Treating Purview like a one-off implementation—plan, deploy, hand over—produces one-off results. Data grows, risks shift, new controls and regulations appear, and the organization changes. The only way to keep value and risk reduction moving in the right direction is to run Purview as a service, governed by a clear Target Operating Model (TOM).
This post explains why the service mindset matters and exactly how to structure a TOM that sustains outcomes over time.
Why “project thinking” falls short
Evergreen scope
Purview spans multiple disciplines: data classification and protection, loss prevention, insider risk, discovery, audit, records and retention, and AI governance. Capabilities evolve continuously, so your processes must evolve too.
Dynamic risk surface
New workspaces, partners, apps, and AI usage reshape risk every week. Effective guardrails, triage, and response must run every day—not just at “go-live.”
Cross-functional accountabilities
Legal, privacy, security, operations, and business units share responsibility. Without documented roles and decision rights, changes stall and controls drift.
Cumulative outcomes
Adoption, coverage, precision of auto-classification, and reduction in oversharing build over time. Sustained operations—not a finish line—drive these results.
From project → product → service
The common Crawl → Walk → Run journey is a delivery pattern—not an operating model. Your operating model starts on day one and is what sustains “Run.”
Project: mobilize, configure, prove value
Product: backlog, roadmap, releases, stakeholder demand
Service: SLAs, L1–L3 operations, measurement, continuous improvement, and a service catalog business units can consume
Stand up Purview as a managed service with defined tiers and handoffs—codified in a concise TOM.
The Purview Service Catalog (start here)
Group capabilities into service lines, each with scope, inputs, outputs, SLAs, and required roles. Make it simple enough for business leaders to understand and precise enough for operations to fulfill.
Data Classification & Protection
Publish labels, enable auto-classification, apply protection at rest and in transit, monitor drift.
Data Loss Prevention (Endpoint & Collaboration)
Policy lifecycle, simulation → monitor → enforce, exception handling, SOC integration.
Insider Risk Management
Signals, policy tuning, case workflow, HR/Legal guardrails.
Records & Data Lifecycle Governance
Retention schedules, disposition review, audit trails, legal holds.
Discovery & Audit
Role separation, immutable logging, standard operating procedures.
Data Security Posture & AI Governance
Oversharing insights, AI-safe controls, prompt hygiene, cross-tool analytics.
Each service line should publish request types, SLAs, and operational runbooks (e.g., “Onboard a new business unit,” “Provision a new label,” “Simulate then enforce a DLP rule”).
The Target Operating Model (TOM): roles and decision rights
A TOM removes ambiguity by clarifying who does what, when, and how success is measured.
Accountability & Governance
- Service Owner (Business Risk)– owns outcomes and approves policy changes with Legal/Privacy.
- Product Manager (Purview)–maintainsroadmap and backlog; prioritizes demand.
- Change Advisory Board– cross-functional forum for high-impact policy and configuration changes.
Delivery & Operations
- Platform Engineering– configuration, environment hygiene, release readiness.
- L2 Analysts (DLP / IRM / Records)– triage, enrich, resolve; escalate to Legal/HR as needed.
- L3 Specialists– complex policy design, investigations, automation.
Service Desk (L1)– intake, standard requests, communications.
Risk & Compliance Partners
- Legal / Privacy– lawful basis, retention schedules, DPIAs.
- Security Operations– incident correlation and response playbooks.
- Business Data Owners – approve remediations (e.g., oversharing cleanups, ROT deletion).
Document this in a RACI and a decision matrix, and store it alongside the runbooks.
Operating cadence that actually works
Run multiple cadences in parallel:
- Daily: alert triage; DLP/IRM queues; platform health checks
- Weekly: policy tuning window; user communications; defect review
- Monthly: service review—KPIs, exceptions, backlog burndown, risk register changes
- Quarterly: roadmap planning; evergreen review to absorb platform updates; performance and penetration tests; public release notes to stakeholders
Metrics that matter (beyond “policies enabled”)
Align measures to risk reduction, adoption, and efficiency:
Risk & Exposure:
Auto-label coverage; oversharing rate and trend; percentage of sensitive content with enforced protection; insider risk detection and resolution rate.
Operational Excellence:
MTTA/MTTR for DLP, IRM, and discovery; false positive rate; lead time for policy changes; incident reopen rate.
Adoption & Value:
Business unit onboarding velocity; persona-based training completion; storage cost avoided through ROT cleanup and retention hygiene.
Typical objections—and how to respond
“We just need a project to enable labels.”
Labels without operations cause alert fatigue or false confidence. A service adds triage, continuous tuning, and measurable risk reduction—backed by SLAs and a roadmap.
“We’ll hand this to business-as-usual (BAU) after go-live.”
BAU needs a blueprint: roles, SLAs, runbooks, release workflows, and CAB gates. That blueprint is the TOM.
“Budgets are annual; a service sounds open-ended.”
A service model fits annual budgeting through defined tiers and a governed backlog—while avoiding the stop-start waste of serial mini-projects.
What good looks like
Teams that succeed tend to do five things early:
- Publish the TOM—RACI, decision rights, runbooks, SLAs—before the first policy hits production.
- Launch a Service Catalog with intake forms and standard request templates (onboard business unit, request label, simulate → enforce).
- Automate wherever sensible—policy deployment, monitoring, audit evidence packs, and reporting.
- Institutionalize the cadence—weekly change windows, monthly service reviews, quarterly roadmap updates aligned to platform releases.
- Tell the story in business terms—dashboards showing risk reduced, incidents resolved, exposure trendlines, and storage cost avoided.
A lightweight blueprint you can copy
Starter TOM (one page):
Purpose & Scope: Protect sensitive data and reduce misuse across collaboration platforms and connected systems.
Service Lines: Classification & Protection; DLP; IRM; Records; Discovery & Audit; AI Governance.
Roles: Service Owner; Product Manager; Platform Engineers; L2 Analysts; L3 Specialists; Legal/Privacy; Security Operations; Data Owners.
Cadence: Daily operations; weekly change; monthly service review; quarterly roadmap.
SLAs: Intake response, simulation timeframes, enforcement lead time, MTTR, audit evidence delivery.
KPIs: Oversharing ↓, auto-label coverage ↑, MTTR ↓, compliance findings ↓, storage cost avoided ↑.
Runbooks: Onboard business unit; create and tune labels; simulate → enforce; exception handling; incident handoff; quarterly policy hygiene.
Why partner with Infotechtion Managed Services for Purview
If you want the benefits of a mature TOM without building everything from scratch, Infotechtion provides a managed services model purpose-built for Purview:
Operating model out of the box
A proven TOM with roles, decision matrices, SLAs, and runbooks mapped to each service line (Classification & Protection, DLP, IRM, Records, Discovery & Audit, AI Governance).
Service Catalog you can consume
Standard request types (e.g., business unit onboarding, label provisioning, DLP simulation → enforcement, exception handling) with clear outcomes and audit-ready evidence packs.
Continuous improvement baked in
Weekly policy tuning windows, monthly service reviews with KPI reporting, and quarterly roadmap updates aligned to platform changes—so controls stay effective as your environment evolves.
Integrated risk and compliance workflows
Structured handoffs with Legal/Privacy and Security Operations, plus escalation paths for high-impact changes, investigations, and incident correlation.
Automation and reporting
Configuration as code where appropriate, centralized health monitoring, and dashboards that tell the story in business terms—risk reduced, exposure trends, resolved incidents, and storage cost avoided.
Ready to operate Purview as a service and start compounding value? Infotechtion can onboard you to the managed model, align it to your governance standards, and demonstrate measurable outcomes quickly. Contact us at contact@infotechtion.com — our team is ready to support you.
