For Helle Schless, Service Delivery & Support Team Manager at SKGSE, going live is not the finish line. It is where the real customer journey begins.
There is a familiar moment in many technology projects: the solution goes live, the project team celebrates, and consultants gradually move on to their next assignment.
But what happens when the excitement of go-live wears off?
When users start working with the solution every day. When an unexpected exception appears.
When a new release needs to be tested.
When a regulatory change affects an existing process. Or when a seemingly small issue turns out to have implications across several customers.
For Helle Schless, Service Delivery & Support Team Manager at SKGSE, this is where the real measure of quality begins.
“When I was on the customer side of the table, I often experienced that consultants would leave a project just before reality really started to set in.”
Everything might look perfect at go-live, Helle explains. But once daily operations begin, questions and unforeseen issues naturally emerge. What can be frustrating for customers is when the people who know the solution best suddenly seem to disappear.
“That is the experience we want to change,” she says.
At SKGSE, Customer Care is built around a simple principle: customers should not be left on their own once the initial implementation is complete.
That does not mean having a consultant permanently on standby. Instead, SKGSE stays involved throughout the lifecycle of the solution, the customer’s continued rollouts, and with the level of IMS and AMS support adapting to the customer’s needs and maturity.
“Our consultants stay involved with customers for the long haul, naturally at different levels depending on the stage of the solution lifecycle and the customer’s internal adoption, but the principle is that we do not leave customers hanging once the project and solution has gone live.”
This philosophy is reflected in SKGSE’s three Customer Care levels: Basic, Standard and Enterprise:
A customer may need more hands-on support during the first year after go-live while internal knowledge and confidence are developing. Later, as the organisation becomes more self-sufficient, a different level may make more sense.
“The right level can also change over time. It should match the customer’s maturity, resources and operational needs.”
One of the biggest differences between traditional support and Managed Customer Care is what happens before a customer raises a ticket.
Because SKGSE supports multiple customers running the Banking and Treasury Automation solution, the Customer Care team has a unique view across the customer base. A problem appearing in one environment can sometimes be an early indication of something that could affect others.
That means the team can identify patterns, raise concerns with the publisher and help customers prepare before an issue becomes an operational problem.
Real life example: A BankFabric outage (aka “Bank Communication”) last year
On a Friday afternoon, two customers reported what initially appeared to be separate issues. The team recognised that the similarity could indicate a broader problem and escalated it to the publisher – as it seemed to be a deeper technical issue.
The issue was subsequently worked on between SKGSE and the publisher non-stop over the weekend and resolved before the majority of customers returned to their systems on Monday morning.
For Helle, that is exactly what proactive customer care should look like.
“Identifying risks early, escalating quickly, and helping customers avoid disruption - that is the kind of proactive customer care we want to provide.”
The same principle applies to planned changes that end-customers may not have on their radar.
An example of this is the ongoing ISO 20022 payment scheme changes requiring customers to act. SKGSE highlighted the changes through its Customer Care channels. The purpose was not simply to inform customers, but to give them time to understand what is changing and act before the change became an urgent operational issue.
In both cases, the value of Customer Care lies partly in something that doesn’t happen: Disruption is avoided before the customer has to deal with it.
For customers using Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management in a standard finance environment, a system issue can be inconvenient. For a Banking or Treasury Automation customer, the consequences can be considerably more significant.
Cash management, Vendor Payments, Bank Reconciliation and payment settlements, Bank connectivity, segregation of duties, audit requirements and fraud prevention are all closely connected to the technology and processing going hand in hand without interruptions.
That changes how support needs to be approached.
“When investigating an issue, we do not only look at whether the system is functioning correctly. We also consider the potential impact on payment integrity, approval workflows, reconciliation accuracy, auditability and regulatory compliance.”
For Helle and her team, understanding the customer’s business context is therefore just as important as understanding the technology.
It is not enough to ask: Is the system working?
The more important question can be: What does this mean for the customer’s business if it isn’t?
There is also a common misconception about Managed Services.
“The most common misunderstanding is that managed services mean “unlimited help with anything related to the solution”.
Instead, Helle describes managed services as a structured framework designed to keep a solution stable, supported and continuously improving how it works but also how it’s being used.
That includes more classical SLA-driven Incident Management (“IMS”) covering issues, tickets and reactive support from SKGSE, but, just as important also Application Management (“AMS”), covering proactive collaboration around Solution Release, Upgrade planning, solution health checks, Best Practices, Proactive guidance and access to specialist expertise. In general, SKGSE wants to make sure that the customer gets most possible value out of the solution already licensed – this can mean, making use of features or processes that they customer may not even be aware of, is a available to them in the solution.
It is a shift from simply asking “Can you fix this?” to working together on “How do we make sure this continues to work well?”
And that requires responsibility on both sides.
Helle is clear that Customer Care cannot work as a one-way relationship.
SKGSE brings deep product, implementation, testing, and support expertise – we understand the strengths and limitations of the solution very well, and with that, can guide and help customers navigating issues and changes actively.
The customer, meanwhile, brings something equally important: knowledge of his own business, processes, priorities and internal controls.
“When both sides bring that knowledge into an open, honest and transparent dialogue, we get the best results.”
That partnership becomes particularly important as a solution evolves. A D365 environment is not static, neither is the Banking and Treasury Automation solution, nor, the customer’s own organization and priorities. Organizations change, regulations change, banking environments change and new releases introduce new requirements and opportunities.
Good customer care therefore needs to look beyond the immediate issue.
It needs to help customers remain ready for what comes next.
For Helle, the answer comes down to two words: transparency and accountability.
Her vision for SKGSE’s Customer Care is not simply about being available when something goes wrong. It is about staying close to customers, taking ownership and helping them get continued value from their investment.
“SKGSE’s approach to customer care is to be a long-term, trusted partner that stays close to the customer, takes ownership, communicates openly, and helps keep their solution stable, secure, tested, optimised and ready for change.”
Because ultimately, quality is not something that can be signed off on a go-live checklist.
It is something that needs to be maintained, tested, challenged and improved throughout the life of the solution.
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