What is the Somerford Technical Value Assessment (TVA)?
Author: Becca Lambert
Release Date: 21/11/2024
The Technical Value Assessment (TVA) is a new complimentary offering from Somerford Associates. Aimed at providing the customer with a full technical assessment of their current Splunk usage and provide a roadmap of how to maximise the value that can be achieved from the Splunk platform and provide a perspective on the net benefits expressed by Splunk customers who undertake data-driven strategies to modernise their services and optimise costs.
The Technical Value Assessment is a 2 stage assessment aimed at gathering a complete overview from both a technical and business perspective of your Splunk environment.
The first part of this engagement is a complete technical review into the customers current Splunk implementation, where we look at areas such as the deployment architecture, systems and data governance, indexing, forwarding and searching tools etc.
The second part of this engagement with a Someford Business Value Consultant who will run a session looking at the uses of the current Splunk set up, understanding what the desired end goals are and what the end users would like to achieve with the platform and from this we work to create a custom roadmap to help you achieve these goals and provide a perspective on net benefits expressed by Splunk customers who undertake data-driven strategies to modernise their services and optimise costs.
From these engagements a round up report will be created containing a technical summary of your Splunk environment and architecture. Then a detailed roadmap forward in order to help you maximise the value of your Splunk environment.
The TVA Process:
• We’ll start off with a pre-req call. This is a really good way to introduce you to the technical engineers who will be performing the technical value assessment, and get an idea of what you can expect on each of the sessions. This can help us gain a better understanding of what your Splunk needs are and any potential pain points you may be having in order to address these needs during the assessment helping you gain maximum benefit out of the engagement. During the pre-req call we will also establish how best to complete the technical check on your environment, whether this be via remote access, screen share or any other option you may prefer.
• We will then complete the technical check side of the assessment, where one of our Splunk certified engineers will perform a health check on your current Spunk environment, to make sure there are no technical issues within your environment and to ensure that best practice is being used throughout your implementation.
• Once this stage of the assessment is completed it moves on to the second stage, which is a session with the Somerford Business Value Consultant. The direction of this call will be entirely dependent on your desired goal for your Splunk implementation combined with the discussions in the pre-req call and the findings of the technical assessment of your current setup. Below are some of the potential workshops that can be run for this session.
The Prescriptive Value Path (PVP)
Splunk's Business Value Consulting tools used in-house by the Somerford Associates BVC team. This can provide customers with value benchmarks that provide a perspective on net benefits expressed by Splunk customers who undertake data-driven strategies to modernise their services and optimise costs.
Standardising across methods and business processes leads to simplification and consolidation, improving overall productivity. Once standardised and simplified, many organisations realise significant benefits through automation.
Completion time: 2 hr Workshop, plus additional follow up session
Data Source Assessment (DSA)
Exercise focuses on aligning your data environment with key goals through a joint discovery exercise between Somerford Associates, with Key IT and Business groups. There are currently two self-service tools for Data Source Assessment analyses.
There is a new customer analysis which focuses on the total data to be ingested. The other is for existing customers which shows current ingest as well as data sources that still need to be ingested to accomplish your organisational goals.
Completion time: around 1hr-1.5hrs
The Interactive Value Assessment
A tool that calculates the current value for existing customers as well as projecting future value for new and existing customers. In addition, you can also demonstrate financial metrics around Return On Investment (ROI), Payback Period and Net Present Value (NPV). Assessment areas include IT Operations, Application Support, Application Development, and Security and Compliance.
The Interactive Value Assessment (IVA) Lite
A simple method to help articulate to the customer the value that Splunk can deliver. This assessment will calculate the current and future value for you. In addition, the IVA Lite will generate financial metrics such as Return on Investment (ROI) and Payback Period. This assessment looks at value drivers in these 4 buying centres: IT Operations, Application Support, DevOps, and Security.
Cloud Value Calculator
Splunk Cloud Value Calculator (SCVC) provides a compelling narrative around the value of Splunk Cloud, reallocation of hours enabled and their ability to deliver qualified benefits. SCVC also helps understand potential cost savings associated with Splunk Cloud deployments, including a breakdown of traditional cost components: licence, infrastructure, support, training and professional services.
Once these sessions have been created will assess all of the information that we have gathered as part of these sessions, then create a report that will detail not only technical details of your environment and any potential fixes that may be needed in order to get this running efficiently and in accordance with best practice, but a roadmap forward in order to help gain maximum value out of the platform and what are the next steps needed in order to achieve your desired goals
