IT Is No Longer a Corporate Support Service. Are You Ready?

If you are part of a corporate IT group, chances are you are struggling like I am with the concept that IT is a support service. It used to be taken for granted: our role was to be the implementers and fixers of technology. The implications being that things like budgets were looked at from a pure cost-centered approach. Provide the necessary technology at the lowest cost possible ... more akin to maintenance and facilities roles.

But corporate needs are shifting, often faster than corporate assumptions around the role of IT. Do you find yourself in this situation today? Corporate strategies and the objectives intended to carry out those strategies depend on technologies requiring more creativity and variability than ever before. Take social media as an example. As recently as five years ago, corporate on line presence was defined by a corporate controlled web site and corporate email. Some put in tools for real-time chat for sales and customer service; but the environment was still tightly controlled by the company. IT’s role was that of a relatively static entity to roll-out things. Even “dynamic” content was rolled out as a technology tool. Once programming and design were complete, it was essentially up to business users to make it work. IT was just there to fix it when something broke.

Compare that to online presence today. Social media that companies have little, if any, direct control over have dominated. Within a few years, it will saturate every nook and cranny of our corporate world. Traditional corporate content providers, like marketing, sales, and customer service, are ill prepared to handle the barrage of technological challenges in such an environment. If your company is anything like mine, they are now looking to IT to provide ongoing expertise in managing the corporate online identity. They key here is “ongoing”. The challenges of corporate online identity are constant; not needing an annual or quarterly technology refresh, but often requiring a daily, hourly, or even minute-by-minute refresh.

As old attitudes around the role of IT pervade, it’s easy for an IT department to say, “It’s not my problem. Sounds like a marketing problem to me. We can provide some consulting, but not much else.” But the business expects and NEEDS IT to become hands-on in managing online presence and identity.

Are they wrong? What are we prepared to do about it?

Do Users Prefer to Contact the Help Desk? Should They?

I've been thinking a lot lately about utilization of the Help Desk (Service Desk, whatever...), and how many of us in IT management constantly try to funnel all requests through the Help Desk. It was starting to bother me that most of us, myself included, spend an awful lot of effort telling end users not to go straight to other IT staff. I can't tell you how many times I've received a call or email from an end user, asking for help with a problem -- or answers to their questions -- and my response was to direct them to the Help Desk.

I recently realized how hypocritical this response is. A few years ago our Finance group made changes to the way we process corporate credit card transactions. Those of us outside Finance complained loudly to each other about how much harder the new system was for us. I was fond of telling anyone who would listen that I'd never endorse an IT project that made life easier for IT, but harder for everyone else. Ha! I understood service, and Finance obviously did not. It was probably within the same day that I told an end user, for the 80th time, that the Help Desk is the best place to go to start any IT inquiry. I love irony ... expect for when it convicts me.

A few days ago Aale Roos (Recommended Twitter follow) linked me to an article he wrote about the concept of Service Desk Market Share. Read up for a good discussion of some survey work he's done around the issue. His take is based more upon the idea of how many attempts a user makes before getting their problem resolved, and how many places other than the service desk a user goes to get help. My interests lie in the options users have in contacting different IT staff.

If an end user has a problem, question, or request to implement something, they have a myriad of choices of where to go to get help. Frequently, the choice is not the Help Desk. We know that self-help can be a great option. It empowers the user and lowers overall costs (assuming what they do actually helps, and they find the answer quickly). Within IT, however, our current attempts to FORCE use of the Help Desk is no better than Finance forcing an unwieldy reimbursement process on us. This is a simple truth:

If it doesn't improve the requester's experience, we shouldn't do it.

I don't advocate banishment of the help desk. Far from it. The Help Desk / Service Desk model allows for significant cost savings and professional management of business requests. Note that I say "allows for". All too often, the only benefit of the Help Desk model is to allow the staff that handles Level 2 and 3 support to spend more time on higher profile -- and therefor more business visible -- projects. Take a long, hard look at your support processes. Do they focus on improving the requester's experience, or are they really based on ensuring the techies don't get bothered by new requests? We've actually encouraged staff outside the Help Desk to turn away requests. The way to get users to access the Help Desk is for those in the other channels to make themselves look awful, right? Don't be embarrassed, we've all done it.

There. Doesn't it feel good to get that out in the open?

So, is your Help Desk the preferred choice when your customers need help or request something? Or are there alternatives, sanctioned or not, that your customers would rather use? Why?

In the next post, I'll look at some ways to start making the Help Desk the preferred choice, as well as how to determine when they shouldn't be the preferred choice. Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Concerning ITers; Or, Being An ITSM Vendor Is Not For The Faint Of Heart

We're looking at Service Desk toolset vendors. There. I said it. How many of you out there are bold enough to make that statement on a widely read public blog? Or even this blog?

Not many I bet. And why is that exactly? We in IT are generally quiet, hardworking folk who are quite distrusting of those outside the Shire. I mean data center. We like only having 2-3 choices for our vendors, and we prefer when we initiate the dance. Get too serious too fast, and we'll back away, saying things like,"It's not you, it's me."

The years of abuse from the dark lords Cisco, Microsoft, Symantec, and Oracle make us a little leery of fast talking outsiders. Of course we still love them. All that talk of mysterious strangers like open source and cloud is just that. Talk. We end up, like always, renewing our commitments no matter how painful they've become. Think of the users. What would happen to them if we split up? There's no telling what kind of crowd they'd end up with. Before we knew it, we'd start finding brochures for Salesforce hidden under the mattress, overhearing hushed conversations, picking out words like "social" and "consumerization". It's too awful.

So, you see, we have good reason to be a little jittery when it comes to all this sales talk. My advice to you, the prospective vendor, is to walk a mile in our purely functional loafers. More specifically...

1.  We really do prefer to come to you first. Amazingly, we've done research. Unlike our corporate brethren, we LIKE figuring things out for ourselves. Many of us go so far as to enlist outside resources to help us determine what toolsets are more likely to work well for us.

2.  Don't try to bond with us by impressing us with technology. We're nerds. We have the geeky stuff we really want (Remember all that Cisco & Microsoft stuff above?). Cloud and such do little to inspire us.

3.  On the other hand, we do have real problems requiring real solutions. Remember the 1990s? We sure do. Sigh. Those days are over and we're having a hard time adjusting. Our corporate partners are being unreasonable and asking, nay demanding, we validate our existence. They're saying we cost a lot of money, and expecting us to show them why. Or worse. Some get no further than the "cost a lot of money" step, and tell us to stop costing so much.

4.  So, please don't just use words like "value" and "alignment". Learn our hopes, dreams, and nightmares. Show us how you've reduced pain for others like us. Be specific. Give us the references so we can check for ourselves. It's not that we don't trust you. We don't trust anyone, remember? And we like verifiable data.

5.  We don't return calls. Ever. It's not that we don't care. You see, we do real work. We make lights blink. We're busy. Nothing personal. We haven't forgotten you. When there is something we need, you'll hear from us. If you don't, we didn't find the need. Pretty simple, actually.

And never forget: We truly love our smials. They are more than just houses for us. They are family.

"But" is an IT Cop-out

"I'd love IT to be a driver of corporate growth, but we don't have enough resources to even maintain what we have."

Have you ever heard something like this coming from your IT team? How about yourself? I'd bet most of us have.

I bring this up because I said this very thing this past week during 2012 budget planning. I'm pretty annoyed with myself, because I know better. At the same time, I am a recovering "but"-er, and I'm getting better all the time. It's become an inside joke between my wife and I. "But". One of us will use the word, and then catch ourselves. It seems harmless enough. "I'd love to , but I ".

How different are these two statements?

"I'd love to play catch with you Billy, but I'm exhausted from a long day at work"

"I wish you could use that iPad here, but we can't support them"

They may seem completely different, but the reality is that they mean the same thing to the listener: the second thing is more important or more true than the first. And they are both embarrassing cop-outs.

Great (or at least Good Enough) Expectations

On my way into work several weeks ago, I saw the ominous orange DOT sign stating: "Road Closed Starting April 28". This happens to be on a critical part of my daily commute, and I work in the boonies. I wasn't at all sure what my detour options would be. While it was helpful to get some advance notice that I needed to find an alternate route, there was a critical piece of information missing: How long will the road be closed? One day? One week? One month? The duration of the road closure would make a big difference in the effort I put into finding an alternate option. DOT change management appeared to be lacking much customer focus.

I'd contend that this is the way most IT shops handle incidents, and frequently problems as well. We've matured our incident management so that all issues are logged, categorized, diagnosed, basic repair steps taken, and the incident properly prioritized and dispatched to the appropriate work queue. We may have even started auto-emailing the requesting customer so they have a reference for their request.

These steps are all great. They help us in IT understand the issue and how to prioritize it against the other things on which we work. It helps us restore, as quickly as possible, the customer's ability to work. Ah, there's the rub. "As quickly as possible". ASAP. Sev 1. Blah blah blah.

When I'm experiencing a service interruption, whether it be with cable TV or road construction, the one phrase I hate to hear is "as soon as possible". As in, "We're working to restore your service as soon as possible". As consumers of services, don't we assume all interruptions are resolved as soon as possible? That's the baseline assumption. It doesn't, however, help me plan my alternate commute route. Or whether I should head to the local bar & grill to watch the Twins game. Or whether I should start working on another task instead of waiting for Desktop Support to show up and fix my problem.

Bad news is better than no news. That's the mantra my team hears from me at least weekly. From your customer's perspective, "ASAP" is the equivalent of "when I get around to it". The customer has to know what to expect.  Here are a few tips for setting communication and resolution expectations. Feel free to add your own.

1. Publish throughout the organization how you determine incident priorities. This doesn't need to be complex. If anything, aim for simplicity. You want it to be read and understood by a lot of people, most of whom don't care about IT processes. Even a little. A starter sample can be found here: ITTicketPrioritization_Sample. This is an example only, and your criteria for determining priority will be different than mine. The point is something simple.


2. When publishing the determination of priorities, it is also critical to include what the customer can expect. Once again, my sample document shows a simple way to do this. It can become a lot more fancy, just make sure it is easy to understand. Feel free to include other elements of expectations. Some ideas include:
   
   
   
   • Expected response time
   
   
   • Expected effort until resolution
   
   
   • Expected resolution goal
   
   
   • Communication expectations, such as the maximum expected time between updates


3. Resist all temptation to include expectations that cannot be measured. If you don't have the means to accurately measure time to respond to email, don't include it in your expectations. Saying "our goal is to respond to every email in 30 minutes or less" when you can't measure that, is no better than saying ASAP. It has no meaning.


4. Use your ticketing system to send out an email to the requester automatically whenever a new incident is logged. The only exception is when the issue is closed at first contact (Then they'll just receive the ticket-closed notification). The email should contain the ticket number and title/short description, the priority of the ticket, and the expected next response and resolution times based on the priority, based on the expectations you already published. You may have different ways to identify expected response and resolution times. The critical part is to set the expectation immediately.


5. The initial message should include how the requester can have the ticket priority "bumped" if needed. I know its scary to give the user this much power, but this is about communication and transparency. You'll be amazed to see how many tickets don't get bumped via user request. The point is to give the requester control.


6. As the ticket is worked through "the system", the goal is transparency and engagement. Give the requester every opportunity to see their ticket status and provide input. Our ticket system is pretty limited in its ability to automate status update communication, but it can email an update as requested. I'd like to see an ITSM tool that allowed users to self-select how much updating and what types of updates they want to receive.


7. Meeting the defined expectations is important. Just as important, however, is updating the requester when the expectations will not be met. This is the "Bad news is better than no news" stage. Do not let automation replace human contact here. This is a whole new paradigm for many support techs; however, they simply MUST make the shift to ensure that user communication is prioritized.

These are just a few ideas. The point is in setting expectations, and finding as many ways as you can to communicate those expectations, especially while a ticket is being worked. After all, when was the last time you praised the efforts of road construction planners? Don't setup your IT team to get the same bad rap.

The T in "ITSM" is Irrelevant

Nicholas Carr ("IT Doesn't Matter") was right. It has now been 8 years since Carr published the controversial article in the Harvard Business Review. In a way, it's almost funny to call it controversial today, since we now have a better understanding of what he meant. Technology in and of itself is no longer a differentiator. A new technology  innovation used to take years before being copied into the mainstream. Now that cycle has been reduced to months.

Consider the Microsoft touch screen tablet operating system. Wait, what Microsoft touch screen tablet OS? Microsoft plans to demo its first generation tablet OS this June, and they are receiving all sorts of flak about it. The demo will be about 14 months after the iPad's initial release in April 2010, and it will be another 15 months until the actual release. Today we call that a non-starter. Ten years ago that would not have been a bad cycle time. (Yes, I know Microsoft has had a tablet OS for years. I played with my first one in 1999. Please raise your hand if you think those tablets are even in the same market space as the iPad, Xoom, etc. Keep them up high so the rest of us can laugh at you.)

Carr's point was that, while there may still be innovation in technology, we'll all have that same innovation at our disposal in such a short time that it is not a differentiator from our competition. You could argue the point as being a bit hyperbolic, but the underlying truth remains. If technology innovation has any capability to provide differentiation, that window is very, very small. We all have the same technology innovations available to us: cloud, virtualization, mobile devices, social media, etc. The technology does not differentiate us from anyone else.

This is where Carr and I part ways. He makes a strong case for why the "T" in IT doesn't matter, but the "I" still matters greatly. Information is the key to business success. Or more directly, what information you gather or share, and how you use that information is what really matters. The technology you use to gather business intelligence doesn't matter, as long as you can gather the information that you believe allows for the best chance to make good business decisions. The keys to driving success in business intelligence are:

• Knowing what decisions need to be made that will provide differentiation from your competition


• Knowing what information you want/need to enable those decisions


• Knowing where the pieces of data reside that come together to make that information


• Optimizing workflows around how the data is gathered and used as information


• Determining if your technology allows you to gather that data in accordance to the workflows

That's all the technology does. It either does or does not allow for the gathering of the needed data. If it does, make sure it does so in a cost-effective manner. It if doesn't, replace it with something that does. It won't be hard to find the technology that provides what the business needs. The technology exists, and it is at your disposal. It also exists and is at the disposal of your competition. No differentiation in the technology. The only differentiator is around the human elements of deciding what decisions to enable, what information is required, finding where the data resides, and deciding on the appropriate technology.

So of course technology matters; but it matters only in the sense that you either have or do not have the right technology for your business. The technology itself is a commodity. Does it matter what carpet shampoo housekeeping uses, as long as it meets needs at a low cost? Technology is now the same.

To bring this back to ITSM, we need to act in light of the reality that "information service management" and "technology management" are two distinct entities and efforts.  Information Service Management is about gathering requirements about how the business wants and needs to use information. How does it want to use information to connect with customers? Then make sure the necessary information is available to enable that goal, as well as allowing us to see how well the outcomes are being met. Your partners in the rest of the business don't care whether you use Exchange or Gmail, cloud or on-premises; as long as their information and workflow needs are being met in a cost effective way.

Information Support can re-focus the same way. Incidents are interruptions in a co-worker's ability to gather or use information. It doesn't matter to them whether they are printing to a Xerox or HP printer, using a virtual desktop or fat client. The more we make of that distinction, the more the business sees us as playing with the toys we want to play with, and forcing those toys on them. We could look at incident priortization based on the information and workflow impact, more so than whether it is a laptop or desktop, on site or remote, etc. How many of us in IT even know the workflows used by our peers to get work done? Knowledge and priortization based on information outcomes and workflows, leads to metrics reflecting the same thing. Our ability to provide (and demonstrate!) real value has the potential to skyrocket. Isn't that what it's all about?

Who Needs IT Financial Management?

Is there a process more discussed, and less implemented, than IT Financial Management? It's almost universally thought of as important, yet too hard or time consuming to do. If it is really that important, shouldn't we be actually DOING it? The reality is that IT Financial Management is that important, but we try way too hard to get it perfect.

IT Financial Management is a necessary part of Service Management, to the point where I'd contend that you aren't doing Service Management without a baseline level of Financial Management. How many IT shops have been asked to cuts costs over the past 2-3 years? Most of us? How many of us have reduced costs in a manner even remotely resembling strategic? How will you even know whether or not your cuts have impacted business outcomes? The reality for many of us is that we are frequently asked to cut (or at least optimize) costs, and we have no means whatsoever to determine whether our cost containment efforts help or hurt the business.

Those of us in the recovery business look at this as an excellent example of the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

We need to know, even at the most basic level, how much IT costs in relation to the services provided. Tracking costs by service allows us to make much more informed decisions around technlology investments. How much should we spend on accounts payable vs. ecommerce? How much would a new service cost, compared to the projected revenues?

But isn't calculating service costs too difficult? It depends on how detailed you need to get. For basic service costing, a solid estimate based on mutually agreeable assumptions is all you need. This is a process where a CMMI level 3 (or maybe even level 2) is plenty for most organizations. Large enterprises may receive more benefit than the cost of achieving CMMI level 4 or 5, but most of us will never recover the costs involved in trying to get there.

So, my main points are that Financial Management is a critical process that is often skipped, and that it doesn't need to be as hard as we usually make it. I will follow up with a post on a (relatively) simple way to do IT Financial Management.