility. The outsourcing deals that succeed are the ones viewed in a more positive way—meaning that the customer gets more control over his business by managing less.

James: How has the Unisys business adapted to these new conditions?

Martin: Unisys brought together the outsourcing and infrastructure services divisions into one unit, such that we now provide full end-to-end outsourcing services to our clients, from desktop to data center. Our global capability and delivery consistency, combined with comprehensive “rightsourcing” solutions (onshore, nearshore, and offshore), means that we deliver effective solutions on an international scale. The scope of services includes everything from distributed break/fix support to complex security, application, and data center services.

We also have invested in developing enterprise transformation methodologies that enable us to look at the inner workings of an organization, and then, using virtual modelling techniques, stimulate changes to accurately predict how these changes would affect the business. The result is an understanding of the cause-effect relationships between business vision, business operations, and the IT systems that support them.

This has been extremely successful in helping customers to expand into new business areas, enter new markets, or swiftly integrate acquisitions

James: In your opinion, what value does an AFSMI membership bring?

Martin: AFSMI brings together people from all parts of the high-tech services industry. It has developed in recent years into a truly international association and therefore absolutely aligns with the market changes that I was referring to earlier. Services managers and leaders find that there are many people facing the same challenges as they are, and most of the time, this is with companies that are not competitors. That non-competitive situation creates a great environment for the sharing of ideas and best practices.

The Association’s alliance with the SSPA and TPSA demonstrates the importance of service, and the quality of the meetings will only improve as a result of the increased profile and the new high-calibre people joining the forum.

James: Which technologies do you feel are most important in services management?

Martin: Thinking specifically about field service, it is around mobility solutions. Providers need to be able to manage the workforce in an extremely efficient way and transmit the information back in “real time”…this is the minimal requirement now. We link PDAs to a real-time field service management system, which means that we can always see where our engineers are and understand what they are working on, and this enables us to keep our clients fully informed. Once the service data goes into history, we have an invaluable database of business intelligence used for problem management, trend analysis, and reporting, which helps us to continually improve our services while also providing intelligence to customers such as product failure statistics, user call analysis, training needs, and so forth.

James: What piece of advice would you give to any organization struggling to improve its service delivery?

Martin: There is no one magic solution. You must execute extremely well on the fundamentals of service, and you must be mindful that the key requirement is providing an excellent customer experience.

The next step is about reviewing your efficiency, increasing productivity, and eliminating waste. From a profit perspective, you should know how profitable the division is and be able to measure the profit contribution of each individual contract. It may seem counter-intuitive, but when you look internally for profit improvement, you will always find an area to improve, to streamline, or to reengineer, and that will result in service improvement for the customer as well. When the service provider and the customer are able to work together toward identifying mutual cost savings or profit improvements, then you truly have a successful partnership.

Featured Interview: Martin Gilday of Unisys Speaks Out on the State of the Industry

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