13. In service

At this stage implementation is now complete. The system, people, and processes (the holistic solution) are now live and supported without assistance from the programme team.

The solution will now be resilient, effective for the organisation and be ready to evolve to emerging needs. The following components of the solution’s Service and Support Model will be up and running:

Service desk and incident management

The service desk acts as the first line of support for end users, logging, prioritizing, and resolving incidents and queries. These are triaged based on impact and urgency, with escalation paths to specialist teams or vendors.

Problem management

Beyond resolving incidents, problem management identifies recurring issues and their root causes to prevent reoccurrence. This includes trend analysis, system health reviews, and the implementation of permanent fixes or process improvements.

Request fulfilment

These are routine user requests, such as new user access, role changes, report generation, or data corrections, handled through structured request fulfilment processes. These follow standardised approval workflows to maintain compliance, auditability, and segregation of duties within the ERP environment.

Change and release management

Controlled change management ensures that updates—such as patches, new features, enhancements, or configuration modifications—are assessed, tested, and approved before release. Release management governs the process of implementing changes into production, minimising risk and disruption to live services.

FinOps

FinOps is the Financial Operations framework that brings together finance, cloud, and the ERP system teams to optimise costs and maximise the value of the overall solution. When adopting an ERP technology, it is important to understand how licensing, operations, AI usage, and data transfers are charged.