Leveraging Your IT Service Transition as A Catalyst for Innovation

Keith Walmsley, Senior Consultant, Saros Consulting

Transitions in IT service often evoke a sense of disruption. As vendor contracts expire, service providers change, and systems are handed over, organisations typically focus on minimising downtime and ensuring continuity. While these objectives are vital, they often overshadow a more significant opportunity: using transitions as a catalyst for modernisation, innovation, and strategic realignment of IT and business. 

At Saros Consulting, we’ve had the privilege of guiding organisations through transitions of various complexities. Time and again, we’ve experienced how a forward-thinking mindset can turn a moment of change into a moment of transformation. Rather than viewing transitions as logistical challenges, organisations should see them as opportunities to redefine what’s possible. Pursuing innovation during a transition requires clarity, strategic focus and proactive planning to identify where and how to gain advantage – but with significant payback in costs, efficiencies and outcomes.

The Perfect Storm for Change – Why Timing Makes Sense 

A service transition, whether shifting between vendors or bringing operations in-house, inherently involves a deep examination of your IT systems, processes, and workflows. This process naturally creates the conditions for change as the ‘pause’ in the status quo, though disruptive, creates unique conditions that can support strategic advancements. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean by this: 

Discovery Drives Transparency 

Most transitions require a comprehensive audit of existing IT environments – mapping dependencies, cataloguing assets, and documenting workflows. This can often reveal inefficiencies and redundancies that might otherwise remain hidden. For example, during a transition, outdated legacy systems often surface as bottlenecks. Rather than migrating these as-is, organisations can seize the opportunity to streamline or modernise them, avoiding the cost and effort of addressing them later. 

Fresh Perspectives from Incoming Vendors 

New vendors often bring updated tools, methodologies, and best practices to the table – especially if they’ve been selected for their innovative approach. Why not leverage these fresh perspectives to help you identify areas for improvement? Oftentimes there are simple opportunities uncovered that may have been overlooked by teams entrenched in business-as-usual. Collaborating with incoming providers to implement these innovations ensures that they are fully integrated into the vendor’s approach from the outset. 

Momentum and Organisational Willingness 

Transitions disrupt the routine, making stakeholders more open to reevaluating processes and embracing change. This momentum, while temporary, can be a powerful driver for action, allowing you to embed modernisation efforts into the transition process rather than revisiting them as separate initiatives later. 

Converging Expertise 

During a well-managed transition, your outgoing and incoming vendors, alongside your internal teams, should be deeply engaged. This convergence of expertise creates a unique window. Knowledge transfer sessions, for instance, can double as brainstorming opportunities for process improvements or automation enhancements. Make them work to your advantage.

Cost and Efficiency Benefits 

Incorporating changes like security upgrades or workflow automation into the transition can be more cost-effective than addressing them in isolation later. Upgrading systems during the migration avoids duplicative costs and effort. Aligning such technology upgrades with the transition timeline can also increase your success rate for seamless integration, reducing post-transition disruption.

Reframing Transitions as Strategic Opportunities  

Every transition is a chance to reflect on the state of your IT landscape. Are your systems aligned with your long-term goals? Are there inefficiencies that could be addressed? Transitions provide a natural pause to ask these questions and take action. Certain areas lend themselves particularly well to advancement during this period. Here’s my take on the top 4: 

1. Streamlining Legacy Systems
   Transitions provide an opportunity to modernise legacy systems that may be hindering scalability in your organisation. The biggest opportunities come in the form of decommissioning outdated technologies, consolidating redundant applications or migrating to cloud platforms.
2. Reevaluating Processes and Automating Workflows
   Manual workflows often remain in place due to inertia rather than necessity. Transitions create a natural inflection point for you to reevaluate these processes. Taking this opportunity to introduce automation tools, such as robotic process automation (RPA) or AI-driven solutions, can further future-proof your IT operations, ensuring even smoother service delivery and a more agile IT environment.
3. Implementing Robust Security Frameworks
   As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, IT transitions present an opportunity to strengthen your security measures. Implementing frameworks like zero-trust architecture or advanced threat detection systems during a transition ensures that new systems and processes are designed with security in mind and align your IT operations with compliance requirements.
4. Talent and Skills Realignment
   Transitions often reveal gaps in internal expertise – its almost inevitable. By leveraging training programmes and workshops provided by incoming vendors, organisations can upskill their teams and even reduce reliance on external providers. This realignment fosters resilience and equips internal teams to handle future challenges more effectively.

Strategies for an Innovation-Focused Transition 

To unlock the full potential of a transition, organisations must approach it with a strategic mindset and careful planning to proactively address the challenges early on – navigating limited bandwidth, stakeholder fatigue, and potential disruption.  

Managing resource constraints starts with prioritising changes that directly align with your broader objectives. For example, if the goal of the service transition is to enhance your customer experience, the plan might open opportunities to implement new CRM tools or integrate AI-driven chatbots. Of course, introducing new technologies or processes during a transition carries the risk of disruptions so its wise to pilot new solutions in low-risk areas before scaling them. 

Collaboration is equally important. Transitions often involve multiple stakeholders, including outgoing and incoming vendors. Encouraging these parties to work together can yield creative solutions that benefit everyone. For instance, a collaborative approach to knowledge transfer can uncover insights that wouldn’t emerge in a more transactional handover. 

Vendors may resist taking on transformative initiatives beyond the scope of the transition. To overcome this, ensure that modernisation goals are embedded in your vendor selection and contract negotiation process. Collaborative planning sessions are also a key stage in aligning the vendor’s capabilities with your strategic priorities. 

Why Delaying Change Is Costlier 

It’s tempting to defer transformation initiatives until after the transition, reasoning that your organisation will have more capacity once operations stabilise. However, this approach often leads to missed opportunities and inefficiencies – and ultimately higher costs, as systems may need to be revisited and re-migrated. Additionally, the appetite for change diminishes over time, making it harder to build momentum for future initiatives. 

In a way, service transitions are not just operational handovers; they are strategic inflection points. At Saros Consulting, we help organisations navigate these dual priorities, ensuring that transitions deliver not just continuity, but transformation – helping our clients to redefine what’s possible.