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Article

7 min

How to Streamline IT Service Delivery for Global Teams

IT & device management

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Author

Michał Kowalewski

Published

January 13, 2025

Last Update

January 13, 2025

Como integrar funcionários remotos: checklist e dicas
Table of Contents

What is IT service delivery?

What are the challenges of IT service delivery for global teams?

What happens when IT service delivery fails?

Key strategies to streamline IT service delivery

The role of KPIs in IT service delivery

Advantages of streamlining IT service delivery

How Deel IT simplifies IT service delivery for global teams

Key takeaways
  1. Streamlining IT service delivery is essential for businesses to ensure consistent access to tools and maintain productivity across locations. However, obstacles like time zone differences and discrepancies in local resources make this challenging for global teams.
  2. Consolidating all your IT services makes it easier to establish standardized processes and get a cohesive look at performance across your organization. You can use automation to take care of tasks, further reducing the administrative burden on teams.
  3. Global providers like Deel IT can take care of variables like location and role requirements to make standardization possible and provide you with the tools to automate workflows.

Global teams often struggle to coordinate IT services across locations. You must account for many variables such as time zone differences, language barriers, and local regulatory standards.

With so many factors at play, it becomes challenging to ensure everyone has the same level of access to IT services.

This disparity leaves some teams waiting longer for support and unable to resolve tech issues promptly. The frustration is likely to take a toll on employee morale. Over time, these issues can build and negatively impact your overall productivity and business performance.

Our guide walks you through the challenges of delivering IT services to global, distributed teams and offers practical strategies for overcoming them. We show you how it’s possible to streamline delivery and manage IT services at scale.

What is IT service delivery?

IT service delivery is the way you provide workers with access to the tech resources needed to perform their jobs effectively. This encompasses core processes like:

  • Structuring your IT system
  • Deploying and configuring devices
  • Implementing and setting up software
  • Monitoring performance
  • Reporting on and resolving issues
  • Providing user support
  • Upgrading hardware and software

The goal is to keep business operations running smoothly. By ensuring IT systems are always available and accessible, you can help teams hit critical milestones and meet objectives.

Responsibility for IT service delivery management often falls to the IT department. However, the strategy works best when other departments are involved because they can help ensure services align closely with the needs of the entire organization.

What are the challenges of IT service delivery for global teams?

Coordinating IT service delivery becomes more complicated as your organization expands across borders. You’re likely to face some of the following obstacles:

  • Extra complexity: Procurement teams must allocate and arrange delivery across various locations, increasing the risk of complications and delays
  • Compliance hurdles: Jurisdictions usually have their own tax, insurance, and health and safety laws concerning remote workers. It’s your responsibility as the employer to maintain compliance with all these various regulations
  • Time zone gaps: Misaligned working hours mean that teams may have to wait for IT support to start their workday to get resolutions for issues. Suppose you’re based in the US. If teams in Japan experience issues at 9 AM, they can’t expect a response for at least 12 hours
  • Regional constraints: Local vendors might not meet your quality standards. Some employees may find they can’t access the necessary IT resources to keep up with colleagues in the same department
  • Decentralization: Dispersed teams may develop their own strategies to manage IT service delivery, leading to fragmented systems and processes. You may find the quality of your products or services varies across regional markets
  • KPI misalignment: Similarly, teams may measure success differently, making it harder to collate data and perform a comprehensive analysis of your performance
  • Lack of scalability: What works for your current location might not apply elsewhere. However, as you start expanding abroad, you may struggle to adapt your current IT services for new users and regions while keeping processes efficient

Many of these challenges stem from the abrupt shift to a remote, distributed model. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many companies online, fundamentally changing how they operated overnight. Even many small to medium businesses say they’ve gone international.

The good news is that as organizations continue to expand across borders, solutions like Deel IT are there to enable remote work. This allows you to turn IT service delivery from a challenge to a competitive advantage.

Deel IT
Automate IT operations in 130+ countries
Simplify equipment lifecycle management with Deel IT—procure, deploy, repair, and recover devices all in one place with 24/7 support.

What happens when IT service delivery fails?

When IT service delivery fails, the impact goes beyond losing your edge. Poor support, regular outages, and unreliable tools can significantly disrupt your operations. Left unchecked, failing IT services can impede business growth and stability.

Here’s a look at some of the warning signs:

  • Disruption to operations: Technical issues prevent employees from performing their jobs effectively. This issue is widespread with 59% of workers saying they deal with disruptive software problems at least once a week
  • Higher IT costs: Inefficient systems and frequent issues may cause you to divert more funds toward IT and away from core operations
  • Security risks: Failure to implement or maintain proper security protocols can leave gaps in your system, leaving you vulnerable to significant data breaches
  • Reputational harm: Customers and stakeholders may lose trust when your services are unreliable, leading to a negative brand image
  • Lower employee morale: Persistent IT issues may frustrate employees and cause dissatisfaction with their work, eventually resulting in higher turnover rates

Altogether, research shows that system downtime costs businesses an average of $100,000 (USD) in direct and indirect costs.

Not having to worry about ordering monitors from one vendor, a laptop from another, and a phone and contract from yet another makes everything much simpler. It’s the whole package.

Hetty Townsend,

APAC People And Culture Business Partner at Lloyd's List Intelligence

Key strategies to streamline IT service delivery

Streamlining your IT services helps you build a strong foundation for growth. You can formulate ways to overcome roadblocks and empower teams to perform their best wherever they may be.

Here are some essential strategies and how Deel IT can support you in their implementation:

Automate device delivery and configuration

Use zero-touch deployment to save time. This guarantees employees can always access the tools needed for their jobs and reduces the administrative burden on teams.

As a bonus, zero-touch deployment gives you tighter control over cybersecurity. You can ensure all devices have the necessary protocols before employees so much as touch them. During their lifecycle, you can keep equipment continuously updated to safeguard against evolving threats.

When you use Deel IT, zero-touch deployment only involves a few steps:

  1. Select the hardware and software you want to use
  2. Set rules and triggers for device allocation
  3. Add users to your system as you hire new workers
  4. Let them choose from a pre-approved catalog
  5. Approve their choice (but this step is optional)

Deel IT handles all the other steps. We automatically send the user an email inviting them to the system and prompting them to select a device.

Afterward, Deel IT configures the device according to your specifications and local regulatory standards. For example, our team ensures it has all the required security protocols. Then we coordinate with the employee to arrange delivery to their preferred location whether that’s their home or temporary accommodation.

Integrate SaaS and device management

Managing hardware and software separately creates inefficiencies and makes it harder to identify and resolve issues promptly. Create a unified system to streamline operations and improve overall IT service delivery.

When technical issues arise, the root cause is often a mix of hardware and software failures. For example, lagging software can be the result of old or outdated equipment. Conversely, devices running out of battery quickly may be due to bugs or glitches in old versions of programs.

A cohesive approach enables you to address these issues holistically, using a single platform to diagnose and resolve them more effectively. This reduces downtime and keeps your teams productive.

Global solutions like Deel make it easy to manage software and equipment in one place. We let you handle the entire device lifecycle from procurement through to disposal while also taking care of the apps your team uses.

Administrators get fine control over the system. You can decide who gets which applications and determine their level of access. This allows you to take a more flexible approach to IT service delivery as you can constantly adapt and adjust as your workforce needs change.

Consolidate IT management

Leverage tools that allow you to track, monitor, and update company IT from a single dashboard. This eliminates redundancies from your workflow and streamlines IT delivery services.

For example, Deel IT lets you track and monitor all devices from the moment you procure them. Administrators can easily see the status and location of shipments when they’re en route to employees to give you extra peace of mind. You won’t have to worry whether new hires are going to be set up for their first day.

Plus, you can monitor device health and usage across your organization and receive notifications when equipment is malfunctioning. Deel IT allows you to arrange maintenance, collection, and disposal via the dashboard with a few clicks.

Regular updates are essential for device health and give teams access to the latest version of their software. However, not every worker has the expertise to manage these. That’s why Deel IT lets you manage all updates remotely, letting you schedule them during quiet hours to minimize the disruption to operations.

Standardize IT processes across regions

Establishing IT policies can improve consistency throughout your organization. You can develop clear guidelines for managers to follow concerning processes like allocation, upgrades, and replacements. This ensures there will be less disparity across departments or regions.

Make these documents free to view. When employees understand the rationale behind your processes, they’ll be more likely to support them.

Depending on the structure of your business, you might need to create hundreds of IT policies. How else can you account for the different role and departmental requirements?

That’s why Deel IT has built policies into its software. All you need to do is choose a few settings and select the employees you want to include. Teams can only see the devices and peripherals you’ve pre-approved and they’ll have to stick to a set budget.

Where there are minor variations between departments, you can copy policies and make adjustments. This reduces your administrative workload even further.

Download our best practice IT policy template for global teams.

Provide 24/7 IT service delivery and support

Continuous support ensures teams can always access the help they need, minimizing the risk of extensive downtime.

The challenge is providing this support with a limited budget. Having IT personnel can quickly drain your resources, especially if you’re managing a small team.

Outsource support to a global solution like Deel to access 24/7 support for a fixed monthly rate. Our team of experts is available around the clock and responds within two minutes. We can also arrange assistance in over 13 languages so employees can chat in the way that’s most comfortable for them.

All of Deel’s support includes regular maintenance and repairs as per our service level agreement (SLA). Teams can reach out, confident we’ll meet their needs with no discussion. If an employee can’t use their device for a time, we even send them a loaner device.

From the US and Brazil to Kenya, India, South Korea, and Europe, we were able to get 60 devices to employees in almost every continent within two weeks.

Michelle S.,

Associate Coordinator at Acled

The role of KPIs in IT service delivery

Key performance indicators (KPIs) let you measure the efficiency, quality, and overall effectiveness of your IT services. They can also tell you if your strategies had the desired impact or whether you need to make adjustments.

For a comprehensive analysis, track the following KPIs:

  • System uptime: This KPI measures the percentage of time your IT systems are fully operational and accessible. A good system uptime to aim for is ‘five nines’ or 99.999% according to popular opinion
  • Mean time to resolution (MTTR): Your MMTR indicates how long it takes to resolve issues from the moment they’re reported. The best time depends on your business type as some roles and sectors are less dependent on tech than others
  • First call resolution (FCR) rate: This KPI is similar to MTTR but instead of measuring time, you’re counting the number of cases you resolve during the first interaction with IT support. Deel is proud to say we have one of the highest FCR rates in our industry at 80%
  • Support availability: There’s no use having a high MTTR or FCR rate if employees are taking hours to reach support. This KPI tracks the average response time and hours of coverage
  • SLA compliance rate: Whether you rely on internal teams or third-party providers, this measures how often your IT adheres to the terms of your SLA. Deel uses this KPI to check we’re meeting all our customers' needs and wants
  • Ticket or incident volume: This tracks the number of support requests you receive over a specific period. Higher levels than usual indicate an underlying issue or increased pressure on your IT resources
  • User satisfaction: You can conduct surveys to measure your Net Promoter Score (NPS) and employee engagement. While inexact, these KPIs can indicate your team’s satisfaction levels with your IT services

Collecting this information doesn’t have to mean extra work for your team. Solutions like Deel IT automatically track and record data as you run your services. All you need to do to view these KPIs is log into our analytics dashboard and choose how to visualize the reports.

Advantages of streamlining IT service delivery

What benefits can you expect to see after overhauling your IT services? One Deel customer, Voiceflow, said they saved over 60 hours of admin and $10,000 (USD) on equipment provisioning alone.

Better yet, Voiceflow reduced their onboarding time by an average of three days. While three days might not seem like much, the extra productivity adds up over time. Plus, new hires get a great first impression of your company when you can help them set up and get ready to perform their jobs sooner.

The process was extremely simple and fast. It was surprising to me how [setup] took a few minutes instead of hours. We’ve had zero complaints from new team members receiving their equipment. Plus, I’ve only heard great things about the service from the internal Voiceflow team in charge of the process. It’s one less task [for them] that used to take a lot of time and effort.

Andrew Lawrence,

Co-founder and Head of Operations at Voiceflow

How Deel IT simplifies IT service delivery for global teams

Streamlining IT service delivery means that everyone will have access to the right tools and support no matter their location. You can count on consistent productivity and performance across your team.

Global teams don’t have to navigate this alone. Deel IT supports the entire IT service delivery process in over 130 countries worldwide. We can bridge gaps across departments in various locations and keep your entire system centralized.

With Deel IT, you can access:

  • Global device delivery
  • Zero-touch deployment
  • Real-time device tracking and management
  • SLA-based global IT support
  • Certified data erasure and compliance
  • Scalable IT solutions
  • Integration with our global payroll and HR software

Looking to streamline IT service delivery as you expand globally? Book a consultation with Deel now to see how we can help.

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About the author

Michał Kowalewski a writer and content manager with 7+ years of experience in digital marketing. He spent most of his professional career working in startups and tech industry. He's a big proponent of remote work considering it not just a professional preference but a lifestyle that enhances productivity and fosters a flexible work environment. He enjoys tackling topics of venture capital, equity, and startup finance.

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