Service Desk at Core of ITSM Initiatives

April 23, 2009
By ITSM Watch Staff

Enterprises are achieving cost savings and operational efficiencies through consolidation, process improvement and deployment of more robust technologies.

The help desk has evolved beyond its role of simply recording and responding to IT user issues, according to a new study, The Aging Help Desk: Migrating to a Modern Service Desk, released by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). Today's help/service desk is at the core of IT service management (ITSM) initiatives.

"EMA has long believed that the service desk represents an area of investment for the enterprise," said Lisa Erickson-Harris, EMA research director and study leader, in a press release. "Our research confirmed that even in this down economy companies view the help/service desk as a place where spending can drive returns through technology automation, the introduction of self-service and consolidation in operations."

Some of the key findings include:

• Service Desk Part of Overarching ITSM Strategy: Sixty two percent (62%) of participants are either already making the help/service desk part of the company's overarching ITSM solution or are planning to move in this direction.
• Use of Multiple Help/Service Desk Tools: Fifty six percent (56%) of respondents from large enterprises are managing or planning to manage multiple help desks. The vast majority of organizations managing multiple help/service desks will consolidate their operations.
• Consolidating Service Desk with Corporate Customer Service: Integrating customer service operations with the IT service desk promises financial savings as both groups require similar training, tool sets, processes and automation capabilities. Thirty percent (30%) of respondents have been able to take advantage of this opportunity.
• ITIL Disciplines Identified as Important: Sixty four (64%) of respondents have deployed or are planning to deploy ITIL v3. Incident, problem and change management are the most frequently-deployed ITIL disciplines and remain the most critical for help/service desk operations.
• Service Catalog a Key Growth Area: Fifty six percent (56%) of respondents have already deployed or are planning to deploy a service catalog. Clearly, there is value in putting IT service offerings front and center in the hands of managers and users via the service catalog.
• Self-Service a Top Priority: Self-service is a strong area of investment because of its ability to lower call volume and resolution time at the service desk. Surprisingly, only 32% of respondents indicated that they had already implemented password reset technology while 41% are planning to do so.

"While the help/service desk has a lot on its plate," Erickson-Harris said. "There are clear opportunities for significant operational cost savings. EMA believes that efforts to expand the footprint of the service desk will also improve the user experience and raise the credibility of IT throughout the organization."

Methodology

For this study, EMA surveyed 158 IT professionals with help/service desk responsibility and familiarity with their organization's ITSM initiatives. This quantitative data was complemented by 14 in-depth telephone interviews. The research examined major initiatives taking place in corporate help/service desk operations and explored topics such as best practices, operational metrics, management priorities and integration needs.

Seven Tips to Rapid Service Transformation

May 15, 2009
By Martin Likier

No ITSM methodology can guarantee success, but there are ways to shorten time to implementation and ensure you get it right the first time, writes ITSM Watch guest columnist Martin Likier of Forsythe.

Once your organization has made the decision to implement an IT service management (ITSM) discipline, you can quickly become overwhelmed.

A litany of books, terms, processes, functions, roles and responsibilities is the first wave that hits you. Then a second wave hits you, which includes communicating with the business, defining services, service level agreements and the gruesome task of trying to develop critical success factors, key performance indicators and operational metrics.

It is enough to make anyone feel like they're drowning, but it doesn't have to be that way. While there is no methodology that can guarantee success, there are seven tips that will shorten your time to implementation, while helping ensure you get it right the first time.

Tip One: Start with a Framework

Frameworks help people avoid reinventing the wheel and overlooking something that will rear its ugly head sooner or later. If you already have a framework in place, you have a choice to make: continue with that framework or choose a new framework. For those who are thinking about choosing a framework path, you may want to consider the following frameworks.

ITIL has become the de facto global standard for IT service management. ITIL provides a set of best practices for managing all phases of the IT service lifecycle. ITIL's best practices encompass services, people, processes and technology, implemented from a life cycle point of view, focused on integration with the business. Because it is public and non-proprietary, it is cost effective and provides the fastest path to making your framework actionable.

Alternatives to ITIL like Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) do exist but can be based on proprietary or a specific vendor's knowledge which can make them far more difficult to adopt and adapt, and their focus can be either too broad or too narrow. If you are considering an alternative to ITIL, be sure you have determined that it fits your organization’s service management requirements and that you are aware of where gaps may exist between its capabilities and your requirements.

Tip Two: Effective IT Service Management Program is Proactive versus Reactive

Most IT departments spend a great portion of their day operating tactically by reacting and responding to one IT fire after another. Due to this turmoil, reactive organizations generally wait for a directive from the business before they move forward. Proactive organizations are always looking for ways to improve and provide better service. They understand the importance of integrating IT into the business and being viewed as a strategic partner. IT departments that successfully transform into a service oriented culture are able to maintain a proper balance between being proactive versus reactive.

Being extreme in either case can cause problems, but being more proactive helps position IT organizations as true advocates of the business. The business will appreciate you more and value you more highly if they see you being proactive in trying to address and even prevent problems.

Tip Three: Implement Best-Practice Processes and Document Them Properly

Whether it’s a down economy (potentially losing staff) or a thriving economy (potentially gaining staff), it is important for everyone to know what is expected of them and how to accomplish their tasks. Implementing a formalized and documented process model based on best practices will lead to consistent performance of your IT staff day-in, day-out. This holds true whether you are a new hire asked to perform a task on day one or you are a 20-year veteran. Each process should have an identified owner and include role-aligned procedures and tool-aligned work instructions. Using an informal process approach leaves too much to interpretation and runs the risk of not getting it right the first time.

Tip Four: Establish a Governance Committee

Establishing a formal governance (or steering) committee will ensure the continued evolution of an IT service management initiative. Such committees take a holistic view of the entire portfolio of IT programs and recommend and prioritize which improvements should be made and when. Without a formal committee, governance will typically be ad-hoc and driven by silo requests. Ad-hoc governance rarely considers the integration of processes, people and technology to provide improved services to the customer.

Tip Five: You Must Be Able to Explain, Monitor and Evaluate Your IT Processes in Terms of How They Support Your Business and its End-Users

Albeit the challenge in doing so, IT departments must start to view themselves as providers of business services and not just the supporters of applications, servers, networks and storage arrays. While the latter is true, business users and customers are generally not concerned about the details of making technology work, but rather they are concerned about whether an agreed-upon service is available or meeting their expectations. Understanding a new or existing service’s utility (what a service does) and its warranty (how well it does it) will help ensure that the service meets the requirements of the business. With that knowledge you should be best positioned to document repeatable and integrated processes for managing your services and operations.

Tip Six: Structure Your Support Organization into Integrated Teams versus Isolated Support Silos

In many IT organizations, day to day support is provided and managed by technology groups such as Windows Support and Unix Support. Most often these independent support silos operate independently with a myopic focus on technology outcomes such as server uptime. However siloed organization and behavior makes it much more difficult to reach business goals or targets due to alignment with IT-focused Operational Level Agreements rather than business-focused Service Level Agreements. This leads to less-efficient use of staff resources and poor interdepartmental communication.

Best results are often achieved when companies break down isolated support silos and work to create integrated support teams. Integrated support teams collaborate to support a service end-to-end, from desktop (or user!) to server, and focus on achieving business outcomes.

Tip Seven: Establish Service-based versus Operational Metrics

Don’t expect what you don’t inspect, and when you inspect, ensure you are measuring what really matters. A formal reporting and measurement program is a key component to quickly identify areas for improvement. The trick here is not to get bogged down at the lowest level of a reporting strategy by only viewing operational metrics. A good reporting strategy should include operational metrics, key performance indicators and critical success factors which encompass an end-to-end service operation. This effort can be further expanded by introducing a sound Continual Service Improvement process. By doing so your organization's ITSM measurement and reporting activities will provide the basis for identifying and prioritizing IT service improvements.

Summary

To assist with guiding your IT service transformation’s passage through the rough waters of implementation, these seven tips can help ensure that you not only get off to the right start, but can ease the concern of how to get there. This approach leverages the integration of services, process, people, and tools which leads to infinite synergy. By understanding this and executing on these tips, you can calm and navigate the waters of IT service transformation without drowning.

Mr. Likier is an ITIL V3 Expert certified consultant within Forsythe's IT Service Management Professional Services Group. Most recently, he has been responsible for the delivery of IT Service Management best practices which provide value to customers in a wide range of vertical markets. His experience encompasses ITSM, ITIL, and process design/implementation and project management.

Understanding and Maximizing Your ITSM Investment

May 22, 2009
By David Mainville

It’s more than a matter of faith, writes ITSMWatch guest columnist David Mainville of Consulting-Portal.

Throughout my 29 years of service management experience I never once doubted the value of having well defined and well implemented IT processes. Over time, it became part of my belief system. I had faith that IT service management (ITSM) provided real value to an organization even though that faith was sometimes hard to explain to others.

However, just because I had faith in ITSM, it didn’t stop senior management from asking “What’s the ROI?” That got me to thinking about my own experiences with ITSM. As a young field engineer fixing mainframes I was on the front lines of incident management.

No one ever argued about the value of getting a client back online quickly.

As a service support manager I learned to look at trends and, in one specific situation, our team identified the root cause of a serious problem. By implementing a simple low-cost engineering fix, we were able to save the company millions of dollars in component replacements, employee overtime and, not to mention, customer goodwill.

No one ever doubted the value of saving money.

As an owner of an ITSM consulting firm, I count on having well defined processes, supported by metrics and continual service improvement, to grow my business. I’m happy to say that my investment in processes has paid off and we are celebrating 10 years in business. So, why do people still question the value of ITSM? I believe it’s because people confuse “adopting a framework” with the hard work of “managing the details”.

Going back to my earlier examples, the true value comes from working the processes. Take incident management as an example. The only way you benefit from an incident management system is if it helps you resolve incidents quicker, reduces the cost of an incident or helps you avoid incidents altogether.

In order to realize maximum benefits from incident management, system data needs to be captured, analysis must be performed and improvements must be identified and implemented. Getting to those improvements is where both the value and the hard work lie. Unfortunately, far too many organizations have gone down the path of writing process documents that sit on the shelf or jump from one ITSM tool to another because they never get the implementation right. Thus, when they fail to derive value from ITSM, the blame is placed on “a faulty framework” and never on the lack of execution.

When people question their faith in ITSM they need to remind themselves that it’s easy to define a process or buy a tool. What always tends to be missing is the willingness, governance and the hard work required to get the value. It is my unfortunate experience that many IT organizations have lost sight of what ITSM is all about. ITSM is not a fad, it’s not a “nice to have” and it’s surely not something from which to calculate ROI. ITSM should be at the core of every IT organization. Ask yourself the question: Why do IT organizations exist? I believe it’s for one reason: to service the business. So, why is there so much dissatisfaction with IT organizations?

Back in 2005 Nicholas Carr, in his bestselling book, asked the question “Does IT matter?” Is the trillions of dollars invested annually into corporate IT actually providing a competitive advantage? That book set off a firestorm of debate, a debate that was held over the backdrop of outsourcing, off-shoring and “on-demand” services.

I believe the reason that argument resonated with so many people is there was already serious doubt about whether IT provided any real value to an organization. All one had to do was follow the endless stream of outsourcing announcements to see there was obviously a powerful chord of dissatisfaction with IT. You may disagree and argue that outsourcing was driven purely by the bottom line. However, it’s been my experience that organizations flirt with outsourcing when the business is dissatisfied and feels that IT is being non-responsive and un-supportive. Outsourcing starts with dissatisfaction and is justified by dollars.

Whether we like it or not the latest generations of business users are computer savvy and used to getting things on-demand. These folks, brought up on YouTube, FaceBook and Google have much higher expectations. So, when IT says it will take months to provision a service or make a change to an application they are tempted to go out on the Internet and find something they can use right away.

We can shrug and say "The business just doesn’t get it―they don’t understand the complexity we have to deal with,” or we can use the discipline of ITSM to find ways to better communicate with the business, improve cycle-times and reduce cost. When we lose sight of the SERVICE in ITSM we are just putting our companies, our co-workers and our own livelihoods at risk.

Nuts and Bolts

So, how does an organization go about maximizing its investment in ITSM?

Realize that ITSM is not something new, but it’s something you already do. The important thing is taking what you do and making it better. In order to accomplish that you need to understand your services, you need to track your performance and you need to take corrective action.

Don’t waste your time trying to justify ITSM―that’s like justifying breathing. Take it on faith that the discipline of ITSM is a given. Focus on communicating with your clients, on having clear and measurable services, on making your supporting processes actionable and on making your people accountable.

Get everyone on the bus and point that bus in a single direction. You can’t have your organization driving different ways to get to the same point. Agree on a plan for improving services, implement processes to support the services and measure the outcomes. Don’t be afraid to tell someone they need to get on a different bus. For that you need leadership.

Educate and automate. Communicate the value of improving services, communicate how the processes will provide value and automate the processes wherever possible so that people are guided through the steps. Leave nothing to chance.

Lastly, don’t fall into the trap that a tool will solve all your problems. There are no silver bullets. The value will come from developing a culture of service and the discipline of measurement and continual service improvement.

I’ll wrap up this article by asking you to do one thing for me: look at your own personal experiences and think of a service provider that consistently provides you with an outstanding service experience. Now think of one who provides the opposite. The difference between organization A and B is the degree to which they practice the discipline of ITSM. Now which organization do you want to be?

David Mainville is CEO and co-founder of Consulting-Portal, an ITSM consulting and ITIL training company focused on helping Fortune 500 and mid-size companies assess, design and implement robust IT Service Management processes. Consulting-Portal also offers a full curriculum of ITSM education including: ITIL, ISO and CobiT.