Bimodal IT is the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility.
Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy.
Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.
- Gartner
Doesn’t it sound like waterfall (SDLC) methodology vs agile methodology? It is more or less the same. But there is more to it. Bimodal IT efficiently dissects the main functions of Information technology into two groups.
- The first group focuses on troubleshooting day-to-day issues, ensuring business uptime
- The second group focuses on innovations around people, process and technology to future proof the enterprise from issues
Bimodal IT will play a big role in hi-tech manufacturing and product (OEMs) companies, telecom service providers, retail chains and FMCGs. All these firms will require tech support services to become world leaders in their respective industries.
Bimodal tech support will be the best bet to handle such a highly connected world. Internet of Things has brought this world closer through network connectivity. Virtual reality will be making inroads into home and work environments. This has already become a reality.
Read my blog on bimodal tech support here. Bimodal tech support is not going to be an easy ball game for everyone. It poses some stiff challenges. Here are three key challenges that a tech support enterprise has to overcome in order to deliver that superior customer experience.
1. Challenges with Big Data
One of the most challenging aspect for tech support enterprises is in handling big data. With abundant legacy and new data and with evolving service models, the data has gone bigger and bigger.
If you visit a complex manufacturing unit today, you will notice how the service models are interconnected. The lathe in which the manufacturing happens, the end product, the service rendered and the production units are all connected. These manufacturing units are able to save costs through analytics which is driven mainly by the data from the service point or the manufacturing point.
Security is another factor that every tech support enterprise has to address while handling big data and if they are handled properly in providing support, the enterprises will be able to deliver better customer experiences.
2. Challenges in the consumer industry
Tech support in the consumer sector is going through a herculean change. The connected homes and the hyper connected world are driving this change.
For example Samsung TV would be talking to an iPhone (A competing product of Samsung). There is going to be an opportunity for tech support service providers to create those hubs and operate under more consortium models. Designing these models in the bimodal IT era is a nut that efficient tech support enterprises would break.
3. Challenges in the service Industry
The service industry is going through a huge change too. Human beings definitely are going to go out of fashion at work. Gartner’s 2016 predictions for the IT industry comes as a shocker for human beings. Some of the shocking predictions made by Gartner are
- By 2018, 20 percent of business content will be authored by machines.
- By 2018, more than 3 million workers globally will be supervised by a "robot-boss”
- By 2018, 45 percent of the fastest-growing companies will have fewer employees than instances of smart machines.
All these predictions reveal that the role of human beings in delivering support is going to reduce in the near future. Tech support will be driven through internet
Today you can book a flight ticket from your home, arrive at a city through an uber, book a hotel, check in to a hotel without a room key and also order food through your mobile phone.
The service industry will have a totally new face in the next couple of years. Tech support enterprises have to take care of challenges that include mission to mission learning, interoperability, data analytics and automation.
Are you geared up to face these challenges in providing extraordinary support?
