Your shared accountability and experience with your clients are crucial to their success and yours. Using Scorecards effectively can simplify presenting proposed solutions to your clients, making it easier for them to understand without wading through complicated proposals. Here’s a guide on how to leverage Scorecards to deliver actionable insights and foster productive client relationships.
Providing clients with clear, concise information eliminates the need for time-consuming data analysis and manual data collection. Regular meetings with clients to discuss their goals and challenges are essential for developing effective IT plans. An up-to-date inventory of all IT assets, classified as critical, important, or unimportant, forms the foundation of these discussions.
To develop an effective IT plan, it is essential to have an up-to-date inventory of all IT assets. Assets can be classified as:
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Critical - Essential for business operations.
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Important—Used daily.
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Unimportant—Used less frequently than once per day.
When engaging in regular meetings with your clients to discuss goals and challenges, consider using these best practices when using Scorecards.
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Highlight IT Infrastructure Concerns and Successes:
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Show both areas of concern and success to indicate progress and reinforce the value and reliability you deliver.
- This approach reassures clients that not everything needs immediate action, emphasizing the effectiveness of ongoing efforts.
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Include DMI Overall Scorecard:
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Adding the Digital Maturity Index (DMI) overall scorecard establishes a common language and shared accountability for improving clients' technology outlook.
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Identify Items Outside Agreed Lifecycle Standards:
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As clients grow, their technology requirements evolve. You can adjust your services and solutions to match their changing goals, showing continued value.
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Provide Estimated Costs Relative to Impact:
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Reinforce the significance of critical assets by relating estimated costs to potential productivity or revenue losses.
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Use Scorecards to Foster Conversations:
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Generate discussions about goals, challenges, business issues, and frustrations. Scorecards serve as a conversation starter between you and your clients.
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Track past and present Scorecards with Versions and History:
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Compare previous and current Scorecards to assess whether the client's environment has improved. Refer to areas for improvement and discuss proposed actions.
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Reviewing Goals and Performance:
Establishing and measuring goals allows you and your client to gain better insight into past performance and how to improve in the future. Measuring against aligned goals simplifies return on investment discussions.
View past versions and history of Scorecards
Refer to previously made assessments areas for improvement, proposed client actions, and discuss with the client to see what has improved, or hasn’t, in their environment.
Tracking Goals:
Goals you might want to track include:
- Replace 10% of outdated workstations per quarter.
- Guarantee workstation/server uptime by specific percentages.
- Clearly define disaster recovery plans, including:
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO): The maximum loss of data tolerable by the client.
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): The timeframe within which normal operations must resume post-disaster.
- Reduce software subscription lapses by 50%.
You can show your clients the value of your services by using performance metrics based on the goals you and your client set. This keeps meetings focused on what is relevant to the client and their business goals, without straying into other areas that don't match their goals.
Evolving Client Needs:
Client needs are always changing. Monitoring and adapting to these changes prevents critical misalignments and ensures continuous alignment with their business goals.
By adhering to these best practices, you can use Scorecards to enhance client relationships, provide clear and actionable insights, and drive continuous improvement in their IT environments.