Implement a Transformative IVR Experience That Empowers Your Customers

Learn the strategies that will allow you to develop an effective interactive voice response (IVR) framework that supports self-service and improves customer experience.

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This Research Is Designed For:

• Business analysts, application directors/managers, and customer service leaders tasked with developing and executing a technology enablement strategy for optimizing their contact center approach.
• Any organization aiming to improve its customer experience by implementing a customer-centric approach to over-the-phone service via an IVR system.

This Research Will Help You:

• Adopt the best strategies for outlining an effective IVR approach and for transforming an existing IVR system.
• Improve customer experience and ultimately customer satisfaction by enabling you to create a more efficient IVR call flow tree.
• Select the proper IVR strategies to focus on based on the maturity level of your organization's call center.
• Review the "art of the possible" and learn of the latest developments in successful IVR execution.
• Learn IT's role in developing a successful IVR system and in developing a technology strategy that optimizes your IVR approach.

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Today's customers expect a top-tier experience when interacting with businesses.
• The advancements in IVR technology mean that IT departments are managing added complexity in drafting a strategy for a top-tier IVR approach.
• Implementing best practices and the right enabling technology stack is critical to supporting world-class customer experience through IVR.

Common Obstacles

• Many organizations do not have a clear understanding of customers' drivers for contacting their IVR.
• As many contact centers look to improve the customer experience, the need for an impactful IVR system has markedly increased. The proliferation of recommendations for IVR best practices and related technologies has made it difficult to identify and implement the right approach.
• With a growing number of IVR-related requests, IT must be prepared to speak intelligently about requirements and the "art of the possible."

Info-Tech's Approach

• Before selecting and deploying technology solutions, create a database of common customer call drivers to act as an outline for the call flow tree.
• Understand and apply operational best practices, such as ensuring proper call menu organization and using self-service applications, to improve IVR metrics and, ultimately, the customer experience.
• Understand evolving trends and emerging technologies in the IVR space, including offering personalized service and using natural language processing/conversational AI.

Info-Tech Insight

Tailor your IVR system specifically for your customers. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Understand your key customers and support their experience by implementing the most effective strategies for them.

Voice is still the dominant way in which customers choose to receive support

Despite the contrary beliefs that the preference for phone support and IVR systems is declining, studies have consistently shown that consumers still prefer receiving customer service over the phone.

Your IVR approach can make or break your customers' experience

The feelings that customers are left with after interacting with contact centers and support lines has a major impact on their future purchase decisions

Effective IVR systems provide customers with positive experiences, keeping them happy and satisfied. Poorly executed IVR systems leave customers feeling frustrated and contribute to an overall negative experience. Negative experiences with your IVR system could lead to your customers taking their business elsewhere.

In fact, research by Haptik shows that an average of $262 per customer is lost each year due to poor IVR experiences ("7 Conversational IVR Trends for 2021 and Beyond," Haptik, 2021).

IVR systems only improve your customers' experience when done properly

There are many common mistakes that organizations make when implementing their own IVR strategies:

1. Offering too many menu options. IVR systems are supposed to allow customers to resolve their inquiries quickly, so it is integral that you organize your menu effectively. Less is more when it comes to your IVR call flow tree.
2. A lack of self-service capabilities. IVR systems are meant to maximize customer service and improve the customer experience by offering self-service functionality. If resolutions for common issues can't be found through IVR, your return on investment (ROI) is limited.
   
3. Having callers get stuck in an "IVR loop." Customers caught hearing the same information repeatedly will often abandon their call. Don't allow customers to get "tangled" in your call flow tree; always make human contact an option.
   
4. Not offering personalized service. The inability to identify customers by their number or other identifying features leads to poor personalization and time wasted repeating information, contributing to an overall negative experience.
   
5. Not updating the IVR system. By not taking advantage of new developments in IVR technology and by not using customer and employee feedback to upgrade your offering, you are missing out on the potential to improve your customers' experience. Complacency kills, and your organization will be at a competitive disadvantage because of it.

Implement a transformative IVR approach that empowers your customers

Call flow trees don't grow overnight; they require commitment, nurturing, and care

1. Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree
   • Your call flow tree will only grow as strong as the roots allow it; begin beneath the surface by understanding the needs of your customers and the goals of your organization first, before building your initial IVR menu.
2. Allow Customers the Opportunity to Branch Out
   • Empower your customers by directing your call flow tree to self-service applications where possible and to live agents when necessary.
3. Let Your Call Flow Tree Flourish
   • Integrate your IVR with other relevant business applications and apply technological developments that align with the needs of your customers and the goals of your organization.
4. Keep Watering Your Call Flow Tree
   • Don't let your call flow tree die! Elicit feedback from relevant stakeholders and develop an iterative review cycle to identify and implement necessary changes to your call flow tree, ensuring continued growth.

IT plays an integral role in supporting the IVR approach

IT is responsible for providing technology enablement of the IVR strategy

While IT may not be involved in organizing the call flow tree itself, their impact on an organization's IVR approach is undeniable. Not only will IT assist with the implementation and integration of your IVR system, they will also be responsible for maintaining the technology on an ongoing basis. As such, IT should be a part of your organization's software selection team, following Info-Tech's methodology for optimizing your software selection process.

• With an understanding of the organization's customer experience management strategy and business goals, IT should be looked toward to:
• Provide insight into the "art of the possible" with IVR systems.
• Recommend enabling technologies relative to your call center's maturity (e.g. agent assist and natural language processing).
• Outline integration capabilities with your existing application portfolio.
• Highlight any security concerns.
• Assist with vendor engagement.
• Take part in stakeholder feedback groups, consulting with agents about their pain points and attempting to solve their problems.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series

of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 5 to 7 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Phase 1

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Building a database of your customers' call drivers
• Developing IVR-related goals and connecting them with your key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Developing the first tier of your IVR menu

This phase involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Implement a Transformative IVR Approach That Empowers Your Customers

Step 1.1

Understand Your Customers

This step will walk you through the following activity:

1.1.1 Build a database of the reasons why your customers call your contact center

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• List of your customers' call drivers

Help your customers get to where they need to go

Understand which questions customers need answered the most and organize your IVR menu accordingly

• With any IVR system, your primary focus should be creating a simple, easily navigated call flow. You not only want your customers to be able to find the solutions that they are looking for, but you want them to be able to do so easily and quickly.
• In order to direct customers more efficiently, you need to understand why they're motivated to call your contact center. This will be different for every organization, so it requires a deeper understanding of your customers.
• After understanding the motivators behind your customers' reasons for calling, you'll be able to organize your call flow tree effectively.
• Assign the most popular reasons that customers call first in your IVR call flow. Organizing your call flow in such a way will ensure a quicker turn around time for customer inquiries, providing callers with the immediate resolution that they are seeking.

"Call flows are the structure of a call center's interactive voice response (IVR). They define the path a caller takes to reach a resolution. The more efficient the flow, the quicker a resolution can be – thereby delivering a better caller experience."

Thomas Randall, Ph.D.
Senior Research Analyst
Info-Tech Research Group

1.1.1 Activity: Build a list of the most common reasons that your key customers call your contact center

30 minutes

1. As a group, review the reasons that customers call your contact center. This includes reviewing which questions are asked most frequently, what services are most often inquired about, and what pain points and complaints live agents hear most regularly.
2. Organize each call driver from most to least popular based on how often they are heard.
3. Record your findings.

Info-Tech Insight

To understand why your customers are calling, first you need to know who your customers are. Improve your caller understanding by creating customer personas.

1.1.1 Activity: Build a list of the most common reasons that your key customers call your contact center

Example

Step 1.2

Develop Goals for Your IVR

This step will walk you through the following activity:

1.2.1 Outline IVR-related goals relevant to your organization.

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Goals for your organizational IVR

Create IVR-related goals you wish for your organization to achieve

Organizations across different industries will measure success in a multitude of ways; develop goals that are relevant to your needs and desires

Based on your customer experience strategy and what industry you're in, the goals that you aim to accomplish will look different. A doctor's office will be more concerned with an accurate diagnosis and high first call resolution rate than low average talk time!

Setting business goals relevant to your organization is only half of the battle; it's just as important to hold your organization accountable to those goals and measure your continued progress toward meeting them.

1.2.1 Activity: Brainstorm a list of goals that you would like your organization to achieve when optimizing your IVR approach

30 minutes

1. In two to three groups, brainstorm goals related to your IVR that are relevant to your organization.
2. Classify these goals as being either quick wins or part of a longer-term engagement based on the time they would take to accomplish.
3. Introduce your goals to the entire group, coming to an agreement on the top goals that the organization should aim to achieve through implementing a new/transformed IVR approach.

1.2.1 Activity: Brainstorm a list of goals that you would like your organization to achieve when optimizing your IVR approach

Example

Step 1.3

Align Your Goals With Your KPIs

This step will walk you through the following activity:

1.3.1 Review your organizational IVR goals and connect them with your key performance indicators (KPIs)

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Metrics used to measure organizational success related to your IVR

Ensure you are using the proper metrics for measuring the success of your call flow tree

You won't know if your IVR is operating successfully if you don't know what success looks like for you. It is important to align your contact center KPIs with your business goals so you can hold your IVR system accountable.

Example

1.3.1 Activity: Develop KPIs for your contact center and connect them to your organization's business goals

30 minutes

1. As a group, establish the metrics or KPIs that will be used to measure your progress against the organizational IVR goals created in Activity 1.2.1.
2. Take note of your current score for each of your organizational goals and determine your target score.
3. Attach a deadline or target date by which you would like to reach your target score. Target dates can vary based on whether your goal is classified as a quick win or part of a longer-term engagement.

Step 1.4

Build Your Initial IVR Menu

This step will walk you through the following activity:

1.4.1 Develop the first tier of your IVR menu, determining the initial selections that customers will have to choose from

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Tier one of your IVR call flow tree

Keep your IVR concise – minimize the length of your voice prompts and limit the depth of your menus

You don't want to overload your customers with information. Providing your callers with overly detailed prompts and too many menu options will only lead to frustration, ultimately diminishing both the efficiency and the effectiveness of your IVR. Limiting the length of your voice prompts and the depth of your menus will lay out a clear path for your callers, increasing the likelihood that they are able to navigate your IVR accurately.

Each of your IVR menus should provide your customers with no more than five selections.

Your IVR should offer a maximum of three menu tiers.

Each of your selection "descriptions" or voice prompts should be no longer than four seconds in length.

Info-Tech Insight

According to a study by Telzio (2020), introductory IVR messages that greet your customers and identify your company should be under 7.9 seconds in length. Longer introductions will only bore, frustrate, and overload the customer before the call really even begins.

When developing your voice prompts, it is integral to speak clearly using simple and easily understood language

• Speak clearly and stay away from industry-specific jargon to ensure that your voice prompts are widely understood by your customer base. This will allow callers to digest the information relayed through your IVR more accurately.
• Part of increasing the retention of information communicated through your IVR is also ensuring that sufficient pauses are taken between each of your voice prompts. Just as you want to avoid overloading your customers with voice prompts that are too long and too detailed, you also want to give your callers adequate time to process the information that is being relayed to them.
• Improving the ease of listening to your IVR will reduce the risk of overwhelming your callers and will increase the likelihood that they are able to follow along appropriately, directing themselves down the proper call flow.

Info-Tech Insight

Securing voice talent and be expensive and cumbersome. Consider using an automated voice through a text-to-speech solution for your prompts. This will ensure that all your prompts are consistent throughout your menus, and it also makes it significantly easier to provide crucial updates within your IVR system.

When sufficient pauses are taken between menu options, input errors can be reduced by over…

Source: Ansafone Contact Centers, 2019

1.4.1 Activity: Begin building your call flow tree by developing the initial selections that customers will choose from when dialing into your IVR

30 minutes

1. Review the database of customer call drivers completed in Activity 1.1.1 to create the opening menu of your IVR call flow tree.
2. Limit your selections/prompts to a maximum of five by grouping related questions, services, and complaints/pain points into broad categories.
3. Organize your selections/prompts according to how often customers call in relating to that topic.

Info-Tech Insight

Remember: You don't need five selections! That is the maximum recommended number of prompts to use and will most likely be reserved for more complex call flows. More isn't always better. If you can limit your initial menu to fewer selections, then do so.

1.4.1 Activity: Begin building your call flow tree by developing the initial selections that customers will choose from when dialing into your IVR

Example

Phase 2

Allow Customers the Opportunity to Branch Out

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Completing the second tier of your call flow tree
• Completing the third and final tier of your call flow tree

This phase involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Implement a Transformative IVR Approach That Empowers Your Customers

Step 2.1

Build the Second Tier of Your IVR Menu

This step will walk you through the following activity:

• 2.1.1 Complete the second tier of your call flow tree, branching out from your initial menu

Allow Customers the Opportunity to Branch Out

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Tier 2 of your IVR call flow tree

An IVR system should empower your customers to solve problems on their own

Integrate business applications into your IVR menus to enable self-service capabilities and automate processes where possible

• An IVR system should assist your customer service team while also empowering your customers. This can be accomplished through offering self-service and using automated messaging via a broadcast messaging system.
• Some common self-service practices include providing callers with the ability to check credit card statements, pay bills, and track shipments.
• Automated messaging can be used to address common customer questions. For instance, if a company-wide issue exists, an automated message can outline the issue and highlight the approximate time for resolution, providing customers with the answer they were seeking while eliminating the need to speak to a live agent. This technique is commonly practiced by internet providers during outages.
• Providing callers with the opportunity to find a resolution for themselves through self-service and automated messaging not only improves the customer experience but also frees up your customer service team for more pressing matters.

Source: Raffle, 2020

2.1.1 Activity: Grow your call flow tree! Begin branching out from your initial menu options and develop the second tier of your IVR system

30 minutes

1. Branch out from your initial IVR menu created in Activity 1.4.1. Get more specific in your prompts, branching out from the general groupings you have created.
2. Consult with your database of customer call drivers created in Activity 1.1.1 to organize your subgroupings, again prioritizing the services most sought and the questions, complaints, and pain points most frequently heard.
3. Limit each subsection to a maximum of five prompts.

Info-Tech Insight

Always provide your callers with the option to go back to a previous menu or to have menu options repeated.

2.1.1 Activity: Grow your call flow tree! Begin branching out from your initial menu options and develop the second tier of your IVR system

Example

Step 2.2

Build the Third Tier of Your IVR Menu

This step will walk you through the following activity:

2.2.1 Complete your call flow tree by branching out your third and final tier of menu options.

Allow Customers the Opportunity to Branch Out

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Third and final tier of your IVR call flow tree

Provide your callers with the option to speak to a live agent – but not too soon

While promoting self-service and automating certain processes will improve the functionality of your IVR, it is also important to realize that some issues will ultimately require human intervention. An effective IVR system harmonizes these concepts by making human contact an option, but not too early in the process. You need to find the right balance!

When organizing your IVR call flow tree, you need to be conscious of sending clients in an endless "IVR loop." You should never have your IVR continually repeat its menu options. Customers will abandon an IVR if they are stuck in an IVR loop, being forced to listen to the same information repeatedly without having a way to reach an agent.

If a problem cannot be solved within three steps or by the third tier of your IVR menus, callers should be provided with the option to speak to a live agent, if not automatically routed to one. By providing your callers with the option to speak to a live agent on the third tier of your IVR, you are still offering ample time for customers to discover an avenue to solve their issue on their own through self-service, without frustrating them by losing them in an endless loop of IVR options.

Source: ProProfs Chat, 2022

Info-Tech Insight

Consider routing callers to a live agent not only on the third tier of your IVR menus but also after three input errors. Multiple input errors can show an eagerness to speak to a representative or a strong misunderstanding of the IVR offering.

How you direct a customer to a live agent can make all the difference

Don't think that just offering your customers the option to speak to a live agent is enough. When aiming to significantly improve your customers' experience, how you direct calls to your live agents plays a major role. When a call is being directed to a live agent, be sure to:

• Optimize your call routing and minimize call transfers. Use skills-based routing to direct your incoming client calls to the most suitable agent to resolve their issue. Inaccurately routing callers through your IVR leads to having to transfer the customer to another agent, which is a major contributor to a negative customer experience.
• Include wait-time expectations and call-back functionality. There is no denying it: Waiting on hold can be a real pain. If a customer needs to go on hold, inform them of where they are in the queue and what the approximate wait time is. A little transparency can go a long way. You should also provide customers with the option to have a representative call them back. This greatly improves the customer experience, particularly when wait times are long.
• Play useful on-hold messages. If a customer does decide to wait on the line to speak to a representative, ensure your on-hold messaging doesn't negatively impact their experience. Always have multiple songs and messages available to cycle through to limit customer annoyance. For on-hold messages, consider mentioning self-service capabilities available on other channels or providing company news and information on special promotions. Know your key customer demographics and plan your on-hold messaging accordingly.

2.2.1 Activity: Complete your call flow tree!

30 minutes

1. Branch out from the second tier of your IVR call flow tree created in Activity 2.1.1, connecting relevant prompts with self-service applications and automated responses. Keep in mind, most of your frequently asked questions can and should be directed toward an automated response.
2. Direct all remaining prompts to a live agent, ensuring each selection from your second-tier menu is capped off appropriately.

Info-Tech Insight

Remember: Your IVR system doesn't live in isolation. The information offered by your IVR, particularly from automated messages, should be consistent with information found within other resources (e.g. online knowledge bases).

2.2.1 Activity: Complete your call flow tree!

Example

Phase 3

Let Your IVR Call Flow Tree Flourish

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Reviewing the benefits of offering personalized service
• Reviewing new technologies offered in the IVR space

This phase involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Implement a Transformative IVR Approach That Empowers Your Customers

Step 3.1

Learn the Benefits of a Personalized IVR

This step will walk you through the following activity:

3.1.1 Review the benefits of offering personalized service, namely by connecting your IVR system with your customer knowledge base

Let Your IVR Call Flow Tree Flourish

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding the importance of offering personalized service

Personalizing service is integral for improving your customer experience

Integrate your IVR system with your customer relationship management (CRM) system or customer knowledge base of choice to provide support to your customers on a personal level.

The integration of your IVR system with your CRM or other applicable knowledge base allows for customer data (e.g. customer history and previous interactions) to be accessible to your staff during calls. Access to this data allows for a deeper understanding of your customers and for personalization of service. This provides immediate benefits to your contact center that will improve your customer experience.

When you inevitably do need to transfer a customer to another agent, they won't have to repeat their issue to a new representative, as all their information will now be easily accessible. Being forced to repeat themselves to multiple agents is a major cause of frustration for customers. This integration would also allow you to route callers to the previous agent that they dealt with whenever possible for the purpose of continuity, and it would enable you to implement other beneficial technologies as well.

One such example is "agent assist." Agent assist is an AI bot that listens in on calls, learning customer context and automatically searching knowledge bases to help resolve queries without the agent having to put the caller on hold to manually perform that work themselves. Not only does agent assist improve customer resolution times, but it also ramps up onboarding time, allowing for new agents to enter the workforce and perform with confidence earlier.

Personalization can empower your IVR in many ways

Personalizing your IVR does much more than just provide your customer service representatives with conversational context. Personalization enables your IVR to recognize callers by their phone number, or even by voice via biometric authentication technologies.

This advanced level of recognition allows your IVR to greet your callers by name, speak to them in their preferred language, send follow-up correspondence to their preferred method of communication (i.e. email or SMS), and even provide them with contact numbers and addresses for your organization's physical locations that are closest to them.

An example of a more advanced functionality is having your IVR call flow personalized for each customer based on their call history. As customers call in, their data is collected, ultimately improving your IVR's ability to predict and understand caller intent. This makes personalized call flows possible. If customers typically call in to make payments, your IVR can logically deduce that their next call will be for the same reason, and it will alter the call menu to direct them to that functionality more efficiently.

Step 3.2

Review New Technology to Apply to Your IVR

This step will walk you through the following activity:

3.2.1 Review new technologies offered in the IVR space and understand their impact

Let Your IVR Call Flow Tree Flourish

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding of key technologies

Let your customers tell you exactly what they need

Use natural language processing and conversational AI to further advance your IVR offering

Instead of making your customers work their way through your call flow tree to find out what they need, why not just ask them? Conversational IVR, also known as an "intuitive IVR system," makes this possible.

Think Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa. Your customers can simply tell you what they need and your conversational IVR, using the advancements in natural language processing and conversational AI, will take it from there, directing callers to the resources needed to resolve their issues.

Powerful enough to understand full sentences and not just select words or phrases, the increased intelligence of a conversational IVR system allows it to handle complex customer inquiries. Leveraging machine learning capabilities, the system will only continue to improve its ability to understand caller intent, ultimately leading to increased call routing accuracy as it fields more and more calls.

Info-Tech Insight

Remember: Your customers want fast and easy, not overwhelming and confusing. Some customers who are greeted with an open-ended question from a conversational IVR may not be sure how to respond.

Understand your key customer demographics and act accordingly. It may be beneficial to provide your callers with guidelines of what to say. Outlining appropriate responses that will guide your customers to their desired department quicker will boost their experience with your conversational IVR.

There are a lot of benefits to implementing a conversational IVR

• Putting your callers in control and offering a more humanized approach, conversational IVRs are the preferred first point of contact for customers.
• Conversational IVRs reduce the time required to reach resolution and can handle more calls than a standard IVR.
• Conversational IVRs allow for the collection of more relevant data. By not limiting callers to predetermined menu options, you can track the reasons behind customers' calls with more accuracy, using this data to drive future IVR developments.
• Conversational IVRs are more cost-effective than standard IVRs. According to a report by IBM, companies world-wide spend over $1.3 trillion to address 256 billion customer calls annually. This means that each call a live agent addresses costs an average of $30 (Cognigy, 2020). With a conversational IVR, that cost can be reduced to one-eighth (ETCIO.com, 2020).
• Conversational IVRs can be handle calls in multiple languages, offering improved scalability for companies operating multi-nationally.

How do you know if a conversational IVR is right for your organization?

Large, enterprise-level organizations that field a high volume of customer calls are more likely to receive the benefits and higher ROI from implementing a conversational IVR

Instead of updating the entire IVR system and implementing a conversational IVR, smaller and mid-level organizations should consider attaching a natural language processing front-end to their existing IVR. Through this, you will be able to reap a lot of the same benefits you would if you were to upgrade to a conversational IVR.

You can attach a natural language processing front-end to your existing IVR in two ways.

1. Use an API to recognize your customer's voice prompts. Greet your customers with a question, such as "what is your reason for calling," as your initial IVR menu, and when your customer answers, their response will be sent to your selected API (Amazon Lex, IBM Watson, Google Dialogflow, etc.). The API will then process the customer's input and direct the caller to the appropriate branch of your call flow tree.
2. Use a conversational AI platform to field your calls. Implement a conversational AI platform to be the first point of contact for your customers. After receiving and analyzing the input from your customers, the platform would then route your callers to your current IVR system and to the appropriate menu, whether that be to an automated message, a self-service application, or a live agent.

Phase 4

Keep Watering Your IVR Call Flow Tree

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Understanding the importance of receiving feedback from relevant stakeholders and the best practices for obtaining feedback
• Understanding the best practices for developing an ongoing review cycle

This phase involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Implement a Transformative IVR Approach That Empowers Your Customers

Step 4.1

Gather Insights on Your IVR's Performance

This step will walk you through the following activity:

4.1.1 Understand the importance of receiving feedback and review the best methods for obtaining it from your clients.

Keep Watering Your IVR Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding of the importance of receiving feedback and how to obtain it from customers

Elicit feedback from your employees and from your customers

Your live agents are on the proverbial front lines, fielding calls from customers daily. As such, they are the prime stakeholders for knowing what kinds of calls the organization receives and how often. Their input on the most frequent reasons that customers call, whether it be to address common pain points or to have FAQs answered, is invaluable. Ask them regularly for their feedback on how the IVR system is performing and which updates should be implemented.

While improving the agent experience is a driver behind adopting an IVR system, the focus should always be improving your customer experience. So why wouldn't you ask your customers for their feedback on your IVR offering? Most customers don't only want to be asked to provide feedback, they expect to be asked. Have your agents ask your customers directly about their experience with your IVR or use the functions of your IVR to offer automated end-of-call surveys.

Info-Tech Insight

Many IVR systems are capable of recording calls. Listening back on previous calls is another great way to further understand how your IVR is performing, and it also can provide a glimpse into your customers' experience.

Surveys provide great insight into your customers' level of satisfaction – not only with your IVR but also with your live agents

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a great way to determine how happy callers are with their experiences with your organization. CSAT surveys ask your clients outright how satisfied they are with their recent interaction and have them rate your service on a scale. While straightforward, the feedback received from CSAT surveys is more general and can lack depth.

For more detailed responses, consider asking your clients an open-ended question as opposed to using a rating scale. This will provide you with a more specific understanding of your customers' experience. For this, an IVR system that supports voice transcription is best. Automated speech-to-text functionality will ensure rapid results.

Another option is to offer a survey that includes skip logic. These multi-tiered surveys, much like an IVR call flow tree, direct your callers to different follow-up questions based on their previous answers. While capable of providing more insight into the customer experience, these surveys are only recommended for more complex service offerings.

Customer feedback is vitally important

Asking for feedback makes your callers feel valued, and it also provides your organization with extremely useful information – including an understanding of what you may need to change within your IVR

Step 4.2

Create an Agile Review Method

This step will walk you through the following activity:

4.2.1 Understand the best practices for developing an ongoing review cycle for your IVR approach

Keep Watering Your IVR Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding of the importance of IVR maintenance and of the development of an iterative review cycle

Create an agile review method to continually enhance your call flows

• Track items
  • Elicit feedback from your key stakeholders (i.e. live agents) as part of a regular review – every month, two months, six months, or year – of your call flow tree's efficiency. Delve into the feedback elicited from your customers at the same intervals. Look for patterns and trends and record items accordingly.
• Manage backlog
  • Store and organize your recorded items into a backlog, prioritizing items to implement in order of importance. This could be structured by way of identifying which items are a quick win vs. which items are part of a more strategic and long-term implementation.
• Perform iteration
  • Record key metric scores and communicate the changes you have planned to stakeholders before you implement items. Then, make the change.
• Be retrospective
  • Examine the success of the implementation by comparing your metric scores from before and after the change. Record instances where performing similar changes could be carried out better in future iterations.

Summary of Accomplishment

• Knowledge Gained
  • Benefits of enabling personalized service
  • IVR-enabling technologies
  • Methods of eliciting feedback
• Processes Optimized
  • IVR voice prompt creation
  • IVR voice prompt organization
  • IVR review cycles
• Deliverables Completed
  • Database of customer call drivers
  • Organizational IVR goals and KPIs
  • IVR call flow tree

Related Info-Tech Research

	Choose a Right-Sized Contact Center Solution	IT needs a method to pinpoint which contact center solution best aligns with business objectives, adapting to a post-COVID-19 world of remote work, flexibility, and scalability.
	Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management	Customer expectations around personalization, channel preferences, and speed-to-resolution are at an all-time high. Your customers are willing to pay more for high-value experiences, and having a strong customer experience management (CXM) strategy is a proven path to creating sustainable value for the organization.
	IT Strategy Research Center	Create an IT strategy based on business needs, not just intuition.
	SoftwareReviews	Accelerate and improve your software selection process with enterprise software reviews. Focus on available resources for communications platform as a service providers and conversational intelligence software.

Bibliography

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"7 Remarkable IVR Trends For the Year 2022 And Beyond." Haptik, 30 Dec. 2021. Accessed 27 April 2022.
"8 IVR Strategies that Keep Customers Happy." Ansafone Contact Centers, 31 May 2019. Accessed 25 April 2022.
"Agent Assist." Speakeasy AI, 19 April 2022. Accessed 27 April 2022.
"AI chatbot that's easy to use." IBM, n.d. Accessed 21 June 2022.
"IVR Trends to Watch in 2020 and Beyond: Inside CX." Intrado, 1 May 2020. Accessed 27 April 2022.
"RIP IVR: 1980-2020." Vonage, 2 June 2020. Accessed 16 June 2022.
Andrea. "What do Customers Want? – 37 Customer Service Statistics." SmallBizGenius, 17 March 2022. Accessed 24 May 2022.
Anthony, James. "106 Customer Service Statistics You Must See: 2021/2022 Data & Analysis." FinancesOnline, 14 Jan. 2022. Accessed 27 April 2022.
Brown, James. "14 stats that prove the importance of self-service in customer service." raffle, 13 Oct. 2020. Accessed 17 June 2022.
Buesing, Eric, et al. "Getting the best customer service from your IVR: Fresh eyes on an old problem." McKinsey & Company, 1 Feb. 2019. Accessed 25 April 2022.
Callari, Ron. "IVR Menus and Best Practices." Telzio, 4 Sep. 2020. Accessed 27 April 2022.
Cornell, Jared. "104 Customer Service Statistics & Facts of 2022." ProProfs Chat, 6 April 2022. Accessed 16 June 2022.
DeCarlo, Matthew. "18 Common IVR Mistakes & How To Configure Effective IVR." GetVoIP, 13 June 2019. Accessed 27 April 2022.
DeMers, Jayson. "77 Customer Service Statistics to Know." EmailAnalytics, 23 March 2022. Accessed 27 April 2022.
Frants, Valeriy. Interview. Conducted by Austin Wagar, 22 June 2022.
Grieve, Patrick. "Personalized customer service: what it is and how to provide it." Zendesk, 28 June 2019. Accessed 27 April 2022.
"How Natural Language Processing Can Help Your Interactive Voice Response System Meet Best Practice." Hostcomm, 15 July 2019. Accessed 25 April 2022.
"IVR and customer experience: get the best UX for your clients." Kaleyra, 14 Dec. 2020. Accessed 25 April 2022.
Irvine, Bill. "Selecting an IVR System for Customer Satisfaction Surveys." IVR Technology Group, 14 April 2020. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Kulbyte, Toma. "Key Customer Experience Statistics to Know." SuperOffice, 24 June 2021. Accessed 24 May 2022.
Leite, Thiago. "What's the Difference Between Standard & Conversational IVR?" Cognigy, 27 Oct. 2020. Accessed 24 May 2022.
Maza, Cristina. "What is IVR? The ultimate guide." Zendesk, 30 Sep. 2020. Accessed 25 April 2022.
McCraw, Corey. "What is IVR Call Flow? Benefits, Features, Metrics & More." GetVoIP, 30 April 2020. Accessed 25 April 2022.
Mircevski, Bruno. "Smart IVR Introduction – What Is It and Why You Should Use It." Ideta, 7 March 2022. Accessed 28 April 2022.
Oriel, Astha. "Artificial Intelligence in IVR: A Step Towards Faster Customer Services." Analytics Insight, 19 Aug. 2020. Accessed 24 May 2022.
Perzynska, Kasia. "What is CSAT & How to Measure Customer Satisfaction?" Survicate, 9 March 2022. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Pratt, Mary K. "How to set business goals, step by step." TechTarget, 27 April 2022. Accessed 21 June 2022.
Robinson, Kerry. "Insight of the Week: Make Your IVR More Like Alexa." Waterfield Tech, 20 April 2022. Accessed 25 April 2022.
Sehgal, Karishma. "Exclusive Research – 76% of customer service teams offer support outside of business hours." Hiver, 4 May 2022. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Smith, Mercer. "111 Customer Service Statistics and Facts You Shouldn't Ignore." Help Scout, 23 May 2022. Accessed 24 June 2022.
Thompson, Adrian. "A Guide to Conversational IVR." The Bot Forge, 27 Jan. 2021. Accessed 21 June 2022.
Tolksdorf, Juergen. " 5 Ways to Leverage AI and Agent-Assist to Improve Customer Experience." Genesys, 19 May 2020. Accessed 27 April 2022.
Vaish, Aakrit. "5 ways conversational IVR is helping businesses revolutionize customer service." ETCIO.com, 20 March 2020. Web.
Westfall, Leah. "Improving customer experience with the right IVR strategy." RingCentral, 23 July 2021. Accessed 25 April 2022.

Tactics to Retain IT Talent

Keep talent from walking out the door by discovering and addressing moments that matter and turnover triggers.

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Many organizations are facing an increase in voluntary turnover as low unemployment, a lack of skilled labor, and a rise in the number of vacant roles have given employees more employment choices.

Common Obstacles

Regrettable turnover is impacting organizational productivity and leading to significant costs associated with employee departures and the recruitment required to replace them.

Many organizations tackle retention from an engagement perspective: Increase engagement to improve retention. This approach doesn't consider the whole problem.

Info-Tech's Approach

Build the case for creating retention plans by leveraging employee data and feedback to identify the key reasons for turnover that need to be addressed.

Target employee segments and work with management to develop solutions to retain top talent.

Info-Tech Insight

Engagement surveys mask the volatility of the employee experience and hide the reason why individual employees leave. You must also talk to employees to understand the moments that matter and engage managers to understand turnover triggers.

This research addresses regrettable turnover

Low unemployment and rising voluntary turnover makes it critical to focus on retention

As the economy continues to recover from the pandemic, unemployment continues to trend downward even with a looming recession. This leaves more job openings vacant, making it easier for employees to job hop.

With more employees voluntarily choosing to leave jobs, it is more important than ever for organizations to identify key employees they want to retain and put plans in place to keep them.

Retention is a challenge for many organizations

The number of HR professionals citing retention/turnover as a top workforce management challenge is increasing, and it is now the second highest recruiting priority ("2020 Recruiter Nation Survey," Jobvite, 2020).

65% of employees believe they can find a better position elsewhere (Legaljobs, 2021). This is a challenge for organizations in that they need to find ways to ensure employees want to stay at the organization or they will lose them, which results in high turnover costs.

Executives and IT are making retention and turnover – two sides of the same coin – a priority because they cost organizations money.

• 87% of HR professionals cited retention/turnover as a critical and high priority for the next few years (TINYpulse, 2020).
• $630B The cost of voluntary turnover in the US (Work Institute, 2020).
• 66% of organizations consider employee retention to be important or very important to an organization (PayScale, 2019).

Improving retention leads to broad-reaching organizational benefits

Cost savings: the price of turnover as a percentage of salary

• 33% Improving retention can result in significant cost savings. A recent study found turnover costs, on average, to be around a third of an employee's annual salary (SHRM, 2019).
• 37.9% of employees leave their organization within the first year. Employees who leave within the first 90 days of being hired offer very little or no return on the investment made to hire them (Work Institute, 2020).

Improved performance

Employees with longer tenure have an increased understanding of an organization's policies and processes, which leads to increased productivity (Indeed, 2021).

Prevents a ripple effect

Turnover often ripples across a team or department, with employees following each other out of the organization (Mereo). Retaining even one individual can often have an impact across the organization.

Transfer of knowledge

Retaining key individuals allows them to pass it on to other employees through communities of practice, mentoring, or other knowledge-sharing activities.

Info-Tech Insight

Improving retention goes beyond cost savings: Employees who agree with the statement "I expect to be at this organization a year from now" are 71% more likely to put in extra hours and 32% more likely to accomplish more than what is expected of their role (McLean & Company Engagement Survey, 2021; N=77,170 and 97,326 respectively).

However, the traditional engagement-focused approach to retention is not enough

Employee engagement is a strong driver of retention, with only 25% of disengaged employees expecting to be at their organization a year from now compared to 92% of engaged employees (McLean & Company Engagement Survey, 2018-2021; N=117,307).

Average employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

Individual employee Net Promoter Scores (eNPS)

However, engagement surveys mask the volatility of the employee experience and hide the reason why individual employees leave.

This analysis of McLean & Company's engagement survey results shows that while an organization's average employee net promoter score (eNPS) stays relatively static, at an individual level there is a huge amount of volatility.

This demonstrates the need for an approach that is more capable of responding to or identifying employees' in-the-moment needs, which an annual engagement survey doesn't support.

Turnover triggers and moments that matter also have an impact on retention

Retention needs to be monitored throughout the employee lifecycle. To address the variety of issues that can appear, consider three main paths to turnover:

1. Employee engagement – areas of low engagement.
2. Turnover triggers that can quickly lead to departures.
3. Moments that matter in the employee experience (EX).

Employee engagement

Engagement drivers are strong predictors of turnover.

Employees who are highly engaged are 3.6x more likely to believe they will be with the organization 12 months from now than disengaged employees (McLean & Company Engagement Survey, 2018-2021; N=117,307).

Turnover triggers

Turnover triggers are events that act as shocks or catalysts that quickly lead to an employee's departure.

Turnover triggers are a cause for voluntary turnover more often than accumulated issues (Lee et al.).

Moments that matter

Employee experience is the employee's perception of the accumulation of moments that matter within their employee lifecycle.

Retention rates increase from 21% to 44% when employees have positive experiences in the following categories: belonging, purpose, achievement, happiness, and vigor at work. (Workhuman, 2020).

While managers do not directly impact turnover, they do influence the three main paths to turnover

Research shows managers do not appear as one of the common reasons for employee turnover.

Top five most common reasons employees leave an organization (McLean & Company, Exit Survey, 2018-2021; N=107 to 141 companies,14,870 to 19,431 responses).

However, managers can still have a huge impact on the turnover of their team through each of the three main paths to turnover:

Employee engagement

Employees who believe their managers care about them as a person are 3.3x more likely to be engaged than those who do not (McLean & Company, 2021; N=105,186).

Turnover triggers

Managers who are involved with and aware of their staff can serve as an early warning system for triggers that lead to turnover too quickly to detect with data.

Moments that matter

Managers have a direct connection with each individual and can tailor the employee experience to meet the needs of the individuals who report to them.

Gallup has found that 52% of exiting employees say their manager could have done something to prevent them from leaving (Gallup, 2019). Do not discount the power of managers in anticipating and preventing regrettable turnover.

Addressing engagement, turnover triggers, and moments that matter is the key to retention

Info-Tech Insight

HR traditionally seeks to examine engagement levels when faced with retention challenges, but engagement is only a part of the full picture. You must also talk to employees to understand the moments that matter and engage managers to understand turnover triggers.

Follow Info-Tech's two-step process to create a retention plan

1. Identify Reasons for Regrettable Turnover

2. Select Solutions and Create an Action Plan

Step 1

Identify Reasons for Regrettable Turnover

After completing this step you will have:

• Analyzed and documented why employees join, stay, and leave your organization.
• Identified common themes and employee needs.
• Conducted employee focus groups and prioritized employee needs.

Step 1 focuses on analyzing existing data and validating it through focus groups

Info-Tech Insight

IT managers often have insights into where and why retention is an issue through their day-to-day work. Gathering detailed quantitative and qualitative data provides credibility to these insights and is key to building a business case for action. Keep an open mind and allow the data to inform your gut feeling, not the other way around.

Gather data to better understand why employees join, stay, and leave

Start to gather and examine additional data to accurately identify the reason(s) for high turnover. Begin to uncover the story behind why these employees join, stay, and leave your organization through themes and trends that emerge.

Look for these icons throughout step 2.		Why do candidates join your organization?
	Why do employees stay with your organization?
	Why do employees leave your organization?

For more information on analysis, visualization, and storytelling with data, see Info-Tech's Start Making Data-Driven People Decisions blueprint.

Employee feedback data to look at includes:

• Employee Experience Monitor
• Employee Engagement Survey

Gather insights through:

• Focus groups
• Verbatim comments
• Exit interviews
• Using the employee value proposition (EVP) as a filter (does it resonate with the lived experience of employees?)

Prepare to draw themes and trends from employee data throughout step 1.

Uncover employee needs and reasons for turnover by analyzing employee feedback data.

• Look for trends (e.g. new hires join for career opportunities and leave for the same reason, or most departments have strong work-life balance scores in engagement data).
• Review if there are recurring issues being raised that may impact turnover.
• Group feedback to highlight themes (e.g. lack of understanding of EVP).
• Identify which key employee needs merit further investigation or information.

Classify where key employee needs fall within the employee lifecycle diagram in tab 2 of the Retention Plan Workbook. This will be used in step 2 to pinpoint and prioritize solutions.

Info-Tech Insight

The employee lifecycle is a valuable way to analyze and organize engagement pain points, moments that matter, and turnover triggers. It ensures that you consider the entirety of an employee's tenure and the different factors that lead to turnover.

Examine new hire data and begin to document emerging themes

While conducting a high-level analysis of new hire data, look for these three key themes impacting retention:

Issues or pain points that occurred during the hiring process.

Reasons why employees joined your organization.

The experience of their first 90 days. This can include their satisfaction with the onboarding process and their overall experience with the organization.

Themes will help to identify areas of strength and weakness organization-wide and within key segments. Document in tab 3 of the Retention Plan Workbook.

1. Start by isolating the top reasons employees joined your organization. Ask:
   • Do the reasons align with the benefits you associate with working at your organization?
   • How might this impact your EVP?
   • If you use a new hire survey, look at the results for the following questions:
   • For which of the following reasons did you apply to this organization?
   • For what reasons did you accept the job offer with this organization?
2. then, examine other potential problem areas that may not be covered by your new hire survey, such as onboarding or the candidate experience during the hiring process.
   • If you conduct a new hire survey, look at the results in the following sections:
     • Candidate Experience
     • Acclimatization
     • Training and Development
     • Defining Performance Expectations

Analyze engagement data to identify areas of strength that drive retention

Employees who are engaged are 3.6x more likely to believe they will be with the organization 12 months from now (McLean & Company Engagement Survey, 2018-2021; N=117,307). Given the strength of this relationship, it is essential to identify areas of strength to maintain and leverage.

1. Look at the highest-performing drivers in your organization's employee engagement survey and drivers that fall into the "leverage" and "maintain" quadrants of the priority matrix.
   • These drivers provide insight into what prompts broader groups of employees to stay.

1. Look into what efforts have been made to maintain programs, policies, and practices related to these drivers and ensure they are consistent across the entire organization.
2. Document trends and themes related to engagement strengths in tab 2 of the Retention Plan Workbook.

If you use Info-Tech's Engagement Survey, look in detail at what are classified as "Retention Drivers": total compensation, working environment, and work-life balance.

Identify areas of weakness that drive turnover in your engagement data

1. Look at the lowest-performing drivers in your organization's employee engagement survey and drivers that fall into the "improve" and "evaluate" quadrants of the priority matrix.
   • These drivers provide insight into what pushes employees to leave the organization.
2. Delve into organizational efforts that have been made to address issues with the programs, policies, and practices related to these drivers. Are there any projects underway to improve them? What are the barriers preventing improvements?
3. Document trends and themes related to engagement weaknesses in tab 2 of the Retention Plan Workbook.

If you use a product other than Info-Tech's Engagement Survey, your results will look different. The key is to look at areas of weakness that emerge from the data.

If you use Info-Tech's Engagement Survey, look in detail at what are classified as "Retention Drivers": total compensation, working environment, and work-life balance.

Mine exit surveys to develop an integrated, holistic understanding of why employees leave

Conduct a high-level analysis of the data from your employee exit diagnostic. While analyzing this data, consider the following:

• What are the trends and quantitative data about why employees leave your organization that may illuminate employee needs or issues at specific points throughout the employee lifecycle?
• What are insights around your key segments? Data on key segments is easily sliced from exit survey results and can be used as a starting point for digging deeper into retention issues for specific groups.
• Exit surveys are an excellent starting point. However, it is valuable to validate the data gathered from an exit survey using exit interviews.

1. Isolate results for key segments of employees to target with retention initiatives (e.g. by age group or by department).
2. Identify data trends or patterns over time; for example, that compensation factors have been increasing in importance.
3. Document trends and themes taken from the exit survey results in tab 2 of the Retention Plan Workbook.

If your organization conducts exit interviews, analyze the results alongside or in lieu of exit survey data.

Compare new hire data with exit data to identify patterns and insights

Determine if new hire expectations weren't met, prompting employees to leave your organization, to help identify where in the employee lifecycle issues driving turnover may be occurring.

1. Look at your new hire data for the top reasons employees joined your organization.
   • McLean & Company's New Hire Survey database shows that the top three reasons candidates accept job offers on average are:
     1. Career opportunities
     2. Nature of the job
     3. Development opportunities
2. Next, look at your exit data and the top reasons employees left your organization.
   1. McLean & Company's Exit Survey database shows that the top three reasons employees leave on average are:
      1. Opportunities for career advancement
      2. Base pay
      3. Satisfaction with my role and responsibilities
3. Examine the results and ask:
   • Is there a link between why employees join and leave the organization?
   • Did they cite the same reasons for joining and for leaving?
   • What do the results say about what your employees do and do not value about working at your organization?
4. Document the resulting insights in tab 2 of the Retention Plan Workbook.

Example:

A result where employees are leaving for the same reason they're joining the organization could signal a disconnect between your organization's employee value proposition and the lived experience.

Revisit your employee value proposition to uncover misalignment

Your employee value proposition (EVP), formal or informal, communicates the value your organization can offer to prospective employees.

If your EVP is mismatched with the lived experience of your employees, new hires will be in for a surprise when they start their new job and find out it isn't what they were expecting.

Forty-six percent of respondents who left a job within 90 days of starting cited a mismatch of expectations about their role ("Job Seeker Nation Study 2020," Jobvite, 2020).

1. Use the EVP as a filter through which you look at all your employee feedback data. It will help identify misalignment between the promised and the lived experience.
2. If you have EVP documentation, start there. If not, go to your careers page and put yourself in the shoes of a candidate. Ask what the four elements of an EVP look like for candidates:
   • Compensation and benefits
   • Day-to-day job elements
   • Working conditions
   • Organizational elements
3. Next, compare this to your own day-to-day experiences. Does it differ drastically? Are there any contradictions with the lived experience at your organization? Are there misleading statements or promises?
4. Document any insights or patterns you uncover in tab 2 of the Retention Plan Workbook.

Conduct focus groups to examine themes

Through focus groups, explore the themes you have uncovered with employees to discover employee needs that are not being met. Addressing these employee needs will be a key aspect of your retention plan.

Identify employee groups who will participate in focus groups:

• Incorporate diverse perspectives (e.g. employees, managers, supervisors).
• Include employees from departments and demographics with strong and weak engagement for a full picture of how engagement impacts your employees.
• Invite boomerang employees to learn why an individual might return to your organization after leaving.

Customize Info-Tech's Standard Focus Group Guide based on the themes you have identified in tab 3 of the Retention Plan Workbook.

The goal of the focus group is to learn from employees and use this information to design or modify a process, system, or other solution that impacts retention.

Focus questions on the employees' personal experience from their perspective.

Key things to remember:

• It is vital for facilitators to be objective.
• Keep an open mind; no feelings are wrong.
• Beware of your own biases.
• Be open and share the reason for conducting the focus groups.

Info-Tech Insight

Maintaining an open dialogue with employees will help flesh out the context behind the data you've gathered and allow you to keep in mind that retention is about people first and foremost.

Empathize with employees to identify moments that matter

(Based on Stanford d.school Empathy Map Method)

Distill employee needs into priority issues to address first

Take employee needs revealed by your data and focus groups and prioritize three to five needs.

Select a limited number of employee needs to develop solutions to ensure that the scope of the project is feasible and that the resources dedicated to this project are not stretched too thin. The remaining needs should not be ignored – act on them later.

Share the needs you identify with stakeholders so they can support prioritization and so you can confirm their buy-in and approval where necessary.

Ask yourself the following questions to determine your priority employee needs:

• Which needs will have the greatest impact on turnover?
• Which needs have the potential to be an easy fix or quick win?
• Which themes or trends came up repeatedly in different data sources?
• Which needs evoked particularly strong or negative emotions in the focus groups?

In the Retention Plan Workbook, distill employee needs on tab 2 into three to five priorities on tab 5.

Step 2

Select Solutions and Create an Action Plan

After completing this step, you will have:

• Selected and prioritized solutions to address employee needs.
• Created a plan to launch stay interviews.
• Built an action plan to implement solutions.

Select IT-owned solutions and implement people leader–driven initiatives

Solutions

First, select and prioritize solutions to address employee needs identified in the previous step. These solutions will address reasons for turnover that influence employee engagement and moments that matter.

• Brainstorm solutions using the Retention Solutions Catalog as a starting point. Select a longlist of solutions to address your priority needs.
• Prioritize the longlist of solutions into a manageable number to act on.

People leaders

Next, create a plan to launch stay interviews to increase managers' accountability in improving retention. Managers will be critical to solving issues stemming from turnover triggers.

• Clarify the importance of harnessing the influence of people leaders in improving retention.
• Discover what might cause individual employees to leave through stay interviews.
• Increase trust in managers through training.

Action plan

Finally, create an action plan and present to senior leadership for approval.

Look for these icons in the top right of slides in this step.

Select solutions to employee needs, starting with the Retention Solutions Catalog

Based on the priority needs you have identified, use the Retention Solutions Catalog to review best-practice solutions for pain points associated with each stage of the lifecycle.

Use this tool as a starting point, adding to it and iterating based on your own experience and organizational culture and goals.

Use Info-Tech's Retention Solutions Catalog to start the brainstorming process and produce a shortlist of potential solutions that will be prioritized on the next slide.

Info-Tech Insight

Unless you have the good fortune of having only a few pain points, no single initiative will completely solve your retention issues. Combine one or two of these broad solutions with people-leader initiatives to ensure employee needs are addressed on an individual and an aggregate level.

Prioritize solutions to be implemented

Target efforts accordingly

Quick wins are high-impact, low-effort initiatives that will build traction and credibility within the organization.

Long-term initiatives require more time and need to be planned for accordingly but will still deliver a large impact. Review the planning horizon to determine how early these need to begin.

Re-evaluate low-impact and low-effort initiatives and identify ones that either support other higher impact initiatives or have the highest impact to gain traction and credibility. Look for low-hanging fruit.

Deprioritize initiatives that will take a high degree of effort to deliver lower-value results.

When assessing the impact of potential solutions, consider:

• How many critical segments or employees will this solution affect?
• Is the employee need it addresses critical, or did the solution encompass several themes in the data you analyzed?
• Will the success of this solution help build a case for further action?
• Will the solution address multiple employee needs?

Info-Tech Insight

It's better to master a few initiatives than under-deliver on many. Start with a few solutions that will have a measurable impact to build the case for further action in the future.

Solutions

	Low Impact	Medium Impact	Large Impact
Large Effort
Medium Effort
Low Effort

Use tab 3 of the Retention Plan Workbook to prioritize your shortlist of solutions.

Harness the influence of people leaders to improve employee retention

Leaders at all levels have a huge impact on employees.

Effective people leaders:

• Manage work distribution.
• Create a motivating work environment.
• Provide development opportunities.
• Ensure work is stimulating and challenging, but not overwhelming.
• Provide clear, actionable feedback.
• Recognize team member contributions.
• Develop positive relationships with their teams.
• Create a line of sight between what the employee is doing and what the organization's objectives are.

Support leaders in recommitting to their role as people managers through Learning & Development initiatives with particular emphasis on coaching and building trust.

For coaching training, see Info-Tech's Build a Better Manager: Team Essentials – Feedback and Coaching training deck.

For more information on supporting managers to become better people leaders, see Info-Tech's Build a Better Manager: Manage Your People blueprint.

"HR can't fix turnover. But leaders on the front line can."
– Richard P. Finnegan, CEO, C-Suite Analytics

Equip managers to conduct regular stay interviews to address turnover triggers

Managers often have the most visibility into their employees' personal and work lives and have a key opportunity to anticipate and address turnover triggers.

Stay interviews are an effective way of uncovering potential retention issues and allowing managers to act as an early warning system for turnover triggers.

Examples of common turnover triggers and potential manager responses:

• Moving, creating a long commute to the office.
  • Through stay interviews, a manager can learn that a long commute is an issue and can help find workarounds such as flexible/remote work options.
• Not receiving an expected promotion.
  • A trusted manager can anticipate issues stemming from this, discuss why the decision was made, and plan development opportunities for future openings.

Stay interview best practices

1. Conducted by an employee's direct manager.
2. Happen regularly as a part of an ongoing process.
3. Based on the stay interview, managers produce a turnover forecast for each direct report.
   1. The method used by stay interview expert Richard P. Finnegan is simple: red for high risk, yellow for medium, and green for low.
4. Provide managers with training and a rough script or list of questions to follow.
   1. Use and customize Info-Tech's Stay Interview Guide to provide a guide for managers on how to conduct a stay interview.
5. Managers use the results to create an individualized retention action plan made up of concrete actions the manager and employee will take.

Sources: Richard P. Finnegan, CEO, C-Suite Analytics; SHRM

Build an action plan to implement the retention plan

For each initiative identified, map out timelines and actions that need to be taken.

When building actions and timelines:

• Refer to the priority needs you identified in tab 4 of the Retention Plan Workbook and ensure they are addressed first.
• Engage internal stakeholders who will be key to the development of the initiatives to ensure they have sufficient time to complete their deliverables.
  • For example, if you conduct manager training, Learning & Development needs to be involved in the development and launch of the program.
• Include a date to revisit your baseline retention and engagement data in your project milestones.
• Designate process owners for new processes such as stay interviews.

Plan for stay interviews by determining:

• Whether stay interviews will be a requirement for all employees.
• How much flexibility managers will have with the process.
• How you will communicate the stay interview approach to managers.
• If manager training is required.
• How managers should record stay interview data and how you will collect this data from them as a way to monitor retention issues.
  • For example, managers can share their turnover forecasts and action plans for each employee.

Be clear about manager accountabilities for initiatives they will own, such as stay interviews. Plan to communicate the goals and timelines managers will be asked to meet, such as when they must conduct interviews or their responsibility to follow up on action items that come from interviews.

Track project success to iterate and improve your solutions

Analyze measurements

• Regularly remeasure your engagement and retention levels to identify themes and trends that provide insights into program improvements.
• For example, look at the difference in manager relationship score to see if training has had an impact, or look at changes in critical segment turnover to calculate cost savings.

Revisit employee and manager feedback

• After three to six months, conduct additional surveys or focus groups to determine the success of your initiatives and opportunities for improvement. Tweak the program, including stay interviews, based on manager and employee feedback.

Iterate frequently

• Revisit your initiatives every two or three years to determine if a refresh is necessary to meet changing organizational and employee needs and to update your goals and targets.

Key insights

Workshop Overview

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workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Research Contributors and Experts

Jeff Bonnell
VP HR
Info-Tech Research Group

Phillip Kotanidis
CHRO
Michael Garron Hospital

Michael McGuire
Director, Organizational Development
William Osler Health System

Dr. Iris Ware
Chief Learning Officer
City of Detroit

Richard P. Finnegan
CEO
C-Suite Analytics

Dr. Thomas Lee
Professor of Management
University of Washington

Jane Moughon
Specialist in increasing profits, reducing turnover, and maximizing human potential in manufacturing companies

Lisa Kaste
Former HR Director
Citco

Piyush Mathur
Head of Workforce Analytics
Johnson & Johnson

Gregory P. Smith
CEO
Chart Your Course

Works Cited

"17 Surprising Statistics about Employee Retention." TINYpulse, 8 Sept. 2020. Web.
"2020 Job Seeker Nation Study." Jobvite, April 2020. Web.
"2020 Recruiter Nation Survey." Jobvite, 2020. Web.
"2020 Retention Report: Insights on 2019 Turnover Trends, Reasons, Costs, & Recommendations." Work Institute, 2020. Web.
"25 Essential Productivity Statistics for 2021." TeamStage, 2021. Accessed 22 Jun. 2021.
Agovino, Theresa. "To Have and to Hold." SHRM, 23 Feb. 2019. Web.
"Civilian Unemployment Rate." Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2020. Web.
Foreman, Paul. "The domino effect of chief sales officer turnover on salespeople." Mereo, 19 July 2018. Web.
"Gross Domestic Product." U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, 27 May 2021. Accessed 22 Jun. 2020.
Kinne, Aaron. "Back to Basics: What is Employee Experience?" Workhuman, 27August 2020. Accessed 21 Jun. 2021.
Lee, Thomas W, et al. "Managing employee retention and turnover with 21st century ideas." Organizational Dynamics, vol 47, no. 2, 2017, pp. 88-98. Web.
Lee, Thomas W. and Terence R. Mitchell. "Control Turnover by Understanding its Causes." The Blackwell Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behaviour. 2017. Print.
McFeely, Shane, and Ben Wigert. "This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion." Gallup. 13 March 2019. Web.
"Table 18. Annual Quit rates by Industry and Region Not Seasonally Adjusted." Bureau of Labor Statistics. June 2021. Web.
"The 2019 Compensation Best Practices Report: Will They Stay or Will They Go? Employee Retention and Acquisition in an Uncertain Economy." PayScale. 2019. Web.
Vuleta, Branka. "30 Troubling Employee Retention Statistics." Legaljobs. 1 Feb. 2021. Web.
"What is a Tenured Employee? Top Benefits of Tenure and How to Stay Engaged as One." Indeed. 22 Feb. 2021. Accessed 22 Jun. 2021.

Build a Better Manager

Support IT success with a solid management foundation.

Analyst Perspective

Training that delivers results.

Ninety-eight percent of managers say they need more training, but 93% of managers already receive some level of manager training. Unfortunately, the training typically provided, although copious, is not working. More of the same will never get you better outcomes. How many times have you sat through training that was so long, you had no hope of implementing half of it? How many times have you been taught best practices, with zero guidance on how to apply them? To truly support our managers, we need to rethink manager training. Move from fulfilling an HR mandate to providing truly trainee-centric instruction. Teach only the right skills – no fluff – and encourage and enable their application in the day to day.

Jane Kouptsova Research Director, People & Leadership Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

When it comes to manager training, more is not more. Attending training is not equal to being trained. Even good information is useless when it doesn’t get applied. If your role hasn’t required you to use your training within 48 hours, you were not trained on the most relevant skills.

Effective managers drive effective departments by engaging their teams

Engaged teams are: 52% more willing to innovate* 70% more likely to be at the organization a year from now** 57% more likely to exceed their role’s expectations** Engaged teams are driven by managers: 70% of team-level engagement is accounted for by managers***

*McLean & Company; N=3,395; **McLean & Company; N=5,902; ***Gallup, 2018

Despite the criticality of their role, IT organizations are failing at supporting new managers

87% of middle managers wish they had more training when they were first promoted

98% of managers say they need more training

Source: Grovo, 2016

IT must take notice:

IT as an industry tends to promote staff on the basis of technical skill. As a result, new managers find themselves suddenly out of their comfort zone, tasked with leading teams using management skills they have not been trained in and, more often than not, having to learn on the job. This is further complicated because many new IT managers must go from a position of team member to leader, which can be a very complex transition.

The truth is, many organizations do try and provide some degree of manager training, it just is not effective

*Grovo, 2016; **Chief Executive, 2016

Info-Tech’s Management & Governance Diagnostic, N=337 CIOs

There are three key reasons why manager training fails

1. Information Overload

Seventy-five percent of managers report that their training was too long to remember or to apply in their day to day (Grovo, 2016). Trying to cover too much useful information results in overwhelm and does not deliver on key training objectives.

2. Limited Implementation

Thirty-three percent of managers find that their training had insufficient follow-up to help them apply it on the job (Grovo, 2016). Learning is only the beginning. The real results are obtained when learning is followed by practice, which turns new knowledge into reliable habits.

3. Lack of departmental alignment

Implementing training without a clear link to departmental and organizational objectives leaves you unable to clearly communicate its value, undermines your ability to secure buy-in from attendees and executives, and leaves you unable to verify that the training is actually improving departmental effectiveness.

Overcome those common training pitfalls with tactical solutions

This research combats common training challenges by focusing on building habits, not just learning ideas

Info-Tech Insight

When it comes to manager training, stop thinking about learning, and start thinking about practice. In difficult situations, we fall back on habits, not theoretical knowledge. If a manager is only as good as their habits, we need to support them in translating knowledge into practice.

This research focuses on building good management habits to drive enterprise success

Set up your first-time managers for success by leveraging Info-Tech’s training to focus on three key areas of management:

• Managing people as a team
• Managing people as individuals
• Managing yourself as a developing leader

Each of these areas:

• Is immediately important for a first-time manager
• Includes practical, tactical skills that can be implemented quickly
• Translates to departmental and organizational benefits

Info-Tech Insight

There is no such thing as “effective management training.” Various topics will be effective at different times for different roles. Delivering only the highest-impact learning at strategic points in your leadership development program will ensure the learning is retained and translates to results.

This blueprint covers foundational training in three key domains of effective management

Effective Managers

• Self
  • Conflict & Difficult Conversations
  • Your Role in the Organization
  • Your Role in Decisions
• Team
  • Communication
  • Feedback & Coaching
  • Performance Management
• People
  • Master Time
  • Delegate
  • Accountability

Each topic corresponds to a module, which can be used individually or as a series in any order.

Choose topics that resonate with your managers and relate directly to their day-to-day tasks. Training on topics that may be useful in the future, while interesting, is less likely to generate lasting skill development.

Info-Tech Best Practice

This blueprint is not a replacement for formal leadership or management certification. It is designed as a practical, tactical, and foundational introduction to key management capabilities.

Info-Tech’s training tools guide participants through successful skill building

Measure the effectiveness of your manager training with outcomes-focused metrics

Linking manager training with measurable outcomes allows you to verify that the program is achieving the intended benefits, course correct as needed, and secure buy-in from stakeholders and participants by articulating and documenting value.

Use the metrics suggested below to monitor your training program’s effectiveness at three key stages:

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series

of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 1 to 3 calls over the course of several months, depending on training schedule.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Pool of topics:

• Master Time
• Accountability
• Your Role in the Organization
• Your Role in Decision Making
• Manage Conflict Constructively
• Effective Communication
• Performance Management
• Coaching & Feedback

Phase 1

Prepare to facilitate training

Outcomes of this phase:

• Training facilitation deck customized to organizational norms
• Training workbook distributed to participants
• Training dates and facilitator finalized

1.1 Select training modules

1-3 hours

1. Review the module descriptions on the following slides.
2. Identify modules that will address managers’ most pressing development needs.
   To help make this decision, consult the following:
   • Trainees’ development plans
   • Trainees’ supervisors

Effective Communication

Effective communication is the cornerstone of good management

Effective communication can make or break your IT team’s effectiveness and engagement and a manager’s reputation in the organization. Effective stakeholder management and communication has a myriad of benefits – yet this is a key area where IT leaders continue to struggle.

There are multiple ways in which you communicate with your staff. The tactics you will learn in this section will help you to:

1. Understand communication styles. Every staff member has a predisposition in terms of how they give, receive, and digest information. To drive effective communication new managers need to understand the profiles of each of their team members and adjust their communicate style to suit.
2. Understand what your team members want communicated to them and how. Communication is highly personal, and a good manager needs to clearly understand what their team wants to be informed about, their desired interactions, and when they need to be involved in decision making. They also must determine the appropriate channels for communication exchanges.
3. Make meetings matter. Many new managers never receive training on what differentiates a good and bad meeting. Effective meetings have a myriad of benefits, but more often than not meetings are ineffective, wasting both the participants’ and organizer’s time. This training will help you to ensure that every team meeting drives a solid outcome and gets results.

Benefits:

• Better buy-in, understanding, and communication.
• Improved IT reputation with the organization.
• Improved team engagement.
• Improved stakeholder satisfaction.
• Better-quality decision making.
• Improved transparency, trust, and credibility.
• Less waste and rework.
• Greater ability to secure support and execute the agenda.
• More effective cooperation on activities, better quality information, and greater value from stakeholder input.
• Better understanding of IT performance and contribution.

Effective Communication

Effective manager communication has a direct impact on employee engagement

35% Of organizations say they have lost an employee due to poor internal communication (project.co, 2021).

59% Of business leaders lose work time to mistakes caused by poor communication (Grammarly, 2022).

$1.2 trillion Lost to US organizations as a result of poor communication (Grammarly, 2022).

Effective Communication

Effective communication is crucial to all parts of the business

Effective Communication

The Communicate Effectively Facilitation Guide covers the following topics:

• Understand Communication Styles
• Tailor Communication Methods to Activities
• Make Meetings Matter

Learning outcomes:

Main goal: Become a better communicator across a variety of personal styles and work contexts.

Key objectives:

• Reaffirm why effective communication matters.
• Work with people with different communication styles.
• Communicate clearly and effectively within a team.
• Make meetings more effective.

Info-Tech Insight

First-time IT managers face specific communication challenges that come with managing people for the first time: learning to communicate a greater variety of information to different kinds of people, in a variety of venues. Tailored training in these areas helps managers focus and fast-track critical skill development.

Performance Management

Meaningful performance measures drive employee engagement, which in turn drives business success

Meaningful performance measures help employees understand the rationale behind business decisions, help managers guide their staff, and clarify expectations for employees. These factors are all strong predictors of team engagement:

Performance Management

Clear performance measures benefit employees and the organization

Performance Management

The Performance Management Facilitation Guide covers the following topics:

• Develop Meaningful Goals
• Set Meaningful Metrics

Learning outcomes:

Main goal: Become proficient in setting, tracking, and communicating around performance management goals.

Key objectives:

• Understand the role of managers and employees in the performance management process.
• Learn to set SMART, business-aligned goals for your team.
• Learn to help employees set useful individual goals.
• Learn to set meaningful, holistic metrics to track goal progression.
• Understand the relationship between goals, metrics, and feedback.

Info-Tech Insight

Goal and metric development holds special significance for first-time IT managers because it now impacts not only their personal performance, but that of their employees and their team collectively. Training on these topics with a practical team- and employee-development approach is a focused way to build these skills.

Coaching & Feedback

Coaching and feedback are effective methods to influence employees and drive business outcomes

1. Administrative Sciences, 2022

2. International Review of Management and Marketing, 2020

3. Current Psychology, 2021

4. Quantum Workplace, 2021

5. Issues and Perspectives in Business and Social Sciences, 2022

6. Sustainability, 2021

Coaching & Feedback

The Coaching & Feedback Facilitation Guide covers the following topics:

• The 4 A’s of Coaching
• Effective Feedback

Learning outcomes:

Main goal: Get prepared to coach and offer feedback to your staff as appropriate.

Key objectives:

• Understand the difference between coaching and feedback and when to apply each one.
• Learn the importance of a coaching mindset.
• Learn effective coaching via the 4 A’s framework.
• Understand the actions that make up feedback and the factors that make it successful.
• Learn to deal with resistance to feedback.

Info-Tech Insight

First-time managers often shy away from giving coaching and feedback, stalling their team’s performance. A focused and practical approach to building these skills equips new managers with the tools and confidence to tackle these challenges as soon as they arise.

Your Role in the Organization

IT managers who understand the business context provide more value to the organization

Managers who don’t understand the business cannot effect positive change. The greater understanding that IT managers have of business context, the more value they provide to the organization as seen by the positive relationship between IT’s understanding of business needs and the business’ perception of IT value.

Source: Info-Tech Research Group

Your Role in the Organization

Knowing your stakeholders is key to understanding your role in the business and providing value to the organization

To understand your role in the business, you need to know who your stakeholders are and what value you and your team provide to the organization. Knowing how you help each stakeholder meet their wants needs and goals means that you have the know-how to balance experience and outcome-based behaviors. This is the key to being an attentive leader.

The tactics you will learn in this section will help you to:

1. Know your stakeholders. There are five key stakeholders the majority of IT managers have: management, peers, direct reports, internal users, and external users or customers. Managers need to understand the goals, needs, and wants of each of these groups to successfully provide value to the organization.
2. Understand the value you provide to each stakeholder. Stakeholder relationship management requires IT managers to exhibit drive and support behaviors based on the situation. By knowing how you drive and support each stakeholder, you understand how you provide value to the organization and support its mission, vision, and values.
3. Communicate the value your team provides to the organization to your team. Employees need to understand the impact of their work. As an IT manager, you are responsible for communicating how your team provides value to the organization. Mission statements on how you provide value to each stakeholder is an easy way to clearly communicate purpose to your team.

Benefits:

• Faster and higher growth.
• Improved team engagement.
• Improved stakeholder satisfaction.
• Better quality decision making.
• More innovation and motivation to complete goals and tasks.
• Greater ability to secure support and execute on goals and tasks.
• More effective cooperation on activities, better quality information, and greater value from stakeholder input.
• Better understanding of IT performance and contribution.

Your Role in the Organization

The Your Role in the Organization Facilitation Guide covers the following topics:

• Know Your Stakeholders
• Understand the Value You Provide to the Organization
• Develop Learnings Into Habits

Learning outcomes:

Main goal: Understand how your role and the role of your team serves the business.

Key objectives:

• Learn who your stakeholders are.
• Understand how you drive and support different stakeholder relationships.
• Relate your team’s tasks back to the mission, vision, and values of the organization.
• Create a mission statement for each stakeholder to bring back to your team.

Info-Tech Insight

Before training first-time IT managers, take some time as the facilitator to review how you will serve the wants and needs of those you are training and your stakeholders in the organization.

Decision Making

Bad decisions have tangible costs, so managers must be trained in how to make effective decisions

To understand your role in the decision-making process, you need to know what is expected of you and you must understand what goes into making a good decision. The majority of managers report they have no trouble making decisions and that they are good decision makers, but the statistics say otherwise. This ease at decision making is due to being overly confident in their expertise and an inability to recognize their own ignorance.1

The tactics you will learn in this section will help you to:

1. Effectively communicate decisions. Often, first-time managers are either sharing their decision recommendations with their manager or they are communicating a decision down to their team. Managers need to understand how to have these conversations so their recommendations provide value to management and top-down decisions are successfully implemented.
2. Provide valuable feedback on decisions. Evaluating decisions is just as critical as making decisions. If decisions aren’t reviewed, there is no data or feedback to discover why a decision was a success or failure. Having a plan in place before the decision is made facilitates the decision review process and makes it easier to provide valuable feedback.
3. Avoid common decision-making mistakes. Heuristics and bias are common decision pitfalls even senior leaders are susceptible to. By learning what the common decision-making mistakes are and being able to recognize them when they appear in their decision-making process, first-time managers can improve their decision-making ability.

20% Of respondents say their organizations excel at decision making (McKinsey, 2018).

87% “Diverse teams are 87% better at making decisions” (Upskillist, 2022).

86% of employees in leadership positions blame the lack of collaboration as the top reason for workplace failures (Upskillist, 2022).

Decision Making

A decision-making process is imperative, even though most managers don’t have a formal one

1. Identify the Problem and Define Objectives
2. Establish Decision Criteria
3. Generate and Evaluate Alternatives
4. Select an Alternative and Implement
5. Evaluate the Decision

Managers tend to rely on their own intuition which is often colored by heuristics and biases. By using a formal decision-making process, these pitfalls of intuition can be mitigated or avoided. This leads to better decisions.

First-time managers are able to apply this framework when making decision recommendations to management to increase their likelihood of success, and having a process will improve their decisions throughout their career and the financial returns correlated with them.

Decision Making

Recognizing personal heuristics and bias in the decision-making process improves more than just decision results

Employees are able to recognize bias in the workplace, even when management can’t. This affects everything from how involved they are in the decision-making process to their level of effort and productivity in implementing decisions. Without employee support, even good decisions are less likely to have positive results. Employees who perceive bias:

Decision Making

The Decision Making Facilitation Guide covers the following topics:

• Effectively Communicate Decisions
• Provide Valuable Feedback on Decisions
• Avoid Common Decision-Making Mistakes

Learning outcomes:

Main goal: Understand how to successfully perform your role in the decision process.

Key objectives:

• Understand the decision-making process and how to assess decisions.
• Learn how to communicate with your manager regarding your decision recommendations.
• Learn how to effectively communicate decisions to your team.
• Understand how to avoid common decision-making errors.

Info-Tech Insight

Before training a decision-making framework, ensure it is in alignment with how decisions are made in your organization. Alternatively, make sure leadership is on board with making a change.

Manage Conflict Constructively

Enable leaders to resolve conflicts while minimizing costs

If you are successful in your talent acquisition, you likely have a variety of personalities and diverse individuals within your IT organization and in the business, which means that conflict is inevitable. However, conflict does not have to be negative – it can take on many forms. The presence of conflict in an organization can actually be a very positive thing: the ability to freely express opinions and openly debate can lead to better, more strategic decisions being made.

The effect that the conflict is having on individuals and the work environment will determine whether the conflict is positive or counterproductive.

As a new manager you need to know how to manage potential negative outcomes of conflict by managing difficult conversations and understanding how to respond to conflict in the workplace.

The tactics you will learn in this section will help you to:

1. Apply strategies to prepare for and navigate through difficult conversations.
2. Expand your comfort level when handling conflict, and engage in constructive conflict resolution approaches.

Benefits:

• Relieve stress for yourself and your co-workers.
• Save yourself time and energy.
• Positively impact relationships with your employees.
• Improve your team dynamic.
• Remove roadblocks to your work and get things done.
• Save the organization money.
• Improve performance.
• Prevent negative issues from reoccurring.

Manage Conflict Constructively

Addressing difficult conversations is beneficial to you, your people, and the organization

When you face a difficult conversation you…

• Relieve stress on you and your co-workers.
• Save yourself time and energy.
• Positively impact relationships with your employees.
• Improve your team dynamic.
• Remove roadblocks to your work
• Save the organization money.
• Improve performance.
• Prevent negative issues from reoccurring.

40% Of employees who experience conflict report being less motivated as a result (Acas, 2021).

30.6% Of employees report coming off as aggressive when trying to resolve a conflict
(Niagara Institute, 2022).

Manage Conflict Constructively

The Manage Conflict Constructively Facilitation Guide covers the following topics:

• Know Your Ideal Time Mix
• Calendar Diligence
• Effective Delegation
• Limit Interruptions

Learning outcomes:

Main goal: Effectively manage your time and know which tasks are your priority and which tasks to delegate.

Key objectives:

• Understand common reasons for difficult conversations.
• Learn Info-Tech’s six-step process to best to prepare for difficult conversations.
• Follow best practices to approach difficult conversations.
• Learn the five approaches to conflict management.
• Practice conflict management skills.

Info-Tech Insight

Conflict does not have to be negative. The presence of conflict in an organization can actually be a very positive thing: the ability to freely express opinions and openly debate can lead to better, more strategic decisions being made.

Master Time

Effective leaders spend their time in specific ways

Source: Info-Tech, N=85

Master Time

Signs you struggle with time management

Master Time

The Master Time Facilitation Guide covers the following topics:

• Understand Communication Styles
• Tailor Communication Methods to Activities
• Make Meetings Matter

Learning outcomes:

Main goal: Become a better communicator across a variety of personal styles and work contexts.

Key objectives:

• Understand how you spend your time.
• Learn how to use your calendar effectively.
• Understand the actions to take to successfully delegate.
• Learn how to successfully limit interruptions.

Info-Tech Insight

There is a right and wrong way to manage your calendar as a first-time manager and it has nothing to do with your personal preference.

Accountability

Accountability creates organizational and team benefits

Source: Forbes, 2019

Accountability

Accountability increases employee empowerment

Employee empowerment is the number one driver of employee engagement. The extent to which you can hold employees accountable for their own actions and decisions is closely related to how empowered they are and how empowered they feel; accountability and empowerment go hand in hand. To feel empowered, employees must understand what is expected of them, have input into decisions that affect their work, and have the tools they need to demonstrate their talents.

Source: McLean & Company Engagement Database, 2018; N=71,794

Accountability

The Accountability Facilitation Guide covers the following topics:

• Create Clarity and Transparency
• Articulate Expectations and Evaluation
• Help Your Team Remove Roadblocks
• Clearly Introduce Accountability to Your Team

Learning outcomes:

Main goal: Create a personal accountability plan and learn how to hold yourself and your team accountable.

Key objectives:

• Understand why accountability matters.
• Learn how to create clarity and transparency.
• Understand how to successfully hold people accountable through clearly articulating expectations and evaluation.
• Know how to remove roadblocks to accountability for your team.

Info-Tech Insight

Accountability is about focusing on the results of a task, rather than just completing the task. Create team accountability by keeping the team focused on the result and not “doing their jobs.” First-time managers need to clearly communicate expectations and evaluation to successfully develop team accountability.

Use the Build a Better Manager Participant Workbooks to help participants set accountabilities and track their progress

A key feature of this blueprint is built-in guidance on transferring your managers’ new knowledge into practical skills and habits they can fall back on when their job requires it.

The Participant Workbooks, one for each module, are structured around the three key principles of learning transfer to help participants optimally structure their own learning:

• Track your learning. This section guides participants through conducting self-assessments, setting learning goals, recording key insights, and brainstorming relapse-prevention strategies
• Establish your personal commitment. This section helps participants record the actions they personally commit to taking to continually practice their new skills
• Secure organizational support. This section guides participants in recording the steps they will take to seek out support from their supervisor and peers.

Info-Tech Insight

Participants should use this workbook throughout their training and continue to review it for at least three months after. Practical skills take an extended amount of time to solidify, and using the workbook for several months will ensure that participants stay on track with regular practice and check-ins.

Set your trainees up for success by reviewing these training best practices

Info-Tech Insight

Participants should use this workbook throughout their training and continue to review it for at least three months after. Practical skills take an extended amount of time to solidify, and using the workbook for several months will ensure that participants stay on track with regular practice and check-ins.

1.2 Customize the facilitation guides

1-3 hours

Prior to facilitating your first session, ensure you complete the following steps:

1. Read through all the module content, including the speaker’s notes, to familiarize yourself with the material and ensure the tactics presented align with your department’s culture and established best practices.
2. Customize the slides with a pencil icon with information relevant to your organization.
3. Ensure you are comfortable with all material to be presented and are prepared to answer questions. If you require clarification on any of the material, book a call with your Info-Tech analyst for guidance.
4. Ensure you do not delete or heavily customize the self-assessment activities and the activities in the Review and Action Plan section of the module. These activities are structured around a skill building framework and designed to aid your trainees in applying their new knowledge in their day to day. If you have any concerns about activities in these sections, book a call with your Info-Tech analyst for guidance.

1.3 Prepare to deliver training

1-3 hours

Complete these steps in preparation for delivering the training to your first-time managers:

1. Select a facilitator.
   • The right person to facilitate the meeting depends on the dynamics within your department. Having a senior IT leader can lend additional weight to the training best practices but may not be feasible in a large department. In these cases, an HR partner or external third party can be asked to facilitate.
2. Distribute the workbooks to attendees before the first training session.
   • Change the header on the workbook templates to your own organization’s, if desired.
   • Email the workbooks to attendees prior to the first session. There is no pre-work to be completed.

Phase 2

Deliver training

Outcomes of this phase:

• Training delivered
• Development goals set by attendees
• Action plan created by attendees

2.1 Deliver training

3 hours

When you are ready, deliver the training. Ensure you complete all activities and that participants record the outcomes in their workbooks.

Tips for activity facilitation:

• Encourage and support participation from everyone. And be sure no one on the team dismisses anyone’s thoughts or opinions – they present the opportunity for further discussion and deeper insight.
• Debrief after each activity, outlining any lessons learned, action items, and next steps.
• Encourage participants to record all outcomes, key insights, and action plans in their workbooks.

Phase 3

Enable long-term skill development

Outcomes of this phase:

• Attendees reminded of action plan and personal commitment
• Supervisors reminded of the need to support trainees' development

3.1 Email trainees with action steps

0.5 hours

After the training, send an email to attendees thanking them for participating and summarizing key next steps for the group. Use the template below, or write your own:

“Hi team,

I want to thank you personally for attending the Communicate Effectively training module. Our group led some great discussion.

A reminder that the next time you will reconvene as a group will be on [Date] to discuss your progress and challenges to date.

Additionally, your manager is aware and supportive of the training program, so be sure to follow through on the commitments you’ve made to secure the support you need from them to build your new skills.

I am always open for questions if you run into any challenges.

Regards,

[Your name]”

3.2 Secure support from trainees’ supervisors

0.5 hours

An important part of the training is securing organizational support, which includes support from your trainees’ supervisors. After the trainees have committed to some action items to seek support from their supervisors, it is important to express your support for this and remind the supervisors of their role in guiding your first-time managers. Use the template below, or write your own, to remind your trainees’ supervisors of this at the end of training (if you are going through all three modules in a short period of time, you may want to wait until the end of the entire training to send this email):

“Hi team,

We have just completed Info-Tech’s first-time manager training with our new manager team. The trainees will be seeking your support in developing their new skills. This could be in the form of coaching, feedback on their progress, reviewing their development plan, etc.

Supervisor support is a crucial component of skill building, so I hope I can count on all of you to support our new managers in their learning. If you are not sure how to handle these requests, or would like a refresher of the material our trainees covered, please let me know.

I am always open for questions if you run into any challenges.

Regards,

[Your name]”

Contributors

Brad Armstrong, Senior Engineering Manager, Code42 Software I am a pragmatic engineering leader with a deep technical background, now focused on building great teams. I'm energized by difficult, high-impact problems at scale and with the cloud technologies and emerging architectures that we can use to solve them. But it's the power of people and organizations that ultimately lead to our success, and the complex challenge of bringing all that together is the work I find most rewarding.

We thank the expert contributors who chose to keep their contributions anonymous.

Bibliography

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Define Your Cloud Vision

Define your cloud vision before it defines you

Analyst perspective

Use the cloud’s strengths. Mitigate its weaknesses.

The cloud isn’t magic. It’s not necessarily cheaper, better, or even available for the thing you want it to do. It’s not mysterious or a cure-all, and it does take a bit of effort to systematize your approach and make consistent, defensible decisions about your cloud services. That’s where this blueprint comes in.

Your cloud vision is the culmination of this effort all boiled down into a single statement: “This is how we want to use the cloud.” That simple statement should, of course, be representative of – and built from – a broader, contextual strategy discussion that answers the following questions: What should go to the cloud? What kind of cloud makes sense? Should the cloud deployment be public, private, or hybrid? What does a migration look like? What risks and roadblocks need to be considered when exploring your cloud migration options? What are the “day 2” activities that you will need to undertake after you’ve gotten the ball rolling?

Taken as a whole, answering these questions is difficult task. But with the framework provided here, it’s as easy as – well, let’s just say it’s easier.

Jeremy Roberts

Research Director, Infrastructure and Operations

Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• You are both extrinsically motivated to move to the cloud (e.g. by vendors) and intrinsically motivated by internal digital transformation initiatives.
• You need to define the cloud’s true value proposition for your organization without assuming it is an outsourcing opportunity or will save you money.
• Your industry, once cloud-averse, is now normalizing the use of cloud services, but you have not established a basic cloud vision from which to develop a strategy at a later point.

Common Obstacles

• Organizations jump to the cloud before defining their cloud vision and without any clear plan for realizing the cloud’s benefits.
• Many organizations have a foot in the cloud already, but these decisions have been made in an ad hoc rather than systematic fashion.
• You lack a consistent framework to assess your workloads’ suitability for the cloud.

Info-Tech's Approach

• Evaluate workloads’ suitability for the cloud using Info-Tech’s methodology to select the optimal migration (or non-migration) path based on the value of cloud characteristics.
• Codify risks tied to workloads’ cloud suitability and plan mitigations.
• Build a roadmap of initiatives for actions by workload and risk mitigation.
• Define a cloud vision to share with stakeholders.

Info-Tech Insight: 1) Base migration decisions on cloud characteristics. If your justification for the migration is simply getting your workload out of the data center, think again. 2) Address the risks up front in your migration plan. 3) The cloud changes roles and calls for different skill sets, but Ops is here to stay.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations who need to:

• Identify workloads that are good candidates for the cloud.
• Develop a consistent, cost-effective approach to cloud services.
• Outline and mitigate risks.
• Define your organization’s cloud archetype.
• Map initiatives on a roadmap.
• Communicate your cloud vision to stakeholders so they can understand the reasons behind a cloud decision and differentiate between different cloud service and deployment models.
• Understand the risks, roadblocks, and limitations of the cloud.

“We’re moving from a world where companies like Oracle and Microsoft and HP and Dell were all critically important to a world where Microsoft is still important, but Amazon is now really important, and Google also matters. The technology has changed, but most of the major vendors they’re betting their business on have also changed. And that’s super hard for people..” –David Chappell, Author and Speaker

Common obstacles

These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations:

• Organizations jump to the cloud before defining their cloud vision and without any clear plan for realizing the cloud’s benefits.
• Many organizations already have a foot in the cloud, but the choice to explore these solutions was made in an ad hoc rather than systematic fashion. The cloud just sort of happened.
• The lack of a consistent assessment framework means that some workloads that probably belong in the cloud are kept on premises or with hosted services providers – and vice versa.
• Securing cloud expertise is remarkably difficult – especially in a labor market roiled by the global pandemic and the increasing importance of cloud services.

Standard cloud challenges

30% of all cloud spend is self-reported as waste. Many workloads that end up in the cloud don’t belong there. Many workloads that do belong in the cloud aren’t properly migrated. (Flexera, 2021)

44% of respondents report themselves as under-skilled in the cloud management space. (Pluralsight, 2021)

Info-Tech’s approach

Goals and drivers

• Service model
  • What type of cloud makes the most sense for workload archetypes? When does it make sense to pick SaaS over IaaS, for example?
• Delivery model
  • Will services be delivered over the public cloud, a private cloud, or a hybrid cloud? What challenges accompany this decision?

• Migration Path
  • What does the migration path look like? What does the transition to the cloud look like, and how much effort will be required? Amazon’s 6Rs framework captures migration options: rehosting, repurchasing, replatforming, and refactoring, along with retaining and retiring. Each workload should be assessed for its suitability for one or more of these paths.

• Support model
  • How will services be provided? Will staff be trained, new staff hired, a service provider retained for ongoing operations, or will a consultant with cloud expertise be brought on board for a defined period? The appropriate support model is highly dependent on goals along with expected outcomes for different workloads.

Highlight risks and roadblocks

Formalize cloud vision

Document your cloud strategy

The Info-Tech difference:

1. Determine the hypothesized value of cloud for your organization.
2. Evaluate workloads with 6Rs framework.
3. Identify and mitigate risks.
4. Identify cloud archetype.
5. Plot initiatives on a roadmap.
6. Write action plan statement and goal statement.

What is the cloud, how is it deployed, and how is service provided?

Cloud Characteristics

1. On-demand self-service: the ability to access reosurces instantly without vendor interaction
2. Broad network access: all services delivered over the network
3. Resource pooling: multi-tenant environment (shared)
4. Rapid elasticity: the ability to expand and retract capabilities as needed
5. Measured service: transparent metering

Service Model:

1. Software-as-a-Service: all but the most minor configuration is done by the vendor
2. Platform-as-a-Service: customer builds the application using tools provided by the provider
3. Infrastructure-as-a-Service: the customer manages OS, storage, and the application

Delivery Model

1. Public cloud: accessible to anyone over the internet; multi-tenant environment
2. Private cloud: provisioned for a single organization with multiple units
3. Hybrid cloud: two or more connected clouds; data is portage across them
4. Community cloud: provisioned for a specific group of organizations

(National Institute of Standards and Technology)

A workload-first approach will allow you to take full advantage of the cloud’s strengths

• Under all but the most exceptional circumstances, good cloud strategies will incorporate different service models. Very few organizations are “IaaS shops” or “SaaS shops,” even if they lean heavily in one direction.
• These different service models (including non-cloud options like colocation and on-premises infrastructure) each have different strengths. Part of your cloud strategy should involve determining which of the services makes the most sense for you.
• Own the cloud by understanding which cloud (or non-cloud!) offering makes the most sense for you given your unique context.

Migration paths

In a 2016 blog post, Amazon introduced a framework for understanding cloud migration strategies. The framework presented here is slightly modified – including a “relocate” component rather than a “retire” component – but otherwise hews close to the standard.

These migration paths reflect organizational capabilities and desired outcomes in terms of service models – cloud or otherwise. Retention means keeping the workload where it is, in a datacenter or a colocation service, or relocating to a colocation or hosted software environment. These represent the “non-cloud” migration paths.

In the graphic on the right, the paths within the red box lead to the cloud. Rehosting means lifting and shifting to an infrastructure environment. Migrating a virtual machine from your VMware environment on premises to Azure Virtual machines is a quick way to realize some benefits from the cloud. Migrating from SQL Server on premises to a cloud-based SQL solution looks a bit more like changing platforms (replatforming). It involves basic infrastructure modification without a substantial architectural component.

Refactoring is the most expensive of the options and involves engaging the software development lifecycle to build a custom solution, fundamentally rewriting the solution to be cloud native and take advantage of cloud-native architectures. This can result in a PaaS or an IaaS solution.

Finally, repurchasing means simply going to market and procuring a new solution. This may involve migrating data, but it does not require the migration of components.

Migration Paths

Retain (Revisit)

• Keep the application in its current form, at least for now. This doesn’t preclude revisiting it in the future.

Relocate

• Move the workload between datacenters or to a hosted software/colocation provider.

Rehost

• Move the application to the cloud (IaaS) and continue to run it in more or less the same form as it currently runs.

Replatform

• Move the application to the cloud and perform a few changes for cloud optimizations.

Refactor

• Rewrite the application, taking advantage of cloud-native architectures.

Repurchase

• Replace with an alternative, cloud-native application and migrate the data.

Support model

Support models by characteristic

IT services, including cloud services, can be delivered and managed in multiple ways depending on the nature of the workload and the organization’s intended path forward. Three high-level options are presented here and may be more or less valuable based on the duration of the expected engagement with the service (temporary or permanent), the skills specialization required, and the flexibility necessary to complete the job.

By way of example, a highly technical, short-term project with significant flexibility requirements might be a good fit for an expensive consultant, whereas post-implementation maintenance of a cloud email system requires relatively little specialization and flexibility and would therefore be a better fit for internal management.

There is no universally applicable rule here, but there are some workloads that are generally a good fit for the cloud and others that are not as effective, with that fit being conditional on the appropriate support model being employed.

Risks, roadblocks, and strategy components

No two cloud strategies are exactly alike, but all should address 14 key areas. A key step in defining your cloud vision is an assessment of these strategy components. Lower maturity does not preclude an aggressive cloud strategy, but it does indicate that higher effort will be required to make the transition.

Cloud archetypes – a cloud vision component

Once you understand the value of the cloud, your workloads’ general suitability for cloud, and your proposed risks and mitigations, the next step is to define your cloud archetype.

Your organization’s cloud archetype is the strategic posture that IT adopts to best support the organization’s goals. Info-Tech’s model recognizes seven archetypes, divided into three high-level archetypes.

After consultation with your stakeholders, and based on the results of the suitability and risk assessment activities, define your archetype. The archetype feeds into the overall cloud vision and provides simple insight into the cloud future state for all stakeholders.

The cloud vision itself is captured in a “vision statement,” a short summary of the overall approach that includes the overall cloud archetype.

Info-Tech’s methodology for defining your cloud vision

Insight summary

The cloud may not be right for you – and that’s okay!

Don’t think about the cloud as an inevitable next step for all workloads. The cloud is merely another tool in the toolbox, ready to be used when appropriate and put away when it’s not needed. Cloud first isn’t always the way to go.

Not all clouds are equal

It’s not “should I go to the cloud?” but “what service and delivery models make sense based on my needs and risk tolerance?” Thinking about the cloud as a binary can force workloads into the cloud that don’t belong (and vice versa).

Bottom-up is best

A workload assessment is the only way to truly understand the cloud’s value. Work from the bottom up, not the top down, understand what characteristics make a workload cloud suitable, and strategize on that basis.

Your accountability doesn’t change

You are still accountable for maintaining available, secure, functional applications and services. Cloud providers share some responsibility, but the buck stops where it always has: with you.

Don’t customize for the sake of customization

SaaS providers make money selling the same thing to everyone. When migrating a workload to SaaS, work with stakeholders to pursue standardization around a selected platform and avoid customization where possible.

Best of both worlds, worst of both worlds

Hybrid clouds are in fashion, but true hybridity comes with additional cost, administration, and other constraints. A convoy moves at the speed of its slowest member.

The journey matters as much as the destination

How you get there is as important as what “there” actually is. Any strategy that focuses solely on the destination misses out on a key part of the value conversation: the migration strategy.

Blueprint benefits

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

This presentation captures the results of the exercises and presents a complete vision to stakeholders including a desired target state, a rubric for decision making, the results of the workload assessments, and an overall risk profile.

Cloud Vision Workbook

This workbook includes the standard cloud workload assessment questionnaire along with the results of the assessment. It also includes the milestone timeline for the implementation of the cloud vision.

Blueprint benefits

IT Benefits

• A consistent approach to the cloud takes the guesswork out of deployment decisions and makes it easier for IT to move on to the execution stage.
• When properly incorporated, cloud services come with many benefits, including automation, elasticity, and alternative architectures (micro-services, containers). The cloud vision project will help IT readers articulate expected benefits and work towards achieving them.
• A clear framework for incorporating organizational goals into cloud plans.

Business benefits

• Simple, well-governed access to high-quality IT resources.
• Access to the latest and greatest in technology to facilitate remote work.
• Framework for cost management in the cloud that incorporates OpEx and chargebacks/showbacks. A clear understanding of expected changes to cost modeling is also a benefit of a cloud vision.
• Clarity for stakeholders about IT’s response (and contribution to) IT strategic initiatives.

Measure the value of this blueprint

Don’t take our word for it:

• The cloud vision material in various forms has been offered for several years, and members have generally benefited substantially, both from cloud vision workshops and from guided implementations led by analysts.
• After each engagement, we send a survey that asks members how they benefited from the experience. Of 30 responses, the cloud vision research has received an average score of 9.8/10. Real members have found significant value in the process.
• Additionally, members reported saving between 2 and 120 days (for an average of 17), and financial savings ranged from $1,920 all the way up to $1.27 million, for an average of $170,577.90! If we drop outliers on both ends, the average reported value of a cloud vision engagement is $37, 613.
• Measure the value by calculating the time saved from using Info-Tech’s framework vs. a home-brewed cloud strategy alternative and by comparing the overall cost of a guided implementation or workshop with the equivalent offering from another firm. We’re confident you’ll come out ahead.

9.8/10 Average reported satisfaction

17 Days Average reported time savings

$37, 613 Average cost savings (adj.)

Executive Brief Case Study

Industry: Financial

Source: Info-Tech workshop

Anonymous financial institution

A small East Coast financial institution was required to develop a cloud strategy. This strategy had to meet several important requirements, including alignment with strategic priorities and best practices, along with regulatory compliance, including with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The bank already had a significant cloud footprint and was looking to organize and formalize the strategy going forward.

Leadership needed a comprehensive strategy that touched on key areas including the delivery model, service models, individual workload assessments, cost management, risk management and governance. The output had to be consumable by a variety of audiences with varying levels of technical expertise and had to speak to IT’s role in the broader strategic goals articulated earlier in the year.

Results

The bank engaged Info-Tech for a cloud vision workshop and worked through four days of exercises with various IT team members. The bank ultimately decided on a multi-cloud strategy that prioritized SaaS while also allowing for PaaS and IaaS solutions, along with some non-cloud hosted solutions, based on organizational circumstances.

Bank cloud vision

[Bank] will provide innovative financial and related services by taking advantage of the multiplicity of best-of-breed solutions available in the cloud. These solutions make it possible to benefit from industry-level innovations, while ensuring efficiency, redundancy, and enhanced security.

Bank cloud decision workflow

• SaaS
  • Platform?
    • Yes
      • PaaS
    • No
      • Hosted
    • IaaS
      • Other

Non-cloud

Cloud

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this crticial project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off imediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge the take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Phase 1

• Call #1: Discuss current state, challenges, etc.
• Call #2: Goals, drivers, and current state.

Phase 2

• Call #3: Conduct cloud suitability assessment for selected workloads.

Phase 3

• Call #4: Generate and categorize risks.
• Call #5: Begin the risk mitigation conversation.

Phase 4

• Call #6: Complete the risk mitigation process
• Call #7: Finalize vision statement and cloud decision framework.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Understand the cloud

Build the foundations of your cloud vision

Phase 1

Phase 1

Understand the Cloud

Phase 1

1.1 Generate goals and drivers

1.2 Explore cloud characteristics

1.3 Create a current state summary

1.4 Select workloads for analysis

Phase 2

2.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.2 Determine workload future states

Phase 3

3.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.2 Mitigate risks and roadblocks

3.3 Define roadmap initiatives

Phase 4

4.1 Review and assign work items

4.2 Finalize cloud decision framework

4.3 Create cloud vision

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

1.1.1 Generate organizational goals

1.1.2 Define cloud drivers

1.1.3 Define success indicators

1.3.1 Record your current state

1.4.1 Select workloads for further assessment

This phase involves the following participants:

IT management, the core working group, security, infrastructure, operations, architecture, engineering, applications, non-IT stakeholders.

It starts with shared understanding

Stakeholders must agree on overall goals and what “cloud” means

The cloud is a nebulous term that can reasonably describe services ranging from infrastructure as a service as delivered by providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft through its Azure platform, right up to software as a service solutions like Jira or Salesforce. These solutions solve different problems – just because your CRM would be a good fit for a migration to Salesforce doesn’t mean the same system would make sense in Azure or AWS.

This is important because the language we use to talk about the cloud can color our approach to cloud services. A “cloud-first” strategy will mean something different to a CEO with a concept of the cloud rooted in Salesforce than it will to a system administrator who interprets it to mean a transition to cloud-hosted virtual machines.

Add to this the fact that not all cloud services are hosted externally by providers (public clouds) and the fact that multiple delivery models can be engaged at once through hybrid or multi-cloud approaches, and it’s apparent that a shared understanding of the cloud is necessary for a coherent strategy to take form.

This phase proceeds in four steps, each governed by the principle of shared understanding. The first requires a shared understanding of corporate goals and drivers. Step 2 involves coming to a shared understanding of the cloud’s unique characteristics. Step 3 requires a review of the current state. Finally, in Step 4, participants will identify workloads that are suitable for analysis as candidates for the cloud.

Step 1.1

Generate goals and drivers

Activities

1.1.1 Define organizational goals

1.1.2 Define cloud drivers

1.1.3 Define success indicators

Generate goals and drivers

Explore cloud characteristics

Create a current state summary

Select workloads for analysis

This step involves the following participants:

• IT management
• Core working group
• Security
• Applications
• Infrastructure
• Service management
• Leadership

Outcomes of this step

• List of organizational goals
• List of cloud drivers
• Defined success indicators

What can the cloud do for you?

The cloud is not valuable for its own sake, and not all users derive the same value

• The cloud is characterized by on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service. Any or all of those characteristics might be enough to make the cloud appealing, but in most cases, there is an overriding driver.
• Multiple paths may lead to the cloud. Consider an organization with a need to control costs by showing back to business units, or perhaps by reducing capital expenditure – the cloud may be the most appropriate way to effect these changes. Conversely, an organization expanding rapidly and with a need to access the latest and greatest technology might benefit from the elasticity and pooled resources that major cloud providers can offer.
• In these cases, the destination might be the same (a cloud solution) but the delivery model – public, private, or hybrid – and the decisions made around the key strategy components, including architecture, provisioning, and cost management, will almost certainly be different.
• Defining goals, understanding cloud drivers, and – crucially – understanding what success means, are all therefore essential elements of the cloud vision process.

1.1.1 Generate organizational goals

1-3 hours

Input

• Strategy documentation

Output

• Organizational goals

Materials

• Whiteboard (digital/physical)

Participants

• IT leadership
• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Security

1. As a group, brainstorm organizational goals, ideally based on existing documentation
   • Review relevant corporate and IT strategies.
   • If you do not have access to internal documentation, review the standard goals on the next slide and select those that are most relevant for you.
2. Record the most important business goals in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation. Include descriptions where possible to ensure wide readability.
3. Make note of these goals. They should inform the answers to prompts offered in the Cloud Vision Workbook and should be a consistent presence in the remainder of the visioning exercise. If you’re conducting the session in person, leave the goals up on a whiteboard and make reference to them throughout the workshop.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Standard COBIT 19 enterprise goals

1. Portfolio of competitive products and services
2. Managed business risk
3. Compliance with external laws and regulations
4. Quality of financial information
5. Customer-oriented service culture
6. Business service continuity and availability
7. Quality of management information
8. Optimization of internal business process functionality
9. Optimization of business process costs
10. Staff skills, motivation, and productivity
11. Compliance with internal policies
12. Managed digital transformation programs
13. Product and business innovation

1.1.2 Define cloud drivers

30-60 minutes

Input

• Organizational goals
• Strategy documentation
• Management/staff perspective

Output

• List of cloud drivers

Materials

• Sticky notes
• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• IT leadership
• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Security

1. Cloud drivers sit at a level of abstraction below organizational goals. Keeping your organizational goals in mind, have each participant in the session write down how they expect to benefit from the cloud on a sticky note.
2. Solicit input one at a time and group similar responses. Encourage participants to bring forward their cloud goals even if similar goals have been mentioned previously. The number of mentions is a useful way to gauge the relative weight of the drivers.
3. Once this is done, you should have a few groups of similar drivers. Work with the group to name each category. This name will be the driver reported in the documentation.
4. Input the results of the exercise into the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation, and include descriptions based on the constituent drivers. For example, if a driver is titled “do more valuable work,” the constituent drivers might be “build cloud skills,” “focus on core products,” and “avoid administration work where possible.” The description would be based on these components.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

1.1.3 Define success indicators

1 hour

Input

• Cloud drivers
• Organizational goals

Output

• List of cloud driver success indicators

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• IT leadership
• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Security

1. On a whiteboard, draw a table with each of the cloud drivers (identified in 1.1.2) across the top.
2. Work collectively to generate success indicators for each cloud driver. In this case, a success indicator is some way you can report your progress with the stated driver. It is a real-world proxy for the sometimes abstract phenomena that make up your drivers. Think about what would be true if your driver was realized.
   1. For example, if your driver is “faster access to resources,” you might consider indicators like developer satisfaction, project completion time, average time to provision, etc.
3. Once you are satisfied with your list of indicators, populate the slide in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation for validation from stakeholders.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Step 1.2

Explore cloud characteristics

Activities

Understand the value of the cloud:

• Review delivery models
• Review support models
• Review service models
• Review migration paths

Understand the Cloud

Generate goals and drivers

Explore cloud characteristics

Create a current state summary

Select workloads for analysis

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Architecture
• Engineering
• Security

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding of cloud service models and value

Defining the cloud

Per NIST, the cloud has five fundamental characteristics. All clouds have these characteristics, even if they are executed in somewhat different ways between delivery models, service models, and even individual providers.

Cloud characteristics

On-demand self-service

Cloud customers are capable of provisioning cloud resources without human interaction (e.g. contacting sales), generally through a web console.

Broad network access

Capabilities are designed to be delivered over a network and are generally intended for access by a wide variety of platform types (cloud services are generally device-agnostic).

Resource pooling

Multiple customers (internal, in the case of private clouds) make use of a highly abstracted shared infrastructure managed by the cloud provider.

Rapid elasticity

Customers are capable of provisioning additional resources as required, pulling from a functionally infinite pool of capacity. Cloud resources can be spun-down when no longer needed.

Measured service

Consumption is metered based on an appropriate unit of analysis (number of licenses, storage used, compute cycles, etc.) and billing is transparent and granular.

Cloud delivery models

The NIST definition of cloud computing outlines four cloud delivery models: public, private, hybrid, and community clouds. A community cloud is like a private cloud, but it is provisioned for the exclusive use of a like-minded group of organizations, usually in a mutually beneficial, non-competitive arrangement. Universities and hospitals are examples of organizations that can pool their resources in this way without impacting competitiveness. The Info-Tech model covers three key delivery models – public, private, and hybrid, and an overarching model (multi-cloud) that can comprise more than one of the other models – public + public, public + hybrid, etc.

Public

The cloud service is provisioned for access by the general public (customers).

Private

A private cloud has the five key characteristics, but is provisioned for use by a single entity, like a company or organization.

Hybrid

Hybridity essentially refers to interoperability between multiple cloud delivery models (public +private).

Multi

A multi-cloud deployment requires only that multiple clouds are used without any necessary interoperability (Nutanix, 2019).

Public cloud

This is what people generally think about when they talk about cloud

• The public cloud is, well, public! Anyone can make use of its resources, and in the case of the major providers, capacity is functionally unlimited. Need to store exabytes of data in the cloud? No problem! Amazon will drive a modified shipping container to your datacenter, load it up, and “migrate” it to a datacenter.
• Public clouds offer significant variety on the infrastructure side. Major IaaS providers, like Microsoft and Amazon, offer dozens of services across many different categories including compute, networking, and storage, but also identity, containers, machine learning, virtual desktops, and much, much more. (See a list from Microsoft here, and Amazon here)
• There are undoubtedly strengths to the public cloud model. Providers offer the “latest and greatest” and customers need not worry about the details, including managing infrastructure and physical locations. Providers offer built-in redundancy, multi-regional deployments, automation tools, management and governance solutions, and a variety of leading-edge technologies that would not be feasible for organizations to run in-house, like high performance compute, blockchain, or quantum computing.
• Of course, the public cloud is not all sunshine and rainbows – there are downsides as well. It can be expensive; it can introduce regulatory complications to have to trust another entity with your key information. Additionally, there can be performance hiccups, and with SaaS products, it can be difficult to monitor at the appropriate (per-transaction) level.

Prominent examples include:

AWS

Microsoft

Azure

Salesforce.com

Workday

SAP

Private cloud

A lower-risk cloud for cloud-averse customers?

• A cloud is a cloud, no matter how small. Some IT shops deploy private clouds that make use of the five key cloud characteristics but provisioned for the exclusive use of a single entity, like a corporation.
• Private clouds have numerous benefits. Some potential cloud customers might be uncomfortable with the shared responsibility that is inherent in the public cloud. Private clouds allow customers to deliver flexible, measured services without having to surrender control, but they require significant overhead, capital expenditure, administrative effort, and technical expertise.
• According to the 2021 State of the Cloud Report, private cloud use is common, and the most frequently cited toolset is VMware vSphere, followed by Azure Stack, OpenStack, and AWS Outposts. Private cloud deployments are more common in larger organizations, which makes sense given the overhead required to manage such an environment.

Private cloud adoption

VMware and Microsoft lead the pack among private cloud customers, with Amazon and Red Hat also substantially present across private cloud environments.

Hybrid cloud

The best of both worlds?

Hybrid cloud architectures combine multiple cloud delivery models and facilitate some level of interoperability. NIST suggests bursting and load balancing as examples of hybrid cloud use cases. Note: it is not sufficient to simply have multiple clouds running in parallel – there must be a toolset that allows for an element of cross-cloud functionality.

This delivery model is attractive because it allows users to take advantage of the strengths of multiple service models using a single management pane. Bursting across clouds to take advantage of additional capacity or disaster recovery capabilities are two obvious use cases that appeal to hybrid cloud users.

But while hybridity is all the rage (especially given the impact Covid-19 has had on the workplace), the reality is that any hybrid cloud user must take the good with the bad. Multiple clouds and a management layer can be technically complex, expensive, and require maintaining a physical infrastructure that is not especially valuable (“I thought we were moving to the cloud to get out of the datacenter!”).

Before selecting a hybrid approach through services like VMware Cloud on AWS or Microsoft’s Azure Stack, consider the cost, complexity, and actual expected benefit.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google dominate public cloud IaaS, but IBM is betting big on hybrid cloud:

With its acquisition of Red Hat in 2019 for $34 billion, Big Blue put its money where its mouth is and acquired a substantial hybrid cloud business. At the time of the acquisition, Red Hat’s CEO, Jim Whitehurst, spoke about the benefit IBM expected to receive:

“Joining forces with IBM gives Red Hat the opportunity to bring more open source innovation to an even broader range of organizations and will enable us to scale to meet the need for hybrid cloud solutions that deliver true choice and agility” (Red Hat, 2019).

Multi-cloud

For most organizations, the multi-cloud is the most realistic option.

Multi-cloud is popular!

Multi-cloud solutions exist at a different layer of abstraction from public, private, and even hybrid cloud delivery models. A multi-cloud architecture, as the name suggests, requires the user to be a customer of more than one cloud provider, and it can certainly include a hybrid cloud deployment, but it is not bound by the same rules of interoperability.

Many organizations – especially those with fewer resources or a lack of a use case for a private cloud – rely on a multi-cloud architecture to build applications where they belong, and they manage each environment separately (or occasionally with the help of cloud management platforms).

If your data team wants to work in AWS and your enterprise services run on basic virtual machines in Azure, that might be the most effective architecture. As the Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report suggests, this architecture is far more common than the more complicated bursting or brokering architectures characteristic of hybrid clouds.

NIST cloud service models

Software as a service

SaaS has exploded in popularity with consumers who wish to avail themselves of the cloud’s benefits without having to manage underlying infrastructure components. SaaS is simple, generally billed per-user per-month, and is almost entirely provider-managed.

Platform as a service

PaaS providers offer a toolset for their customers to run custom applications and services without the requirement to manage underlying infrastructure components. This service model is ideal for custom applications/services that don’t benefit from highly granular infrastructure control.

Infrastructure as a service

IaaS represents the sale of components. Instead of a service, IaaS providers sell access to components, like compute, storage, and networking, allowing for customers to build anything they want on top of the providers’ infrastructure.

Cloud service models

• This research focuses on five key service models, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses. Moving right from “on-prem,” customers gradually give up more control over their environments to cloud service providers.
• An entirely premises-based environment means that the customer is responsible for everything ranging from the dirt under the datacenter to application-level configurations. Conversely, in a SaaS environment, the provider is responsible for everything but those top-level application configurations.
• A managed service provider or other third party can manage any or of the components of the infrastructure stack. A service provider may, for example, build a SaaS solution on top of another provider’s IaaS, or might offer configuration assistance with a commercially available SaaS.

Info-Tech Insight

Not all workloads fit well in the cloud. Many environments will mix service models (e.g. SaaS for some workloads, some in IaaS, some on-premises), and this can be perfectly effective. It must be consistent and intentional, however.

Organization has control

Organization or vendor may control

Vendor has control

Analytics folly

SaaS is good, but it’s not a panacea

Industry: Healthcare

Source: Info-Tech workshop

Situation

A healthcare analytics provider had already moved a significant number of “non-core workloads” to the cloud, including email, HRIS, and related services.

The company CEO was satisfied with the reduced effort required by IT to manage SaaS-based workloads and sought to extend the same benefits to the core analytics platform where there was an opportunity to reduce overhead.

Complication

Many components of the health analytics service were designed to run specifically in a datacenter and were not ready to be migrated to the cloud without significant effort/refactoring. SaaS was not an option because this was a core platform – a SaaS provider would have been the competition.

That left IaaS, which was expensive and would not bring the expected benefits (reduced overhead).

Results

The organization determined that there were no short-term gains from migrating to the cloud. Due to the nature of the application (its extensive customization, the fact that it was a core product sold by the company) any steps to reduce operational overhead were not feasible.

The CEO recognized that the analytics platform was not a good candidate for the cloud and what distinguished the analytics platform from more suitable workloads.

Migration paths

In a 2016 blog post, Amazon Web Services articulated a framework for cloud migration that incorporates elements of the journey as well as the destination. If workload owners do not choose to retain or retire their workloads, there are four alternatives. These alternatives all stack up differently along five key dimensions:

1. Value: does the workload stand to benefit from unique cloud characteristics? To what degree?
2. Effort: how much work would be required to make the transition?
3. Cost: how much money is the migration expected to cost?
4. Time: how long will the migration take?
5. Skills: what skills must be brought to bear to complete the migration?

Not all migration paths can lead to all destinations. Rehosting generally means IaaS, while repurchasing leads to SaaS. Refactoring and replatforming have some variety of outcomes, and it becomes possible to take advantage of new IaaS architectures or migrate workloads over fully to SaaS.

As part of the workload assessment process, use the five dimensions (expanded upon on the next slide) to determine what migration path makes sense. Preferred migration paths form an important part of the overall cloud vision process.

Retain (Revisit)

• Keep the application in its current form, at least for now. This doesn’t preclude revisiting it in the future.

Retire

• Get rid of the application completely.

Rehost

• Move the application to the cloud (IaaS) and continue to run it in more or less the same form as it currently runs.

Replatform

• Move the application to the cloud and perform a few changes for cloud optimizations.

Refactor

• Rewrite the application, taking advantage of cloud native architectures.

Repurchase

• Replace with an alternative, cloud-native application and migrate the data.

Migration paths – relative value

Where should you get your cloud skills?

Cloud skills are certainly top of mind right now. With the great upheaval in both work patterns and in the labor market more generally, expertise in cloud-related areas is simultaneously more valuable and more difficult to procure. According to Pluralsight’s 2021 “State of Upskilling” report, 44% of respondents report themselves under-skilled in the cloud management area, making cloud management the most significant skill gap reported on the survey.

Everyone left the office. Work as we know it is fundamentally altered for a generation or more. Cloud services shot up in popularity by enabling the transition. And yet there is a gap – a prominent gap – in skilling up for this critically important future. What is the cloud manager to do?

Per the framework presented here, that manager has three essential options. They may take somewhat different forms depending on specific requirements and the quirks of the local market, but the options are:

1. Train or hire internal resources: This might be easier said than done, especially for more niche skills, but makes sense for workloads that are critical to operations for the long term.
2. Engage a managed service provider: MSPs are often engaged to manage services where internal IT lacks bandwidth or expertise.
3. Hire a consultant: Consultants are great for time-bound implementation projects where highly specific expertise is required, such as a migration or implementation project.

Each model makes sense to some degree. When evaluating individual workloads for cloud suitability, it is critical to consider the support model – both immediate and long term. What makes sense from a value perspective?

Cloud decisions – summary

A key component of the Info-Tech cloud vision model is that it is multi-layered. Not every decision must be made at every level. At the workload level, it makes sense to select service models that make sense, but each workload does not need its own defined vision. Workload-level decisions should be guided by an overall strategy but applied tactically, based on individual workload characteristics and circumstances.

Conversely, some decisions will inevitably be applied at the environment level. With some exceptions, it is unlikely that cloud customers will build an entire private/hybrid cloud environment around a single solution; instead, they will define a broader strategy and fit individual workloads into that strategy.

Some considerations exist at both the workload and environment levels. Risks and roadblocks, as well as the preferred support model, are concerns that exist at both the environment level and at the workload level.

Step 1.3

Create a current state summary

Activities

1.3.1 Record your current state

Understand the Cloud

Generate goals and drivers

Explore cloud characteristics

Create a current state summary

Select workloads for analysis

This step involves the following participants: Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• Current state summary of cloud solutions

1.3.1 Record your current state

30 minutes

Input

• Knowledge of existing cloud workloads

Output

• Current state cloud summary for service, delivery, and support models

Materials

• Whiteboard

Participants

• Core working group
• Infrastructure team
• Service owners

1. On a whiteboard (real or virtual) draw a table with each of the cloud service models across the top. Leave a cell below each to list examples.
2. Under each service model, record examples present in your environment. The purpose of the exercise is to illustrate the existence of cloud services in your environment or the lack thereof, so there is no need to be exhaustive. Complete this in turn for each service model until you are satisfied that you have created an effective picture of your current cloud SaaS state, IaaS state, etc.
3. Input the results into their own slide titled “current state summary” in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.
4. Repeat for the cloud delivery models and support models and include the results of those exercises as well.
5. Create a short summary statement (“We are primarily a public cloud consumer with a large SaaS footprint and minimal presence in PaaS and IaaS. We retain an MSP to manage our hosted telephony solution; otherwise, everything is handled in house.”

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Step 1.4

Select workloads for current analysis

Activities

1.4.1 Select workloads for assessment

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• List of workloads for assessment

Understand the cloud

Generate goals and drivers

Explore cloud characteristics

Create a current state summary

Select workloads for analysis

1.4.1 Select workloads for assessment

30 minutes

Input

• Knowledge of existing cloud workloads

Output

• List of workloads to be assessed

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group
• IT management

1. In many cases, the cloud project is inspired by a desire to move a particular workload or set of workloads. Solicit feedback from the core working group about what these workloads might be. Ask everyone in the meeting to suggest a workload and record each one on a sticky note or white board (virtual or physical).
2. Discuss the results with the group and begin grouping similar workloads together. They will be subject to the assessments in the Cloud Vision Workbook, so try to avoid selecting too many workloads that will produce similar answers. It might not be obvious, but try to think about workloads that have similar usage patterns, risk levels, and performance requirements, and select a representative group.
3. You should embrace counterintuition by selecting a workload that you think is unlikely to be a good fit for the cloud if you can and subjecting it to the assessment as well for validation purposes.
4. When you have a list of 4-6 workloads, record them on tab 2 of the Cloud Vision Workbook.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Assess your cloud workloads

Build the foundations of your cloud vision

Phase 2

Phase 2

Evaluate Cloud Workloads

Phase 1

1.1 Generate goals and drivers

1.2 Explore cloud characteristics

1.3 Create a current state summary

1.4 Select workloads for analysis

Phase 2

2.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.2 Determine workload future states

Phase 3

3.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.2 Mitigate risks and roadblocks

3.3 Define roadmap initiatives

Phase 4

4.1 Review and assign work items

4.2 Finalize cloud decision framework

4.3 Create cloud vision

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Conduct workload assessments
• Determine workload future state

This phase involves the following participants:

• Subject matter experts
• Core working group
• IT management

Define Your Cloud Vision

Work from the bottom up and assess your workloads

A workload-first approach will help you create a realistic vision.

The concept of a cloud vision should unquestionably be informed by the nature of the workloads that IT is expected to provide for the wider organization. The overall cloud vision is no greater than the sum of its parts. You cannot migrate to the cloud in the abstract. Workloads need to go – and not all workloads are equally suitable for the transition.

It is therefore imperative to understand which workloads are a good fit for the cloud, which cloud service models make the most sense, how to execute the migration, what support should look like, and what risks and roadblocks you are likely to encounter as part of the process.

That’s where the Cloud Vision Workbook comes into play. You can use this tool to assess as many workloads as you’d like – most people get the idea after about four – and by the end of the exercise, you should have a pretty good idea about where your workloads belong, and you’ll have a tool to assess any net new or previously unconsidered workloads.

It’s not so much about the results of the assessment – though these are undeniably important – but about the learnings gleaned from the collaborative assessment exercise. While you can certainly fill out the assessment without any additional input, this exercise is most effective when completed as part of a group.

Introducing the Cloud Vision Workbook

• The Cloud Vision Workbook is an Excel tool that answers the age old question: “What should I do with my workloads?”
• It is divided into eight tabs, each of which offers unique value. Start by reading the introduction and inputting your list of workloads. Work your way through tabs 3-6, completing the suitability, migration, management, and risk and roadblock assessments, and review the results on tab 7.
• If you choose to go through the full battery of assessments for each workload, expect to answer and weight 111 unique questions across the four assessments. This is an intensive exercise, so carefully consider which assessments are valuable to you, and what workloads you have time to assess.
• Tab 8 hosts the milestone timeline and captures the results of the phase 3 risk and mitigation exercise.

Understand Cloud Vision Workbook outputs

Step 2.1

Conduct workload assessments

Activities

2.1.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.1.2 Interpret your results

Phase Title

Conduct workload assessments

Determine workload future state

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Workload subject matter experts

Outcomes of this step

• Completed workload assessments

2.1.1 Conduct workload assessments

2 hours per workload

Input

• List of workloads to be assessed

Output

• Completed cloud vision assessments

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners/workload SMEs

1. The Cloud Vision Workbook is your one stop shop for all things workload assessment. Open the tool to tab 2 and review the workloads you identified at the end of phase 1. Ensure that these are correct. Once satisfied, project the tool (virtually, if necessary) so that all participants can see the assessment questions.
2. Work through tabs 3-6, answering the questions and assigning a multiplier for each one. A higher multiplier increases the relative weight of the question, giving it a greater impact on the overall outcome.
3. Do your best to induce participants to offer opinions. Consensus is not absolutely necessary, but it is a good goal. Ask your participants if they agree with initial responses and occasionally take the opposite position (“I’m surprised you said agree – I would have thought we didn’t care about CapEx vs. OpEx”). Stimulate discussion.
4. Highlight any questions that you will need to return to or run by someone not present. Include a placeholder answer, as the tool requires all cells to be filled for computation.

Cloud Vision Workbook

2.1.2 Interpret your results

10 minutes

Input

• Completed cloud vision assessments

Output

• Shared understanding of implications

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners/workload SMEs

1. Once you’ve completed all 111 questions for each workload, you can review your results on tab 7. On tab 7, you will see four populated graphics: cloud suitability, migration path, “where should skills be procured?”, and risks and roadblocks. These represent the components of the overall cloud vision that you will present to stakeholders.
2. The “cloud suitability” chart captures the service model that the assessment judges to be most suitable for the workload. Ask those present if any are surprised by the output. If there is any disagreement, discuss the source of the surprise and what a more realistic outcome would be. Revisit the assessment if necessary.
3. Conduct a similar exercise with each of the other outputs. Does it make sense to refactor the workload based on its cloud suitability? Does the fact that we scored so highly on the “consultant” support model indicate something about how we handle upskilling internally? Does the profile of risks and roadblocks identified here align with expectations? What should be ranked higher? What about lower?
4. Once everyone is generally satisfied with the results, close the tool and take a break! You’ve earned it.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Understand the cloud strategy components

Each cloud strategy will take a slightly different form, but all should contain echoes of each of these components. This process will help you define your vision and direction, but you will need to take steps to execute on that vision. The remainder of the cloud strategy, covered in the related blueprint Document Your Cloud Strategy comprises these fourteen topics divided across three categories: people, governance, and technology. The workload assessment covers these under risks and roadblocks and highlights areas that may require specific additional attention. When interpreting the results, think of these areas as comprising things that you will need to do to make your vision a reality.

People

• Skills and roles
• Culture and adoption
• Governing bodies

Governance

• Architecture
• Integration and interoperability
• Operations management
• Cloud portfolio management
• Cloud vendor management
• Finance management
• Security
• Data controls

Technology

• Monitoring
• Provisioning
• Migration

Strategy component: People

People form the core of any good strategy. As part of your cloud vision, you will need to understand the implications a cloud transition will have on your staff and users, whether those users are internal or external.

Strategy component: Governance

Without guardrails, the cloud deployment will grow organically. This has strengths (people tend to adopt solutions that they select and deploy themselves), but these are more than balanced out by the drawbacks that come with inconsistency, poor administration, duplication of services, suboptimal costing, and any number of other unique challenges. The solution is to develop and deploy governance. The following list captures some of the necessary governance-related components of a cloud strategy.

Strategy component: Governance (cont.)

Strategy component: Technology

Good technology will never replace good people and effective process, but it remains important in its own right. A migration that neglects the undeniable technical components of a solid cloud strategy is doomed to mediocrity at best and failure at worst. Understanding the technical implications of the cloud vision – particularly in terms of monitoring, provisioning, and migration – makes all the difference. You can interpret the results of the cloud workload assessments by reviewing the details presented here.

Step 2.2

Determine workload future state

Activities

2.2.1 Determine workload future state

Conduct workload assessments

Determine workload future state

This step involves the following participants:

• IT management
• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• Completed workload assessments
• Defined workload future state

2.2.1 Determine workload future state

1-3 hours

Input

• Completed workload assessments

Output

• Preliminary future state outputs

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook
• Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners
• IT management

1. After you’ve had a chance to validate your results, refer to tab 7 of the tool, where you will find a blank notes section.
2. With the working group, capture your answers to each of the following questions:
   1. What service model is the most suitable for the workload? Why?
   2. How will we conduct the migration? Which of the six models makes the most sense? Do we have a backup plan if our primary plan doesn’t work out?
   3. What should the support model look like?
   4. What are some workload-specific risks and considerations that must be taken into account for the workload?
3. Once you’ve got answers to each of these questions for each of the workloads, include your summary in the “notes” section of tab 7.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Paste the output into the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

• The Cloud Vision Workbook output is a compact, consumable summary of each workload’s planned future state. Paste each assessment in as necessary.
• There is no absolutely correct way to present the information, but the output is a good place to start. Do note that, while the presentation is designed to lead with the vision statement, because the process is workload-first, the assessments are populated prior to the overall vision in a bottom-up manner.
• Be sure to anticipate the questions you are likely to receive from any stakeholders. You may consider preparing for questions like: “What other workloads fit this profile?” “What do we expect the impact on the budget to be?” “How long will this take?” Keep these and other questions in mind as you progress through the vision definition process.

Info-Tech Insight

Keep your audience in mind. You may want to include some additional context in the presentation if the results are going to be presented to non-technical stakeholders or those who are not familiar with the terms or how to interpret the outputs.

Identify and Mitigate Risks

Build the foundations of your cloud vision

PHASE 3

Phase 3

Identify and Mitigate Risks

Phase 1

1.1 Generate goals and drivers

1.2 Explore cloud characteristics

1.3 Create a current state summary

1.4 Select workloads for analysis

Phase 2

2.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.2 Determine workload future states

Phase 3

3.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.2 Mitigate risks and roadblocks

3.3 Define roadmap initiatives

Phase 4

4.1 Review and assign work items

4.2 Finalize cloud decision framework

4.3 Create cloud vision

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Generate risks and roadblocks
• Mitigate risks and roadblocks
• Define roadmap initiatives

This phase involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Workload subject matter experts

You know what you want to do, but what do you have to do?

What questions remain unanswered?

There are workload-level risks and roadblocks, and there are environment-level risks. This phase is focused primarily on environment-level risks and roadblocks, or those that are likely to span multiple workloads (but this is not hard and fast rule – anything that you deem worth discussing is worth discussing). The framework here calls for an open forum where all stakeholders – technical and non-technical, pro-cloud and anti-cloud, management and individual contributor – have an opportunity to articulate their concerns, however specific or general, and receive feedback and possible mitigation.

Start by soliciting feedback. You can do this over time or in a single session. Encourage anyone with an opinion to share it. Focus on those who are likely to have a perspective that will become relevant at some point during the creation of the cloud strategy and the execution of any migration. Explain the preliminary direction; highlight any major changes that you foresee. Remind participants that you are not looking for solutions (yet), but that you want to make sure you hear any and every concern as early as possible. You will get feedback and it will all be valuable.

Before cutting your participants loose, remind them that, as with all business decisions, the cloud comes with trade-offs. Not everyone will have every wish fulfilled, and in some cases, significant effort may be needed to get around a roadblock, risks may need to be accepted, and workloads that looked like promising candidates for one service model or another may not be able to realize that potential. This is a normal and expected part of the cloud vision process.

Once the risks and roadblocks conversation is complete, it is the core working group’s job to propose and validate mitigations. Not every risk can be completely resolved, but the cloud has been around for decades – chances are someone else has faced a similar challenge and made it through relatively unscathed. That work will inevitably result in initiatives for immediate execution. Those initiatives will form the core of the initiative roadmap that accompanies the completed Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.

Step 3.1

Generate risks and roadblocks

Activities

3.1.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.1.2 Generate mitigations

Identify and mitigate risks

Generate risks and roadblocks

Mitigate risks and roadblocks

Define roadmap initiatives

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• IT management
• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Security
• Architecture

Outcomes of this step

• List of risks and roadblocks

Understand risks and roadblocks

Risk

• Something that could potentially go wrong.
• You can respond to risks by mitigating them:
  • Eliminate: take action to prevent the risk from causing issues.
  • Reduce: take action to minimize the likelihood/severity of the risk.
  • Transfer: shift responsibility for the risk away from IT, towards another division of the company.
  • Accept: where the likelihood or severity is low, it may be prudent to accept that the risk could come to fruition.

Roadblock

• There are things that aren’t “risks” that we care about when migrating to the cloud.
• We know, for example, that a complicated integration situation will create work items for any migration – this is not an “unknown.”
• We respond to roadblocks by generating work items.

3.1.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

1.5 hours

Input

• Completed cloud vision assessments

Output

• List of risks and roadblocks

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners/workload SMEs
• Anyone with concerns about the cloud

1. Gather your core working group – and really anyone with an intelligent opinion on the cloud – into a single meeting space. Give the group 5-10 minutes to list anything they think could present a difficulty in transitioning workloads to the cloud. Write each risk/roadblock on its own sticky note. You will never be 100% exhaustive, but don’t let anything your users care about go unaddressed.
2. Once everyone has had time to write down their risks and roadblocks, have everyone share one by one. Make sure you get them all. Overlap in risks and roadblocks is okay! Group similar concerns together to give a sort of heat map of what your participants are concerned about. (This is called “affinity diagramming.”)
3. Assign names to these categories. Many of these categories will align with the strategy components discussed in the previous phase (governance, security, etc.) but some will be specific whether by nature or by degree.
4. Sort each of the individual risks into its respective category, collapsing any exact duplicates, and leaving room for notes and mitigations (see the next slide for a visual).

Understand risks and roadblocks

Step 3.2

Mitigate risks and roadblocks

Activities

3.2.1 Generate mitigations

Identify and mitigate risks

Generate risks and roadblocks

Mitigate risks and roadblocks

Define roadmap initiatives

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• List of mitigations

Is the public cloud less secure?

This is the key risk-related question that most cloud customers will have to answer at some point: does migrating to the cloud for some services increase their exposure and create a security problem?

As with all good questions, the answer is “it depends.” But what does it depend on? Consider these cloud risks and potential mitigations:

1. Misconfiguration: An error grants access to unauthorized parties (as happened to Capital One in 2019). This can be mitigated by careful configuration management and third-party tooling.
2. Unauthorized access by cloud provider/partner employees: Though rare, it is possible that a cloud provider or partner can be a vector for a breach. Careful contract language, choosing to own your own encryption keys, and a hybrid approach (storing data on-premises) are some possible ways to address this problem.
3. Unauthorized access to systems: Cloud services are designed to be accessed from anywhere and may be accessed by malicious actors. Possible mitigations include risk-based conditional access, careful identity access management, and logging and detection.

“The cloud is definitely more secure in that you have much more control, you have much more security tooling, much more visibility, and much more automation. So it is more secure. The caveat is that there is more risk. It is easier to accidentally expose data in the cloud than it is on-premises, but, especially for security, the amount of tooling and visibility you get in cloud is much more than anything we’ve had in our careers on-premises, and that’s why I think cloud in general is more secure.” –Abdul Kittana, Founder, ASecureCloud

Breach bests bank

No cloud provider can protect against every misconfiguration

Industry: Finance

Source: The New York Times, CNET

Background

Capital One is a major Amazon Web Services customer and is even featured on Amazon’s site as a case study. That case study emphasizes the bank’s commitment to the cloud and highlights how central security and compliance were. From the CTO: “Before we moved a single workload, we engaged groups from across the company to build a risk framework for the cloud that met the same high bar for security and compliance that we meet in our on-premises environments. AWS worked with us every step of the way.”

Complication

The cloud migration was humming along until July 2019, when the bank suffered a serious breach at the hands of a hacker. That hacker was able to steal millions of credit card applications and hundreds of thousands of Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, and Canadian social insurance numbers.

According to investigators and to AWS, the breach was caused by an open reverse proxy attack against a misconfigured web app firewall, not by an underlying vulnerability in the cloud infrastructure.

Results

Capital One reported that the breach was expected to cost it $150 million, and AWS fervently denied any blame. The US Senate got involved, as did national media, and Capital One’s CEO issued a public apology, writing, “I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected, and I am committed to making it right.”

It was a bad few months for IT at Capital One.

3.2.1 Generate mitigations

3-4.5 hours

Input

• Completed cloud vision assessments

Output

• List of risks and roadblocks

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners/workload SMEs
• Anyone with concerns about the cloud

1. Recall the four mitigation strategies: eliminate, reduce, transfer, or accept. Keep these in mind as you work through the list of risks and roadblocks with the core working group. For every individual risk or roadblock raised in the initial generation session, suggest a specific mitigation. If the concern is “SaaS providers having access to confidential information,” a mitigation might be encryption, specific contract language, or proof of certifications (or all the above).
2. Work through this for each of the risks and roadblocks, identifying the steps you need to take that would satisfy your requirements as you understand them.
3. Once you have gone through the whole list – ideally with input from SMEs in particular areas like security, engineering, and compliance/legal – populate the Cloud Vision Workbook (tab 8) with the risks, roadblocks, and mitigations (sorted by category). Review tab 8 for an example of the output of this exercise.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Cloud Vision Workbook – mitigations

Step 3.3

Define roadmap initiatives

Activities

3.3.1 Generate roadmap initiatives

Identify and mitigate risks

Generate risks and roadblocks

Mitigate risks and roadblocks

Define roadmap initiatives

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• Defined roadmap initiatives

3.3.1 Generate roadmap initiatives

1 hour

Input

• List of risk and roadblock mitigations

Output

• List of cloud initiatives

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group

1. Executing on your cloud vision will likely require you to undertake some key initiatives, many of which have already been identified as part of your mitigation exercise. On tab 8 of the Cloud Vision Workbook, review the mitigations you created in response to the risks and roadblocks identified. Initiatives should generally be assignable to a party and should have a defined scope/duration. For example, “assess all net new applications for cloud suitability” might not be counted as an initiative, but “design a cloud application assessment” would likely be.
2. Design a timeline appropriate for your specific needs. Generally short-term (less than 3 months), medium-term (3-6 months), and long-term (greater than 6 months) will work, but this is entirely based on preference.
3. Review and validate the parameters with the working group. Consider creating additional color-coding (highlighting certain tasks that might be dependent on a decision or have ongoing components).

Cloud Vision Workbook

Bridge the gap and create the vision

Build the foundations of your cloud vision

Phase 4

Phase 4

Bridge the Gap and Create the Vision

Phase 1

1.1 Generate goals and drivers

1.2 Explore cloud characteristics

1.3 Create a current state summary

1.4 Select workloads for analysis

Phase 2

2.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.2 Determine workload future states

Phase 3

3.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.2 Mitigate risks and roadblocks

3.3 Define roadmap initiatives

Phase 4

4.1 Review and assign work items

4.2 Finalize cloud decision framework

4.3 Create cloud vision

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Assign initiatives and propose timelines
• Build a delivery model rubric
• Build a service model rubric
• Built a support model rubric
• Create a cloud vision statement
• Map cloud workloads
• Complete the Cloud Vision presentation

This phase involves the following participants:

• IT management, the core working group, security, infrastructure, operations, architecture, engineering, applications, non-IT stakeholders

Step 4.1

Review and assign work items

Activities

4.1.1 Assign initiatives and propose timelines

Bridge the gap and create the vision

Review and assign work items

Finalize cloud decision framework

Create cloud vision

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• IT management

Outcomes of this step

• Populated cloud vision roadmap

4.1.1 Assign initiatives and propose timelines

1 hour

Input

• List of cloud initiatives

Output

• Initiatives assigned by responsibility and timeline

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group

1. Once the list is populated, begin assigning responsibility for execution. This is not a RACI exercise, so focus on the functional responsibility. Once you have determined who is responsible, assign a timeline and include any notes. This will form the basis of a more formal project plan.
2. To assign the initiative to a party, consider 1) who will be responsible for execution and 2) if that responsibility will be shared. Be as specific as possible, but be sure to be consistent to make it easier for you to sort responsibility later on.
3. When assigning timelines, we suggest including the end date (when you expect the project to be complete) rather than the start date, though whatever you choose, be sure to be consistent. Make use of the notes column to record anything that you think any other readers will need to be aware of in the future, or details that may not be possible to commit to memory.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Step 4.2

Finalize cloud decision framework

Activities

4.2.1 Build a delivery model rubric

4.2.2 Build a service model rubric

4.2.3 Build a support model rubric

Bridge the gap and create the vision

Review and assign work items

Finalize cloud decision framework

Create cloud vision

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• Cloud decision framework

4.2.1 Build a delivery model rubric

1 hour

Input

• List of cloud initiatives

Output

• Initiatives assigned by responsibility and timeline

Materials

• Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Participants

• Core working group

1. Now that we have a good understanding of the cloud’s key characteristics, the relative suitability of different workloads for the cloud, and a good understanding of some of the risks and roadblocks that may need to be overcome if a cloud transition is to take place, it is time to formalize a delivery model rubric. Start by listing the delivery models on a white board vertically – public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud. Include a community cloud option as well if that is feasible for you. Strike any models that do not figure into your vision.
2. Create a table style rubric for each delivery model. Confer with the working group to determine what characteristics best define workloads suitable for each model. If you have a hybrid cloud option, you may consider workloads that are highly dynamic; a private cloud hosted on-premises may be more suitable for workloads that have extensive regulatory requirements.
3. Once the table is complete, include it in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Vision for the cloud future state (example)

Summary statement: Everything must go! Public cloud is a top priority. Anything that is not compatible (for whatever reason) with a public cloud deployment will be retained in a premises-based server closet (downgraded from a full datacenter). The private cloud does not align with the overall organizational vision, nor does a hybrid solution.

4.2.2 Build a service model rubric

1 hour

Input

• Output of workload assessments
• Output of risk and mitigation exercise

Output

• Service model rubric

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Participants

• Core working group

1. This next activity is like the delivery model activity, but covers the relevant cloud service models. On a whiteboard, make a vertical list of the cloud service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.) that will be considered for workloads. If you have an order of preference, place your most preferred at the top, your least preferred at the bottom.
2. Describe the circumstances under which you would select each service model. Do your best to focus on differentiators. If a decision criterion appears for multiple service models, consider refining or excluding it. (For additional information, check out Info-Tech’s Reimagine IT Operations for a Cloud-First World blueprint.)
3. Create a summary statement to capture your overall service model position. See the next slide for an example. Note: this can be incorporated into your cloud vision statement, so be sure that it reflects your genuine cloud preferences.
4. Record the results in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Vision for the cloud future state (example)

Summary statement: SaaS will be the primary service model. All workloads will migrate to the public cloud where possible. Anything that cannot be migrated to SaaS will be migrated to PaaS. IaaS is a transitory step.

4.2.3 Build a support model rubric

1 hour

Input

• Results of the cloud workload assessments

Output

• Support model rubric

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Participants

• Core working group

1. The final rubric covered here is that for the support model. Where will you procure the skills necessary to ensure the vision’s proper execution? Much like the other rubric activities, write the three support models vertically (in order of preference, if you have one) on a whiteboard.
2. Next to each model, describe the circumstances under which you would select each support model. Focus on the dimensions: the duration of the engagement, specialization required, and flexibility required. If you have existing rules/practices around hiring consultants/MSPs, consider those as well.
3. Once you have a good list of decision criteria, form a summary statement. This should encapsulate your position on support models and should mention any notable criteria that will contribute to most decisions.
4. Record the results in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Vision for the cloud future state (example)

Summary statement: Most workloads will be managed in house. A consultant will be employed to facilitate the transition to micro-services in a cloud container environment, but this will be transitioned to in-house staff. An MSP will continue to manage backups and telephony.

Step 4.3

Create cloud vision

Activities

4.3.1 Create a cloud vision statement

4.3.2 Map cloud workloads

4.3.3 Complete the Cloud Vision Presentation

Review and assign work items

Finalize cloud decision framework

Create cloud vision

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• IT management

Outcomes of this step

Completed Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

4.3.1 Create a cloud vision statement

1 hour

Input

• List of cloud initiatives

Output

• Initiatives assigned by responsibility and timeline

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group

1. Now that you know what service models are appropriate, it’s time to summarize your cloud vision in a succinct, consumable way. A good vision statement should have three components:
   • Scope: Which parts of the organization will the strategy impact?
   • Goal: What is the strategy intended to accomplish?
   • Key differentiator: What makes the new strategy special?
2. On a whiteboard, make a chart with three columns (one column for each of the features of a good mission statement). Have the group generate a list of words to describe each of the categories. Ideally, the group will produce multiple answers for each category.
3. Once you’ve gathered a few different responses for each category, have the team put their heads down and generate pithy mission statements that capture the sentiments underlying each category.
4. Have participants read their vision statements in front of the group. Use the rest of the session to produce a final statement. Record the results in the Cloud Strategy Executive Presentation.

Example vision statement outputs

“IT at ACME Corp. hereby commits to providing clients and end users with an unparalleled, productivity-enabling technology experience, leveraging, insofar as it is possible and practical, cloud-based services.”

“At ACME Corp. our employees and customers are our first priority. Using new, agile cloud services, IT is devoted to eliminating inefficiency, providing cutting-edge solutions for a fast-paced world, and making a positive difference in the lives of our colleagues and the people we serve.”

“As a global leader in technology, ACME Corp. is committed to taking full advantage of new cloud services, looking first to agile cloud options to optimize internal processes wherever efficiency gaps exist. Improved efficiency will allow associates to spend more time on ACME’s core mission: providing an unrivalled customer experience.”

Scope

Goal

Key differentiator

4.3.2 Map cloud workloads

1 hour

Input

• List of workloads
• List of acceptable service models
• List of acceptable migration paths

Output

• Workloads mapped by service model/migration path

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Core working group

1. Now that you have defined your overall cloud vision as well as your service model options, consider aligning your service model preferences with your migration path preferences. Draw a table with your expected migration strategies across the top (retain, retire, rehost, replatform, refactor, repurchase, or some of these) and your expected service models across the side.
2. On individual sticky notes, write a list of workloads in your environment. In a smaller environment, this list can be exhaustive. Otherwise take advantage of the list you created as part of phase 1 along with any additional workloads that warrant discussion.
3. As a group, go through the list, placing the sticky notes first in the appropriate row based on their characteristics and the decision criteria that have already been defined, and then in the appropriate column based on the appropriate migration path. (See the next slide for an example of what this looks like.)
4. Record the results in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation. Note: not every cell will be filled; some migration path/service model combinations are impossible or otherwise undesirable.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Example cloud workload map

4.3.3 Complete the Cloud Vision Presentation

1 hour

Input

• List of cloud initiatives

Output

• Initiatives assigned by responsibility and timeline

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group

1. Open the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation to the second slide and review the templated executive brief. This comprises several sections (see the next slide). Populate each one:
   • Summary of the exercise
   • The cloud vision statement
   • Key cloud drivers
   • Risks and roadblocks
   • Top initiatives and next steps
2. Review the remainder of the presentation. Be sure to elaborate on any significant initiatives and changes (where applicable) and to delete any slides that you no longer require.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Sample cloud vision executive summary

• From [date to date], a cross-functional group representing IT and its constituents met to discuss the cloud.
• Over the course of the week, the group identified drivers for cloud computing and developed a shared vision, evaluated several workloads through an assessment framework, identified risks, roadblocks, and mitigations, and finally generated initiatives and next steps.
• From the process, the group produced a summary and a cloud suitability assessment framework that can be applied at the level of the workload.

Cloud Vision Statement

[Organization] will leverage public cloud solutions and retire existing datacenter and colocation facilities. This transition will simplify infrastructure administration, support, and security, while modernizing legacy infrastructure and reducing the need for additional capital expenditure.

Initiatives and next steps

• Close the datacenter and colocation site in favor of a SaaS-first cloud approach.
• Some workloads will migrate to infrastructure-as-a-service in the short term with the assistance of third-party consultants.

Document your cloud strategy

You did it!

Congratulations! If you’ve made it this far, you’ve successfully articulated a cloud vision, assessed workloads, developed an understanding (shared with your team and stakeholders) of cloud concepts, and mitigated risks and roadblocks that you may encounter along your cloud journey. From this exercise, you should understand your mission and vision, how your cloud plans will interact with any other relevant strategic plans, and what successful execution looks like, as well as developing a good understanding of overall guiding principles. These are several components of your overall strategy, but they do not comprise the strategy in its entirety.

How do you fix this?

First, validate the results of the vision exercise with your stakeholders. Socialize it and collect feedback. Make changes where you think changes should be made. This will become a key foundational piece. The next step is to formally document your cloud strategy. This is a separate project and is covered in the Info-Tech blueprint Document Your Cloud Strategy.

The vision exercise tells you where you want to go and offers some clues as to how to get there. The formal strategy exercise is a formal documentation of the target state, but also captures in detail the steps you’ll need to take, the processes you’ll need to refine, and the people you’ll need to hire.

A cloud strategy should comprise your organizational stance on how the cloud will change your approach to people and human resources, technology, and governance. Once you are confident that you can make and enforce decisions in these areas, you should consider moving on to Document Your Cloud Strategy. This blueprint, Define Your Cloud Vision, often serves as a prerequisite for the strategy documentation conversation(s).

Appendix

Summary of Accomplishment

Additional Support

Research Contributors

Related Info-Tech Research

Vendor Resources

Bibliography

Summary of Accomplishment

Problem Solved

You have now documented what you want from the cloud, what you mean when you say “cloud,” and some preliminary steps you can take to make your vision a reality.

You now have at your disposal a framework for identifying and evaluating candidates for their cloud suitability, as well as a series of techniques for generating risks and mitigations associated with your cloud journey. The next step is to formalize your cloud strategy using the takeaways from this exercise. You’re well on your way to a completed cloud strategy!

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com

1-888-670-8889

Additional Support

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech Workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.

Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

Generate drivers for cloud adoption

Work with stakeholders to understand the expected benefits of the cloud migration and how these drivers will impact the overall vision.

Conduct workload assessments

Assess your individual cloud workloads for their suitability as candidates for the cloud migration.

Bibliography

“2021 State of the Cloud Report.” Flexera, 2021. Web.

“2021 State of Upskilling Report.” Pluralsight, 2021. Web.

“AWS Snowmobile.” Amazon Web Services, n.d. Web.

“Azure products.” Microsoft, n.d. Web.

“Azure Migrate Documentation.” Microsoft, n.d. Web.

Bell, Harold. “Multi-Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud: What’s the Difference?” Nutanix, 2019. Web.

“Cloud Products.” Amazon Web Services, n.d. Web.

“COBIT 2019 Framework: Introduction and Methodology.” ISACA, 2019. Web.

Edmead, Mark T. “Using COBIT 2019 to Plan and Execute an Organization’s Transformation Strategy.” ISACA, 2020. Web.

Flitter, Emily, and Karen Weise. “Capital One Data Breach Compromises Data of Over 100 Million.” The New York Times, 29 July 2019. Web.

Gillis, Alexander S. “Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM).” TechTarget, 2021. Web.

“’How to Cloud’ with Capital One.” Amazon Web Services, n.d. Web.

“IBM Closes Landmark Acquisition of Red Hat for $34 Billion; Defines Open, Hybrid Cloud Future.” Red Hat, 9 July 2019. Web.

Mell, Peter, and Timothy Grance. “The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing.” National Institute of Standards and Technology, Sept. 2011. Web.

Ng, Alfred. “Amazon Tells Senators it Isn't to Blame for Capital One Breach.” CNET, 2019. Web.

Orban, Stephen. “6 Strategies for Migrating Applications to the Cloud.” Amazon Web Services, 2016. Web.

Sullivan, Dan. “Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB).” TechTarget, 2021. Web.

“What Is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)?” Cisco, n.d. Web.

Design and Build a User-Facing Service Catalog

Improve user satisfaction with IT with a convenient menu-like catalog.

Our understanding of the problem

This Research Is Designed For:

• CIOs
• Directors and senior managers within IT and the business

This Research Will Help You:

• Articulate all of the services IT provides to the business in a language the business users understand.
• Improve IT and business alignment through a common understanding of service features and IT support.

This Research Will Help Them

• Standardize and communicate how users request access to services.
• Standardize and communicate how users obtain support for services.
• Clearly understand IT’s role in providing each service.

What is a service catalog?

The user-facing service catalog is the go-to place for IT service-related information.

The catalog defines, documents, and organizes the services that IT delivers to the organization. The catalog also describes the features of the services and how the services are intended to be used.

The user-facing service catalog creates benefits for both the business and IT.

For business users, the service catalog:

1. Documents how to request access to the service, hours of availability, delivery timeframes, and customer responsibilities.
2. Specifies how to obtain support for the services, support hours, and documentation.