it e & u sk iss de ow e ic sh rv rt se Po p su
vital Inspiration for the modern business Volume 3 : Issue 4 : March / April 2010
High-flying service Supplying IT know-how to the global airline industry
Problem management How important is the Service Desk?
The fine art of negotiation It’s time to get organised FEATURE FOCUS: DEPLOYING THE IT SERVICE DESK: 32-35
Take Control of Business Service Management
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Service management | InfraVison delivers their services in the form of projects. This means that for you as a customer it is completely clear up-front what results will be achieved, what the deliverables of the project will be, which costs will be related to the project and what is the delivery time frame for the solution. When the solution is accepted you could choose to hand over the maintenance
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leader
The times they are a-changin’ Leader W
e are at present in a state of suspension. Until we know who is to form the next Government, it’s difficult to predict with any certainty what is around the corner and one thing is for certain, we won’t know until sometime in May this year. The chances are that one of two leaders will be Prime Minister – so much for my uncanny predictive skills – and I suspect that in the short term very little will change, but either way, be it the existing regime getting a vote of confidence or the opposition getting a brand new mandate, one can only hope that it offers a fillip to the recovering UK economy. Of course there is a third option which is looking increasingly likely as we head into Spring, that there will be some sort of coalition government formed from various parties and interests. Not entirely a bad prospect, given the low esteem both main parties are currently held in perhaps. Anyway, enough of my amateurish political prognostications; there are far more important matters afoot. For those with an interest in IT service management, the service desk etc, we are approaching the exhibition season. From 27th to the 28th April this year at Earls Court in London, The Service Desk and IT Support (SDITS) Show, the highlight of the service desk calendar, is running. Now in its 17th year, the show continues to highlight the latest technology and service best practise in the IT service desk industry (full preview starts on page 55 of this issue). And with the recent news (see news section, page six of the January / February 2010 issue of VitAL) that the Government intends to utilise some form of unified communications strategy in the public sector to reduce costs and replace outmoded hardware, UC Expo – The UK’s leading enterprise communications and collaboration event which takes place at Olympia on 10 – 11 March - has to be worth a visit too. See you there.
Service management training in particular, becomes vitally
important in tough economic times
because it will be
those operations that can adapt quickest to changing circumstances Matt Bailey, Editor
that will be strong enough to survive, and even thrive, under the present economic
If you have any thoughts, feedback, or suggestions on how we can improve VitAL Magazine, please feel free to email me matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk
climate.
www.vital-mag.net
March / April 2010 : VitAL 1
Cherwell. The service desk solution that covers all your ‘vITIL’ areas
I should visit Cherwell at the Service Desk & IT Support Show, stand 910, Earls Court 27-28 April
The complete IT Service Management solution Cherwell is the ITIL solution that covers every angle – more powerful, more customisable, more scalable and more cost effective than other systems. Fast and easy to deploy, simple to manage, offering ITIL best practice ‘out-of-the-box’. Available as a traditional ‘On Premise’ installation or via a fully hosted SaaS solution, the choice is yours and with our unique CBAT technology, Cherwell delivers a truly powerful, scalable solution without ever stripping your budget.
Don’t leave yourself exposed, contact us today on 01793 680280 or visit www.cherwellsoftware.com
Innovative Technology Built on Yesterday’s Values
contents
vital Inspiration for the modern business
it e & u sk iss de ow e ic sh rv rt se Po p su
vital Inspiration for the modern business Volume 3 : Issue 4 : March / April 2010
Contents 6 News The VitAL Cover Story
8 High-flying service matt bailey VitAL asks SITA regional vice president for Northern Europe, Rob Watkins how the association deals with the challenges of supplying IT services to the world’s airline industries.
High-flying service Supplying IT know-how to the global airline industry
Problem management How important is the Service Desk?
The fine art of negotiation It’s time to get organised FEATURE FOCUS: DEPLOYING THE IT SERVICE DESK: 32-35
Editor Matthew Bailey matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4599 To advertise contact: Grant Farrell grant.farrell@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4598 Production & Design Toni Barrington toni.barrington@31media.co.uk Dean Cook dean.cook@31media.co.uk Editorial & Advertising Enquiries 31 Media Limited, Media House 16 Rippolson Road, London SE18 1NS Tel: +44 (0) 870 863 6930 Fax: +44 (0) 870 085 8837 Email: info@31media.co.uk Web: www.vital-mag.net Printed by Pensord, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood. NP12 2YA © 2010 31 Media Limited. All rights reserved. VitAL Magazine is edited, designed, and published by 31 Media Limited. No part of VitAL Magazine may be reproduced, transmitted, stored electronically, distributed, or copied, in whole or part without the prior written consent of the publisher. A reprint service is available. Opinions expressed in this journal do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or VitAL Magazine or its publisher, 31 Media Limited. ISSN 1755-6465 Published by:
VitAL Signs – Life in a world with IT
11 If a tree falls in the forest and no one was there to hear it, did it make a sound? Steve White Steve White discovers it’s nice to deal with companies that it’s easy to do business with.
VitAL events
12 United state-of-the-art Previewing UC Expo – the UK’s leading enterprise communications and collaboration event which takes place at Olympia on 10 – 11 March.
VitAL management
14 How integral is the service desk for successful problem management? PAUL OFFORD To be truly effective, problem management needs high quality information in the incident record; information that is recorded at the very front line of the Service Desk. This isn’t happening and, to make matters worse, ITIL isn’t helping either.
18 Support – oversold and undervalued GARY WAYLETT A bargain basement price may look appealing but what is the business implication of being swayed by cost over value?
22 What does the future hold for IT application outsourcing? FERENC SZELENYI Assessing the future of IT application outsourcing: where it started, where new technology and techniques will lead, where the greatest opportunities for business advantage lie and how organisations can best take advantage of all that it has to offer.
VitAL Magazine, Proud to be the UKCMG’s Official Publication ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Subscribing to VitAL Magazine VitAL Magazine is published six times per year for directors, department heads, and managers who are looking to improve the impact that IT implementation has on their customers and business. For a FREE annual subscription to VitAL Magazine please visit: www.vital-mag.net/subscribe March / April 2010 : VitAL 3
Unbiased advice and bespoke IT Service Management solutions
ITIL v2-v3 Foundation and Managers Bridge ITIL v2 and v3 Foundation Certificate ITIL v3 Intermediate Certificate Public schedule and on-site options available. Visit our website www.wardownconsulting.co.uk for details.
Tel: 01582 488242 Fax: 01582 488343 E-mail: training@wardownconsulting.co.uk Website: www.wardownconsulting.co.uk Wardown Consulting Limited. Prudence Place, Proctor Way, Luton, Bedfordshire. LU2 9PE
IT Service Management Training & Consultancy
COntents
Contents VitAL eyes on
VitAL drive – it hits the fairway
25 Business processes – get the users involved!
45 I’m working from home today
Jonathan Westlake Recent IT project failures have highlighted the need for greater understanding about the business processes involved. How can projects fail in this day and age? The evidence points at the age old problem of a failure in requirements capture.
Geraint Lewis Like many thousands of others in early January, Geraint turns in his copy from the warmth and safety of his home... as the winter snows pile up ever deeper outside.
46 Out of the box IT NIGEL TODD Offering out of the box solutions to help IT service departments work harder and smarter, InfraVision managing director Nigel Todd explains his company’s philosophy to VitAL.
27 Who can you trust? LLOYD COLE Don’t underestimate the value of screen privacy. Lloyd Cole says Mobile workers need to be vigilant.
VitAL planet
30 A common sense approach to ITIL
52 Gaining green intelligence RICHARD KELLETT Why do most forwardthinking organisations use analytics for sustainable IT? Richard Kellett is here to tell us.
“We don’t call it ITIL – it’s just good common sense customer service, and we have cut call volumes by 40 percent!” says Rob Gwatkin, service desk manager at Comet Group.
32 Deploying the IT service desk TONY PROBERT As the global economy begins its recovery, a real differentiator is the quality of service and support and if these can be more automated and efficient, the business benefits can make the difference between success and failure.
VitAL events VitAL processes
36 Achieving a higher standard ROSEMARY GURNEY ISO/IEC 20000 – Why would you go for it? And how would you begin?
42 Successful negotiation DAVID FREEDMAN David Freedman says that it’s time for a more organised approach to negotiation.
55 Europe’s largest IT service management event VitAL’s seven page preview of the highlight of the service desk calendar: The Service Desk and IT Support (SDITS) at Earls Court in London.
60 Team management and motivation COLIN SHEWRY One of the key themes at this year’s Service Desk and IT Support show is ‘Team Management and Motivation’. Birkman Method consultant Colin Shewry explores the benefit of a personality profiling tool in understanding motivation and developing teams.
64 Secret of my success David Amizade of firewall and change management software specialists Tufin Technologies shares his insights.
March / April 2010 : VitAL 5
news
ITIL training partnership
B
CS, the Chartered Institute for IT, and Focus on Training have launched a new service which simplifies finding and booking accredited IT training courses online. Training and exams for industry leading qualifications such as ITIL, ISEB Software Testing, and ISEB Business Analysis are just a few clicks away. The Institute has, through its professional examination arm ISEB, developed a collection
of training courses and certifications which are the benchmark for information systems best practice. The exams provide IT specialists with professional development routes in a variety of areas, including IT Service Management, business analysis, systems development, software testing and information security. Visitors to the ISEB website can now access the nationwide schedule for these courses and book places online. The training is delivered by specialist training companies that have each been accredited by ISEB. A central booking service is provided by Focus on Training. Stephen Daniels of the BCS explains: “As the Chartered Institute for IT, we chose to work with Focus as they already offer a highly effective search and book facility in their specialist fields of project management and IT Service Management. Moreover, the status of 8,000 courses is updated daily. As well as enabling
security beyond the cloud
T
he Common Assurance Metric (CAM) is a global initiative that aims to produce objective quantifiable metrics, that its authors say will assure information security maturity in cloud, third party service providers, as well as internally hosted systems. The collaborative initiative has received strong support from public and private sectors, industry associations, and global key industry stakeholders. There is currently an urgent need for customers of cloud computing and third party IT services to be able to make an objective comparison between providers on the basis of their security features. Security remains the number one concern for many businesses and governments. Existing mechanisms to measure security are often subjective and in many cases are bespoke solutions. This makes quantifiable measurement of security profiles difficult, and imposes the need to apply a bespoke approach, impacting in time, and cost. The CAM aims to bridge the divide between what is available, and what is required. By using existing standards that are often industry specific, the CAM is designed to provide a singular approach of benefit to all organisations regardless of geography or industry.
6 VitAL : March / April 2010
“With today’s complex IT architectures and heavy reliance upon third party providers, there has never been a greater demand for transparency and objective metrics for attestation,” said Jim Reavis, executive director of the Cloud Security Alliance. “The Common Assurance Metric framework has great promise to address this demand and the Cloud Security Alliance is proud to support this initiative and align our own cloud security metrics research with it.” “Microsoft is committed to delivering secure, private, and reliable computing experiences. Today’s interconnected world trustworthiness of computing solutions depends on many interdependent components and requires broad industry collaboration. We look forward to contributing to the work on Common Assurance Metric,” Added Matt Broda, senior security strategist at Microsoft. The project team anticipate delivery of the framework in late 2010 followed by a process towards global adoption for organisations wishing to obtain an objective measurement of security provided by cloud providers, as well as the level of security for systems hosted internally.
fast and efficient course booking, Focus is able to provide expert and impartial advice that will help IT professionals continue to enable the information society.” The initial phase of this collaboration is in the UK and Ireland providing a comprehensive database of ISEB accredited business analysis, software testing, IT governance, and ITIL training courses in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow – and 20 other cities. For the most popular certification tracks such as the ISEB Business Analysis Diploma, ISEB Software Testing and ITIL, Focus offers explanatory guides which can be downloaded free of charge. Certifications from ISEB such as ITIL are complemented on the Focus website with other widely respected best practice” training such as PRINCE2 and MSP. www.focus-on-training.co.uk www.iseb-exams.com
why hackers love you on valentine’s day V
alentine’s Day once again provided a bonanza for hackers anticipating that consumers got weak at the knees with the mention of the ‘L’ word. A decade ago, the I LOVE YOU virus spread from one machine to another since few consumers used protection at the time. A decade later, ‘iloveyou’ is the fifth most common password, ‘lovely’ is number 18 and ‘loveu’ is number 23 and ‘loveme’ is number 43. Hackers looked likely concoct a special Valentine potion using the promise of being secretly admired combined with our prevailing addiction to sharing personal information on social networks like Facebook. Hackers get a complete list of friends for many users. Then, they send to that certain someone a Valentine messages seemingly coming from a friend. Urged to click a Valentine’s Card to retrieve virtual chocolates or roses, you end up instead with a virus. “The success of such a campaign is in numbers,” commented Amichai Shulman, CTO of Imperva. “For this, the hacker adds a key ingredient – automation. Using an automated tool, the hacker scrapes friends lists from Facebook and turns them into a phishing mail, all in a single click of the mouse, to spread their virus. What can you do next time? First, look up who sent you the Valentine’s greeting and make sure it’s legitimate. Do not follow links or download software referencing unsolicited spam; update your comput er with the latest patches; ensure your anti-virus is enabled and up-to-date; if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Nothing bad will happen if you simply hit delete.”
www.vital-mag.net
news
IT executives keep cloud initiatives within firewalls
E
ighty-three percent of IT executives intend to keep their cloud initiatives within their own firewall, according to a survey of delegates by Platform Computing at the Supercomputing Conference (SC’09) in November 2009. Ninety five IT executives were surveyed across the research, manufacturing, government and education industries to determine why organisations are investing in cloud solutions, their concerns about cloud computing and plans for future initiatives. Although most organisations are experimenting with cloud computing, the majority (82 percent) do not foresee cloud bursting initiatives, demonstrating that cloud models are still early in their adoption and that executives are cognisant of the very same security and management issues that
drive them to create a private cloud in the first place. Executives see the value of a private cloud management platform that is independent of location and ownership resources. The survey cited that nearly half (45 percent) of organisations are considering establishing a private cloud, with executives citing experimenting with cloud computing (40 percent) and improving efficiency (33 percent) as top reasons for investing in a cloud solution. According to respondents, the greatest expected benefits of cloud computing are a larger resource pool (28 percent) and a more flexible, agile infrastructure (26 percent). The survey also found that security remains a principal concern regarding cloud computing (49 percent), followed by complexity of managing (31 percent) and upfront costs (15 percent). For organisations
considering cloud computing, fears of upfront investment costs and complexity can be addressed through the availability of private cloud management solutions designed to leverage their existing infrastructure. “When deploying a private cloud, organisations will need a management framework that can leverage existing hardware and software investments and support key business applications,” said Peter Nichol, general manager, HPC Business Unit, Platform Computing. “This survey reaffirms the benefits that private clouds offer – a more flexible and dynamic infrastructure with greater levels of self-service and enterprise application support.” “Cloud computing has provided the impetus for IT to make a much needed shift, but many in the industry are still struggling to understand the value of the cloud,” said Randy Clark, chief marketing officer, Platform Computing. “As organisations continue to experiment with cloud to move toward better efficiency and cost-savings, it is best to bear in mind that to ensure success, the adoption of cloud computing should follow a sequence of evolutionary steps rather than an overnight revolution.”
Keeping it confidential A
ccording to a recent survey, although 98 percent of employees believe it is vital to protect confidential information, more than half don’t take any security measures at all when sending data out externally. Companies make many blunders when sending sensitive information and here are just a few common scenarios: 1. PDFs are secure: converting documents into PDF format and believing that this is adequate enough to protect the information is a common scenario. PDF documents can be tampered with by the end-user and it is not too complicated to modify them, as there are many downloadable options easily accessible from the Internet explaining the process for doing so. Signatures, figures and confidential data can be changed and as a consequence security risks to your data could be inevitable. 2. Email complacency: sending the information in an email attachment. Today we are so email-centric that we have an overreliance of using email as a trusted way of sending out information. Realistically most www.vital-mag.net
businesses should be well aware that an email attachment alone offers no protection for sensitive documents but there is a tendency to feel over-comfortable that this is a safe environment. In fact many people send email attachments without a second thought and this is where the real problem lies – in human complacency. 3. Relying on human intervention: asking the recipient to delete the information once it has been viewed. This is one of the most common mistakes businesses make, but it is one of the most vulnerable methods. Even if the recipient does remember to delete your email (and there is a good chance that they won’t), they are even less likely to delete the item from their ‘deleted items’ box straight away, which means the information is easily accessible. 4. Assumption that data has arrived: One of the most overlooked questions is: Was the data actually received? Can you be sure the data you sent was received by your the intended recipient? A common scenario is assuming the data was received, reviewed
or amended by colleagues and clients, when it never actually arrived in the first place, as there is no formal way of confirming this, other than vocally. 5. Using inappropriate and easily intercepted methods: Using methods such as fax or post increases the risk further of data falling into the wrong hands. Since most fax machines (if used at all nowadays) tend to be positioned in open spaces in offices in full view of whoever happens to be nearby, they offer little in the way of privacy or protection. This risk is magnified in larger serviced offices where there may be other businesses sharing the same space as you. Equally using the post may be more than sufficient in some cases, but also poses its own risks of interception. If you need to send confidential information, it is worth using a method that allows you to send the information in any format and in an isolated fashion. Ensuring that the detail can be viewed as required but in a controlled way that allows you to choose exactly who sees it, what they can do with it and how long they can see it for is the safest route to take. March / April 2010 : VitAL 7
cover story
High-flying service Catering for the IT needs of the world’s airline industry is a formidable challenge. As the industry’s IT supplier SITA signs an historic partnership with Virgin Atlantic, VitAL editor Matt Bailey asks SITA regional vice president for Northern Europe, Rob Watkins how the company manages a truly global industry.
8 VitAL : March / April 2010
www.vital-mag.net
cover story
S
ITA, a leading specialist in air transport communications and IT solutions has announced that it is partnering with Virgin Atlantic as the airline’s Network Guardian with primary responsibility for all of Virgin’s voice and data IT services. The five-year, multi-million dollar partnership covers more than 100 sites worldwide, progressively moving full responsibility for a diverse range of IT services from multiple providers to SITA including; international and domestic IP VPN, voice (IPT and PBX), managed LAN, cabling, core network support, vendor management services and the all important area of service management. “A large part of what we do is dealing with the world as it develops,” explains Rob Watkins, SITA regional vice president for Northern Europe. “For instance, we are now in a gamechanging recession and our service has to
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reflect this. We have to offer the industry value for money; the best balance between price, functionality and risk. What is unique now is that you have to work together for a solution and we have worked with Virgin Atlantic to achieve that mix.” SITA was set up in 1949 to provide communications services to the nascent international airline industry. These days it delivers and manages business solutions for airlines, airports, GDS, government and other customers over the world’s most extensive network, which forms the communications backbone of the global air transport industry. “A group of airlines got together to share a communications infrastructure,” says Watkins. “Initially this was to save money, but now we provide communications and IT across the industry from special messaging to infrastructure, desktops and ticketing. In our business, service management has to be really boringly dependable; always there, effective, reliable and predictable, day-in, day-out.” And the members are not just buying-in product, it’s a full blown service. Created and owned by the air transport community, SITA is the community’s dedicated partner for information and communications technology. As a team of industry experts, its know-how is based on working with customers across the global air transport community. In fact, almost every airline and airport in the world does business with SITA.
“We are now in a gamechanging recession and our service has to reflect this. We have to offer the industry value for money; the best balance between price, functionality and risk. What is unique now is that you have to work together for a solution and we have worked with Virgin Atlantic to achieve that mix.”
A global industry As you would expect, the aviation industry is a highly distributed business with SITA clients all around the world, including some in very difficult to support regions. SITA has to have a truly global capability to cover this range, March / April 2010 : VitAL 9
cover story
The history of SITA 1949: SITA is founded by eleven airlines including Air France, Swissair, TWA, British European Airways Corporation (BEAC), British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British South American Airways. 1950: SITA opens its first telecommunications centre in Rome. Information is manually transmitted using perforated tape and teleprinters. This is the first generation of the world’s largest network. 1966: The first computer adapted for message switching opens in Frankfurt. 1969: SITA’s High Level Network is implemented. This leads to the development of the world’s first worldwide packet switching network dedicated to business traffic. This is the second generation of the world’s largest communications network. 1971: Interactive data exchange between terminals becomes available. SITA implements its first satellite processor. This vastly expands the number of locations to be equipped with computerised systems. 1981: The SITA network expands with the introduction of the Data Transport Network. This is the third generation of the world’s largest network. 1989: SITA membership is extended to include computer reservations systems, aerospace manufacturers, tour operators, airfreight forwarders, airport authorities and other related air transport organisations. 1991: The Mega-Transport Network becomes operational. This forms the fourth generation of the world’s largest network. 1995: SITA launches AeroNet as the intranet for the aerospace and air transport community. 1996: Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) technology begins to be installed over the SITA network. It enables the transport of mixed voice and data traffic. This is the fifth generation of the world’s largest network. 2004: CHAMP Cargosystems is jointly set up by SITA Cargo (UK) Ltd with Cargolux. CHAMP is the world’s only company solely dedicated to the provision of IT solutions to the air cargo industry, with over 60 airline customers. .aero launches. SITA sponsors the .aero Top Level Domain name on behalf of the aviation community. .aero is reserved exclusively for aviation. 2005: OnAir launches. OnAir, a joint venture with SITA and Airbus, is the leading pioneer of inflight communications. The service brings the use of mobile phones and other personal communications devices on board aircraft. 2006: With industry trends moving towards communications and IT convergence, SITA consolidates into a single organisation. It focuses on providing global integrated communications and IT services to the air transport industry. 2008: SITA consolidates its leadership in border management by becoming the first IT provider worldwide to receive US government approval to transmit passenger data at check-in, based on its Advance Passenger Information Quick Query (AQQ) service. 2009: SITA commemorates 60 years of working for the air transport industry.
10 VitAL : March / April 2010
from single person operations right up to the largest airports in the world. “I always think of it as the only truly global company,” claims Watkins. “All the others are multinationals, SITA is the only really global organisation. It has to be because aviation is a very widely distributed business.” One of the main methods to support this global network is with ITIL. “We’ve been making huge investments in the ITIL infrastructure,” says Watkins, who is foundation level ITIL himself. “It has brought us consistency. When you’re global you need to have a single way of supporting the customer. Service levels and delivery and best practise have to be across the whole organisation. This ensures that service management is deployed consistently all around the world. The point is that ITIL delivers happier customers and our services have been improving year on year, but you have to have robust methods of measuring performance or you’re not doing a proper job.” SITA uses a formal customer satisfaction survey process driven from its board which is made up of representatives from the airlines. “Our board members are all from the airlines and they insist on key performance indicators (KPIs) for customer satisfaction,” explains Watkins. “The most important thing is that every year we have to improve, so we need a robust mechanism to get customer feedback. We have to know where we’re not performing in order to do something about it. We get a formal report of performance linked to customer satisfaction scores and this is how we measure our success.” This feedback mechanism is crucial to delivering the all important value for money. “Giving value for money is always on my mind,” states Watkins, “I go to bed thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it.”
Changing situation SITA relies on surveys on IT trends at airlines and airports, in addition to a global passenger survey for
guidance. “We have been doing this for 11 years,” says Watkins, “so trends are easy to spot. One thing is crystal clear; there is a big change when you compare 2008 with 2009. You can see a massive change in thinking about IT spend. The impetus has changed from a culture of increasing spend to one of cutting. And many radically changed what they planned to spend any available funds on. Contract renegotiation and vendor consolidation were the top two trends in the IT sector.” It’s a trick the UK Government have tried and the jury is still out on whether and how well it has worked, but can companies save in the long term by investing in the short term? There certainly seem to be a number of ways this could work for IT users. “Many are looking at cloud computing as a way of driving out cost,” says Watkins. “Cloud, mobility and software-as-a-service (SaaS) all make excellent sense for the aviation industry because it is so widely distributed.”
Standardised and simplified delivery Airlines in particular have tended to suffer from the organic growth of their voice and data solutions which in many cases has resulted in complex, unmanaged interfaces, the existence of non-standard solutions, major service overlaps and consequently, a high cost of support. The role SITA will play at Virgin Atlantic, of Network Guardian, includes the standardisation and simplification of the delivery of these services, driving cost savings and improved service levels. “As Virgin Atlantic’s Network Guardian, SITA will be in a position to focus on the airline’s overall business objectives rather than the delivery of any single, specific technology,” comments Rob Watkins. “The immediate cost savings will be strengthened by our experience and understanding of the air transport industry. Virgin will www.vital-mag.net
VitAL signs: Life in the world coverwith story IT
also benefit from our drive for innovation and continuous improvement in the provision of IT and communications.” Tim Livett, director of Finance and Business Services at Virgin Atlantic commented: “Our mission at Virgin Atlantic dictates that we grow a profitable airline and to achieve this we constantly examine every element of our business. By consolidating the delivery of voice and data services from approximately 40 suppliers to a single supplier, SITA, we will improve the delivery of a high quality service to the business while we are achieving significant economies of scale and reducing the cost of delivery.” Matthew Billings, head of IT Services at Virgin Atlantic Airways, added: “The financial savings are fundamental to our goal of driving down the overall cost base of delivery of IT to the business but as head of IT I am also assured that our newly extended partnership with SITA will enable us to deliver other strategic initiatives including global supplier consolidation, service standardisation and improved Service Levels to our end users. Our company values are well aligned and our teams are closely integrated – we see the SITA team as a seamless extension of our own IT department. We will have the added benefits of simplified supplier management, faster deployment, improved reporting and reduced incident resolution times. All of these are hugely valuable in addition to the monetary savings.”
Flying into the future “We wouldn’t be doing our job properly if we didn’t improve,” says Watkins. “So we have signed off investment in the next generation of products and services, especially service management. We are investing in service and training the staff along with new facilities and next generation tools.” As with his customers, for Rob Watkins it’s the journey that’s important. “You can never sit back and think you’ve got to where you want to be,” he says. “It’s the journey that’s important, not the destination and investing in service management is just as valid as investment in products, but we’ve got to strike the right balance. You have to look at your service in the whole. Even if you have the latest and most advanced functionality, you’re still only as strong as your weakest link.” VitAL www.sita.aero www.vital-mag.net
If a tree falls in the forest and no one was there to hear it, did it make a sound? Steve White finds out it’s nice to deal with companies that it’s easy to do business with.
R
ecently the head gasket gave up on my car. Ouch! There’s also something wrong with the turbo, and I explained carefully to my friend at the garage the exact circumstances by which the problem could be reproduced. The car then vanished into a black-hole of silence. A recent piece of research indicates that while we mess around with reducing mean time to this and improving first-time that, customer satisfaction with a company is simply a function of how easy the company is to do business with. The research showed that “how easy it is to transact with a company” is the overwhelming thing that drives customer satisfaction and it’s a stark yardstick and yet it resonates with me. It was slightly drizzling, cold and windy in the Long Term car park at Heathrow, light was fading and all I needed to do was book a hotel room, so with mobile broadband up and 747s screeching to a halt next to me I logged into a hotel chain portal to search and book a room. Fingers numbing with cold I navigated to their site, found the room, came to pay for it and the ‘Verified by VISA’ window did not appear in the browser. This same fault had happened to me two weeks before, and I phoned them that time to start the process all over again. Since then they had taken their phone number off their website, so on to Yell to find their number, an ACD and five minutes of ‘your call is important to us’ and I was speaking to someone. It took not four
minutes to book a room, but 23 cold, damp minutes of my life which I’m not going to get back. I was told by the call centre person that a few people call with this problem each day. Easy to transact with? No! Now I consider myself a professional troubleshooter, and I’d like this payment method to work for me – ‘Verifed by VISA’ works on all the other sites I visit, so I offered this hotel chain help to solve this problem. I wrote a nice note to their customer services offering to work with them as I had a reproducible test case. What did I get back? Nothing. They appear not interested to bother to allow me to help them take in more money. Customer satisfaction? Not much there I think. The next communication I had with my garage was more than a week later, them asking me how to reproduce the turbo problem. <sigh>. And so onto the philosophical question. If a question is asked by a customer services organisation and the answer is not written down, was the question ever asked? If you’re the customer services organisation, the answer is ‘no’ since there is no record of the question or the answer. If you’re the customer – the answer is ‘yes’ and it’s the quickest way for a support organisation to add another negative experience in the mind of the caller to their personal ‘how easy it was to transact with you’ figure. VitAL March / April 2010 : VitAL 11
vital events
United state-of-the-art UC Expo – The UK’s leading enterprise communications and collaboration event takes place at Olympia on 10 – 11 March.
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ccording to the organiser, UC Expo offers visitors an exciting look into the business potential and changing delivery models within the voice, visual, mobile, and collaboration workspaces to ensure your organisation has substantial business benefit and competitive advantage. This year’s show will see announcements from leading companies as well as the first public viewing, outside of the US, of the latest Microsoft Office Communications Server part of the refresh of Information Worker products (code name ‘Wave 14) which is currently in private beta-testing. Outsourcery will be announcing and demonstrating two new unified communications products: Hosted iPBX and Hosted iPBX Overlay. Eurodata systems have teamed up with StartReady and Interoute and will be launching the first ever Microsoft OCS appliance in the UK, taking only days to deploy (not weeks) at fraction of the cost. End users will also be present including Severn Trent Water who can speak about how ClickSoftware’s 12 VitAL : March / April 2010
mobile field service application is transforming service delivery. This year, UC Expo and Mobile 10 offers four exhibition areas with over 100 exhibitors including O2, Vodafone, Mitel, Brocade, Symbian, Microsoft, ShoreTel, Digium|Asterisk, Gigaset and SMART. The show also offers unrivalled breadth of knowledge through its eight seminar theatres delivering strategic keynotes, Insights into future development, practical ‘How to’ sessions, analysis and opinion, roadmaps to implementation, infrastructure planning services and technology overviews. Key speakers to look out for include: • Nic Newman, head of strategy and European GM, Tigerspike – Mobile Applications now and the future – the application of technology. Wednesday 10 March 11:50 am – 12:20 pm • Brett Johnson, UC technical specialist, Microsoft – Microsoft Office Communicator 14 early preview. Wednesday 10 March 11:50pm 12:20pm. • Andy Powell, solutions evangelist EMEA, ShoreTel – Building a business case for new technology: the challenges and opportunities.
Wednesday 10 March 11:50am - 12:20pm. • Geoff Paulsen, global security operations director, Microsoft – Using Microsoft Unified Communication & Collaboration to run your business. Thursday 11 March 12:30pm 13:00pm. • Alison Brewer, solutions marketing manager, Mitel Networks – ‘Sorry I can’t make it to work today’… how flexible working can keep your business moving, whatever the disruption. Thursday 11 March 12:30pm - 13:00pm. • Jon S von Tetzchner, founder and former CEO, Opera – The future of mobile applications. The browser vs the OS. Thursday 11 March 13:10pm - 13:40pm. • Lester Hewett, solution architect, Dell – Dell’s approach to building available unified communications solutions. Thursday 11 March 13:50pm - 14:20pm. Attendance to the event is free, and visitors to UC Expo will have access to all four parts of the exhibition Voice, Visual, Mobile, and Collaboration. VitAL
www.ucexpo.co.uk www.vital-mag.net
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Experts in IT Skills Development Here’s the conundrum; your IT Department is planning to install some critical new IT infrastructure (i.e. hardware, software and applications) that has a significant skills impact on your IT Professionals. The skills gap has been identified so do you: • Provide the manuals and leave them to figure it out for themselves? • Send them on a 5 day training course? • Do nothing and hire the skills? • Provide them with a safe working environment to develop their skills while still supporting the organisation?
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Conventional classroom courses are the traditional way to ensure the effective transfer of new skills and they directly address the concerns arising from reading the manual – there are predictable outcomes, hardware and software is off-site, and best practice is deployed. However, there are cons as well: time off work is significant, it’s a high cost approach (especially if there are a number of people to
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vital management
How integral is the service desk for successful problem management? To be truly effective, problem management needs high quality information in the incident record; information that is recorded at the very front line of the Service Desk. This isn’t happening and, to make matters worse, ITIL isn’t helping either according to Paul Offord, founder Advance7.
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roblem management activity has traditionally been of a reactive nature, focusing on determining the root cause of a major incident after the event. This leaves IT support on the back foot, stuck in a cycle of fire-fighting and incident autopsies. While proactive problem identification and investigation is a defined activity, most problem management teams never seem to get around to it due to the pressure to follow up on major incidents. There are three principle areas of problem management activity: first, incident autopsy; second, dealing with ongoing and recurring problems; and third, the proactive detection of recurring problems. But the performance of the Service Desk has a significant impact on the success of the second and third stages. Time pressures and lack of training often mean that the Service Desk only records scant information about an incident when logging a call and loosely or inconsistently applies incident categories. The resulting Incident Record may then be escalated to Second Line Support and eventually to Problem Management with
14 VitAL : March / April 2010
the same details recorded during the initial Service Desk call. Take the case of the Indian call centre that accessed systems based in the UK. Call centre agents complained that they experienced intermittent failures. The Service Desk categorised the repeated incidents as a network issue because UK users of the same system didn’t complain and Indian users had experienced some issues related to the network connecting to India. Descriptions of the problems in the Incident Record were vague, focusing on the user type, the time of day and how often. The issue quickly escalated, dragging in people from service delivery, the network team, the network provider and server support. After several months the service delivery team phoned a call service agent, asking them to explain the problem. The call service agent described three faults, all of which were obvious application errors and unrelated to the network. I’m astounded just how much effort an IT support operation will put into incident recovery or problem investigation based on the scantest
While proactive problem identification and investigation is a defined activity, most problem management teams never seem to get around to it due to the pressure to follow up on major incidents. www.vital-mag.net
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of information in the Incident Record or without any further checks with the user. What is even more tragic, is that I see organisations making this fundamental mistake over and over again.
Proactive problem management I’ve been frustrated by the rate of progress toward proactive problem management but I think things are about to change. Problem Management is maturing and there is a growing interest in the proactive role. Recent changes at a high street bank signpost a positive future. They have split their problem management team into reactive and proactive, thereby avoiding the issue of only ever dealing with the fall-out from major incidents. An important element of proactive problem management is problem detection through the analysis of incident trends. This has proved difficult since the total number of incidents can be thousands per week and analysis with reporting tools is thwarted by three factors: a) Poorly defined incident categories; b) Poor use of incident categories when logging Service Desk calls; c) Use of free text fields to record critical information. Poorly defined incident categories derive directly from ITIL, and although I do believe that ITIL is an excellent guide, in this area it is categorically wrong. ITIL suggests a top level of categorisation as being based on causing technology. This may be valuable for incident closure, but how can the Service Desk possibly know for certain at the time of logging an incident that the cause is hardware or software?
Quality is everything First we need to address the quality of the problem description. Ambiguity can easily arise, for example, an Incident Record that has the description: “Word document is slow to open” could mean many things. The user could be double clicking on the Word document in Windows Explorer, or Word is already started and the user chooses ‘File’ then ‘Open’ from the menu system, navigates to the document 16 VitAL : March / April 2010
and then double clicks on it. From a problem investigation point of view these two scenarios are very different. Before the Service Desk escalates any issue for investigation, First Line Support should check the quality of the information in the Incident Record. A second step to take is to tackle problem categorisation. Incidents should be logged with a category based on the user’s experience and not the predicted cause. The top level should be: • Performance (response time/throughput issue); • Availability (service unavailable); • Fault (error message); • Incorrect Output; • Functional (service is below expected functionality). This approach overcomes the need for the Service Desk or First Line Support people to try to determine the cause up front. They will still have to make some level of assessment when the Incident Record is queued to Second Line Support, but at least the Incident Category won’t send them down the garden path. This approach also makes it more likely that multiple occurrences of the same issue will be identified rather than multiple Incident Records being opened, each with a slightly different category setting. Data recorded in this way and combined with service information would simplify the identification of incident trends and the detection of problems. Ultimately, incident categorisation based on predicted causing technology is simply not going to work. The quality of the information captured by front line Service Desk people has a large impact on reactive and proactive problem management. The Service Desk and Problem Management teams need to work closely together. This will drive down the number of Incidents and enable Problem Management to provide the Service Desk with known error and problem information so that calls can be turned around without escalation to other teams. VitAL www.advance7.com
Paul Offord’s Service Desk Wish List: 1. Add a quality gate to Functional Escalation procedures to ensure that First Line Support checks the quality of the information in an Incident Record before it is escalated to Second Line Support. The Incident Record should be checked for correct categorisation and quality of the problem description as outlined above. This action alone would probably save a large company a fortune in support cost. 2. Reconfigure the Service Desk system to add user experience orientated categories and subcategories for incidents as outlined above. Use these categories when opening incidents. 3. Change ITIL Service Operations Incident Management to suggest that opening incident categories are based on user experience and closure categories are based on cause or recovery action.
Indian call centre • High priority Incident recorded as a network issue; • Network problem causing intermittent application faults; • Team of six working on the problem; • Considerable time and money spent on investigation; • After several months it was discovered that the user was actually receiving a JavaScript error; • There was no detail of this fact in the Incident Record.
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vital management
Support – oversold and undervalued A bargain basement price may look appealing but what is the business implication of being swayed by cost over value? Gary Waylett, chief executive officer, Eclipse Computing, asks why organisations still spend months rigorously evaluating software products yet still fail to assess the quality of business critical support.
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conomic p r e ssu r e a n d technology change is resulting in plummeting support prices. But while it may be cheaper, just what is the effect on the overall quality, timeliness and value of support packages? In the current economic climate it is understandable that many organisations, especially in the not-for-profit and government sectors, are putting annual maintenance and support agreements out to tender. And, driven in no small part by an IT industry that has spent the past 12 to 18 months driving support costs down to an unprecedented low, many of these organisations are opting for the lowest priced contract. Few, however,
18 VitAL : March / April 2010
are achieving the best value for money. Relationships and the support provider’s knowledge of an organisation’s set-up and systems are not always taken into account if a ‘cold’ procurement department is running the process. Nor can the department differentiate between the quality and expertise of support staff, assess the relevance of proactive support strategies or consider the implications of an increasingly complex technology environment.
Service level agreements But if determining best value cannot be based just on price, what are the other measures? How much weight, for example, www.vital-mag.net
vital management
can an organisation put on the service level agreement (SLA)? Potentially, the SLA can be meaningless. Response within ‘x’ timeframe, resolution within ‘y’ timeframe – what does that mean? A response could be an automatic email confirming receipt of call; while resolution could be the support organisation providing the client with a possible resolution to a problem (which may or may not resolve the problem satisfactorily). Taking into account the many different operating systems in use, database versions, server configurations, hosted locations, VPNs, Internet connections, telecoms plus the myriad of combinations of release numbers/patchsets/updates across all of these, it is becoming increasingly difficult for any organisation to guarantee timeframes to problem resolution. Furthermore, without access to the software source code, it is impossible for a VAR type support provider to guarantee any resolution times if there is a program bug – although most are very good at coming up with workarounds.
Remote implications At the same time, the support requirements of companies have changed in recent years. With a growing acceptance of remote technology in most organisations – with the exception of financial institutions – support providers can typically resolve a greater number of problems remotely. Combined with an increasing familiarity with technology/computer systems in general, this has resulted in a drop in support call volumes. However, due to the technology complexities, the calls that are received often take much longer to resolve. Fewer calls does not mean fewer staff – it means same number of staff with a higher skill set.
Dedicated staff or trainee consultants? And this is a key issue in attaining value: organisations need to assess both the skills and incentives of support staff. In many companies, support is viewed as a great training ground for consultants. This means that an organisation’s business-critical support is actually delivered by people who are neither experts in the product or technology nor focused on support as a career. Support is viewed simply as a tedious 20 VitAL : March / April 2010
As the economic reality begins to bite, support organisations are increasingly recognising that taking a revenue first approach is no apprenticeship to be served before attaining a real job as a consultant. But providing support and consulting advice are two very different skill sets. An individual may be an excellent application/technical/ business consultant but a very poor support consultant. The support role is a specialist role – and needs a very particular type of personality to do it well. Therefore, providers that recognise the value of excellent customer support have dedicated staff with a clear support-based career plan. The combination of industry accreditations with a depth of product expertise enables the delivery of consistent levels of support, even when staff are on holiday. A committed, consistent team of people trained to troubleshoot support calls, increases the productivity and resolution of support queries, enabling the software supplier to pledge high levels of support commitment.
guarantee of business success. A number of organisations are now reviewing the costs to support each client and assessing which are profitable.
Proactive attitude Indeed, when it comes to attaining value for money, organisations need to look beyond the SLA towards the attitude of the support provider. And this includes a commitment to delivering proactive support and advice – and not just during the initial sales consultation period. Despite the availability of remote monitoring solutions, how many support providers include or even consider providing preventative maintenance or proactive support as part of the service offering? After successful completion of a new implementation, the proactive contact from the sales person/account manager diminishes and takes the form of a re-active www.vital-mag.net
vital management
role. By taking a look at the commission/ incentive schemes in place in many reseller organisations the reasons for this change becomes very clear - the primary focus is to sell software – there is no focus on client retention or satisfaction. As a result, good support is provided at best during the initial software implementation period – but once that is complete and there are no ‘software’ sales left, the service focus is diverted to the next big product implementation. Yet by seeking out the right attitude to proactive support, organisations attain a partner that is focused on helping the business to get value for money from existing solutions and infrastructure without having to buy more software or spend more money. An attitude that clearly delivers greater value in the long term. Furthermore, by adjusting commission and incentive structures away from sales-led to client da-add-19.08.09.qsd
19/8/09
service/consulting staff, a support provider can truly demonstrate its commitment to long term business and customer satisfaction.
Supplier commitment Indeed, this ‘customer first’ strategy is proven to boost support provider revenues while also delivering clear customer value. And, in this market, provider stability should be a major concern for any business. Indeed, as the economic reality begins to bite, support organisations are increasingly recognising that taking a revenue first approach is no guarantee of business success. A number of organisations are now reviewing the costs to support each client and assessing which are profitable. Any support organisation undertaking a thorough review of calls resolved/time spent/margin earned will often have to face some difficult truths: in this market, it is not sustainable to continue unprofitable support
11:06
and maintenance contracts, however large. And while it is a tough decision to walk away from any business, providers with a long term commitment are indeed following this strategy, creating ever greater risks for those organisations focused exclusively on cost. It may be tempting but cost cannot be the prime determinant of a support provider if a business wants to minimise risk and maximise IT value. This is a key relationship – not a simple sales transaction based on support call numbers. If organisations are to get the very best levels of support there must be a willingness to engage with a provider at all levels to develop closer working relationships on a peer to peer basis. And the development of these relationships will definitely result in better support, greater value for money and ultimately tangible benefit to both the organisation and the support provider. VitAL www.eclgrp.com
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vital management
What does the future hold for IT application outsourcing? Ferenc Szelenyi managing director EMEA, Dell Perot Systems gives his views on the future of IT application outsourcing: where it started, where new technology and techniques will lead, where the greatest opportunities for business advantage lie and how organisations can best take advantage of all that it has to offer.
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pplication outsourcing, the management and upgrades of packaged or customised software that is contracted out to a service provider, has come a long way since the Y2K projects of the 1990s. The Y2K, or millennium bug as it became commonly known, was a problem for both digital (computer-related) and nondigital documentation and data storage situations, resulting from the practice of abbreviating a four-digit year to two digits. Consequently, many projects related to the Y2K syndrome were outsourced on a large scale, with organisations seeking to acquire additional competence especially in applications during this stage. Traditionally, the process of an application outsourcing strategy can improve business effectiveness by promoting a tighter focus on
22 VitAL : March / April 2010
managing costs. With the Y2K era potential costing companies millions in lost revenue, this approach made perfect sense. Since then, as marketplaces have expanded to global proportions and competition has increased, application outsourcing must remain costeffective, by providing development and maintenance resources at price points that organisations could not previously obtain locally or internally.
Time for change However, post Y2k, it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take long for organisations to realise that application outsourcingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attractiveness, as a cost-cutting exercise, is only one part of the story. While there will always be a place in every business plan for cutting costs, there is also room for new opportunities and fresh approaches. www.vital-mag.net
vital management
24 VitAL : March / April 2010
Organisations now have access to new talent, advanced techniques and technologies that can deliver additional benefits, most notably faster time to market for new applications and upgrades alike. For example, if you take the healthcare sector, many hospitals can now provide a hosted application platform that enables them to gain access to advanced clinical IT solutions in a shared resource or dedicated server environment. Application outsourcing platforms can also enable hospitals to deploy technology faster, more affordably and using fewer internal resources. As application outsourcing solutions continue to evolve, transforming from a strictly tactical solution to a strategic one, companies will be able to deliver measurable business value and competitive advantage. However, in order for organisations to embrace this, they need to overcome a number of challenges.
processes when integrating across cultures, languages and time zones. Thirdly, risk management is probably the most obvious challenge inherent in application outsourcing. CIOs are constantly looking for new ways to offset the risks that come with offshoring. These risks arise from such varied sources as language barriers, political unrest, or natural disasters such as typhoons or earthquakes. However, not all the challenges application outsourcing will have to address in the future are of its own creation. As CIOs and their organisations become more comfortable with the concept of application outsourcing, they are asking themselves if their current outsourcing solutions are doing everything possible to help the business achieve its objectives. Therefore, it is down to the vendor to combine this new emphasis on business objectives with the existing emphasis on IT objectives.
Success brings new challenges
The future
In the near future, it is my view that application outsourcing will need to address a variety of challenges, some external and some created by the very opportunities it has itself created. For example, application outsourcing’s ability to deliver significant cost savings has enabled organisations to put new downward pressure on IT budgets. As a result, many IT departments are being challenged to transform one-time or short-term savings into repeatable, consistent efficiencies. Many CIOs are also looking for application outsourcing solutions to provide sustainable savings that can be used to self-fund new businessoriented projects. Secondly, Governance is another area where, up until now, application outsourcing may have created as many challenges as it has solved. For example, organisations that have embraced application outsourcing with numerous projects and vendors have begun to realise they may actually have made their processes and models more complex. Moreover, they may even lack adequate
The application outsourcing choices that an organisation makes can now help to ensure that the future is more company-friendly, allowing themselves to embrace change without having to commit to massive disruptive transformations over a short period of time. To achieve this goal, application outsourcing solutions will need to work hand-in-hand with infrastructure and a myriad of application solutions, from in-house custom applications to new Internet applications. As CIOs continue to align their internal efforts with an organisation’s business goals and objectives, outsourcing solutions will, by necessity, follow suit. In the near future, it will no longer be the CIO and his or her department who are solely responsible for this business-IT alignment. Outsourcing vendors in general—and application outsourcing vendors in particular—will be retooling their processes and methods in order to measure and substantiate an outsourcing solution’s business value. VitAL www.perotsystems.com www.vital-mag.net
VitAL eyes on
Business processes â&#x20AC;&#x201C; get the users involved! Recent IT project failures have highlighted the need for greater understanding about the business processes involved. How can projects fail in this day and age? The evidence points at the age old problem of a failure in requirements capture according to Jonathan Westlake.
Risk management is probably the most obvious challenge inherent in application outsourcing. CIOs are constantly looking for new ways to offset the risks that come with offshoring. These risks arise from such varied sources as language barriers, political unrest, or natural disasters such as typhoons or earthquakes.
I
n the current economic climate it is imperative that processes within an organisation are not only understood but also made subject to regular review. IT is pervasive in most business processes and complexity is not uncommon. In the September 2009 issue of VitAL I mentioned the use of Unified Modelling Language for business process analysis. For my business process module at Staffordshire University we have been following a seven views approach using UML as championed by the BCS (Jon Holt 2009). The initial view is a Requirement View using what are called Use Cases. Over the years I have tried different approaches to enriching the requirements stage including data flow diagrams; involving super users and SCRUM. The use case model is a visual diagram of the business process, it has no complicated drawing rules and hence does not alienate the user. Users can engage with not only the diagram but a detailed use case script which models a process dialogue between the actors (roles) and the system. Use case diagrams and scripts have grown in popularity and I witness their use in industry regularly. Herewith is an example of the script template we use: Use Case Name: Process login; Actors: Job Applicant (user); Use case does: Allow the Job Applicant to log in to the recruitment website;
Use case begins: This use case describes the process by which users log in to the recruitment website; Use case ends: When the system displays the main page.
Alternative actions Bad username: user is asked to try again; Bad password: user is asked to try again; User does not have a username and password for the site: user is asked to Register (use case: Register Member). Why not try them for requirements capture or process analysis? References: Gartner Business Process Summit: http:// www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=928017 BCS Seven View Framework: http://www.bcs.org/server. php?show=ConWebDoc.6862 Altova uModel: http://www.altova.com/umodel.html VitAL
March / April 2010 : VitAL 25
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vital management
Who can you trust? Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t underestimate the value of screen privacy. Lloyd Cole, European marketing manager at 3M Mobile Interactive Systems Division urges caution for mobile workers.
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he effective management of private, personal and confidential information is an ever increasing concern for international organisations large and small, as factors such as remote working, global travel, public wifi availability and the explosion in laptop sales combine to put their employees under imminent threat from data exposure. While on the one hand this threat stems from the indifference of many employees to the security risks posed by use of company laptops in public places, on the other hand many organisations are failing to educate their workforce on best practice for maintaining and improving data protection compliance. According to a British Standards Institution (BSI) 2009 survey, of over 500 small- and www.vital-mag.net
medium-sized businesses, almost one in five has unwittingly breached the Data Protection Act (DPA) at least once. 65 percent provide no data protection training for their staff and nearly half admit that there is no one in their business with specific responsibility for data protection. Fifteen percent are not confident that their data sharing practices conform to the DPA and worryingly, almost five percent frequently share data regardless. Furthermore, 18 percent said that data protection is less of a priority in the current economic climate. On the contrary, data protection has never been so important and organisations should not let down their guard. Loss of data â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whether it is sales and marketing plans, legal cases, customer names, purchasing details, human resource information, salary scales or March / April 2010 : VitAL 27
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When working on laptops in public places, users are generally unaware of the activity going on in their surroundings, making them vulnerable to curious bystanders, opportunistic criminals or even practiced experts peering over their shoulder to read or record on-screen information.
proposed redundancies – can have potentially damaging consequences to competitive edge and credibility leading to serious financial consequences, loss of customers and reputation.
The high cost of data loss The number of data breaches and the costs involved for UK organisations is rising at a staggering rate. This trend is reflected in a Ponemon Institute study released in February 2009 (2008 Annual Study: Cost of a Data Breach), which examines the costs incurred by 30 UK organisations from ten different industry sectors after incurring a data breach. The study found that the total average costs of a data breach grew to £60 per record compromised – an increase of 28 percent since 2007 (£47 per record). The average total cost per reporting company was more than £1.73 million per breach (up from £1.42 million in 2007) and ranged from £160,000 to over £4.8 million. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has called the amount of data being stolen, lost in transit or mislaid by staff “unacceptable”. Around 33 European countries have passed some form of privacy and data protection legislation, and many of these have a requirement for notification to either the regulatory authorities or those affected by the breach. In the UK, under current legislation, the individual inside an organisation charged with implementing the DPA is responsible for notifying the ICO of any significant breach and deciding together whether there is a need to notify any potential victims. From 2010, companies that recklessly or deliberately break the data protection rules will face fines of up to half a million pounds.
Best defence So what measures can be implemented by 28 VitAL : March / April 2010
organisations to defend against losses that can never be quantified? As a first line of defence for employees using company laptops while travelling or in public places security filters that help guard the laptop screen are a simple and cost-effective privacy tool. Such screen filters are ideal for shoulder surfing prevention and help improve data protection compliance. They are easily fixed to laptops, can be removed or replaced instantly and laptops can be closed with the filters in position. They work by restricting the viewing angle of laptop displays so that only users positioned directly in front are able to see the data. When working on laptops in public places, users are generally unaware of the activity going on in their surroundings, making them vulnerable to curious bystanders, opportunistic criminals or even practiced experts peering over their shoulder to read or record on-screen information. Being the victim of shoulder surfing can make laptop users feel uncomfortable and can impede work productivity if it means shutting down and closing the laptop as a result of being observed. According to research commissioned by 3M United Kingdom plc in 2007, there is an 80 percent chance that laptop users have already been a victim. Almost a quarter of UK computer snoopers do it for the opportunity to read people’s business emails and 16 percent are trying to get a glimpse of someone’s company documents. The shoulder surfing threat does not only lie in wait outside the office, there is an internal threat in open plan offices as well. By specifying these simple on-screen privacy tools in their security policies, backed up by clearly defined defence strategies, organisations can tighten up on data privacy and ensure effective, practical implementation throughout their mobile and office-based workforce. VitAL www.solutions.3m.co.uk www.vital-mag.net
Properly equipped for the job? In the current climate every organisation is balancing the need to reduce risk and costs, but at the same time maintain or increase service levels. Headcount freezes are becoming the norm, but the IT organisation is still expected to deliver the same, if not better service to its customers. When most companies need additional or temporary resource the first port of call is the preferred recruitment agency, who will perform a word matching exercise in their CV database, then send you a stack of CVs. With a Pink Elephant resource you get much more than a body – you get people who: • Are cost competitive • Are highly skilled in their field and have a very high aptitude for delivering ‘Service’, not simply ‘Techies’
• Understand ITIL and IT Service Management • Will transfer their knowledge to your staff • Have the backing of the world’s leading niche player in Service Management behind them – with the ability to call on their colleagues for help and support And finally, you will be using an organisation that really understands IT Service Management and can help you to reduce risk and costs, and increase customer satisfaction.
• Understand how good process can deliver benefits to the organisation, and will look to improve at any opportunity
To speak to us about our resourcing solutions and the quality of personnel we provide;
phone us on: + 44 (0) 118 903 6824 email us at: info.europe@pinkelephant.com or visit our website: www.pinkelephant.com
Pink Elephant – Leading the way in IT Service Management Best Practices © Pink Elephant 2008. These contents are protected by copyright and cannot be reproduced in any manner. Pink Elephant and its logo, PinkVERIFY, PinkSCAN, PinkATLAS, PinkSELECT, and PinkREADY are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Pink Elephant Inc. ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.
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A common sense approach to ITIL A common sense approach to ITIL significantly improves service delivery at high street retailer Comet and enhances credibility of IT within the business. “We don’t call it ITIL – it’s just good common sense customer service, and we have cut call volumes by 40 percent!” says Rob Gwatkin, service desk manager at Comet Group.
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C
omet is a leading specialist electrical retailer with more than 250 stores throughout the UK, offering a wide range of electrical products. The company offers a unique all-round shopping experience with a range of services including home delivery, full installation of products such as televisions and computers, take back and recycling facilities for large products and comprehensive after sales service.
Service management solution Comet employs 10,000 staff across its locations in the UK, many of whom use the IT systems that underpin the retailer’s successful sales and after sales service, for which the company is renowned. To ensure that the business systems operate to maximum efficiency, the IS department has invested in Hornbill’s Supportworks ITSM for its service desk. The solution was selected for its ability to be used across several areas of the business, its ease of use and ergonomic design following an evaluation of competitive solutions. According to Rob Gwatkin, service desk manager at Comet Group Plc: “During evaluation, Supportworks ITSM was by far the most popular choice with end-users. We were looking for a solution that would give all round visibility of the service we were offering, so that we could see where improvements could be made. Since implementation, Supportworks has given us that visibility and by concentrating on the top ten most common calls, and applying root cause analysis, we have been able to reduce weekly call volumes by 40 percent, through more effective incident and problem management.” Rob Gwatkin continues, “Getting an early quick win, by implementing the vanilla version of Supportworks ITSM to give us maximum benefit for least effort has enabled us to show the business that we deliver what we say we can deliver. This has put the department in a strong position when we are in discussions with the business about service delivery. Instead of being dictated to by the business, we are able to take a more proactive and creative approach, whereby we go to the business with ideas for better service provision and more efficient use of our resources.”
Common sense The IS department uses Supportworks www.vital-mag.net
ITSM for Incident Management, Problem Management, and is about to go live on Change Management. Supportworks is also used to manage IT assets through integration with Comet’s Altiris asset management and SAP enterprise solutions. Incidents with usage histories can be tracked-back to particular business units or individuals. This helps the IS team to identify potential training requirements. Call statistics have identified that 20 percent of the calls received by the service desk relate to password resets. Gwatkin has introduced a nominal departmental cross charging system that could be adopted. By providing visibility of the cost of service provision, IT aims to encourage callers to initially look for answers on the company intranet before contacting the service desk. “ITIL provides a best practice framework for service delivery, which we have used as a guide for our service improvement programme at Comet,” explains Gwatkin. “However, we don’t refer to ITIL when we talk to the business. We prefer to use terms like ‘common sense’, and ‘good practice’: underneath it is still ITIL, but business managers don’t need to know. We find that we get greater buy-in from the business when we take this approach.”
80% of calls resolved ahead of SLA targets One of the major benefits that Supportworks ITSM has brought is the ability to demonstrate the value of the services that the IT department provides to the business. The introduction of Service Level Agreements has provided clarity on the service delivered by IT and its performance. It has also enabled the team to measure the performance of third party suppliers. “Our SLA rates consistently reach 94 percent,” said Gwatkin. “We are also able to demonstrate that of the fixes that we carry out, 80 percent of the time we are faster than the published SLA target. This published information has helped to boost the credibility of the department. Now we receive many ‘thank yous’ from the business.” The Major Incident Management records enable business managers to get an update on an incident within 15 minutes, which reduces the number of calls the service desk receives to enquire about progress. “Communication
routes are a lot clearer now and everyone has visibility of what is happening, which is particularly helpful during a major incident as it enables us to concentrate on solving the issue in hand,” said Gwatkin.
Other departments benefit from ITIL approach Following the successful adoption of Supportworks ITSM by the IS team, the HR department is also using the system for common HR queries relating to cost centre, employee service information and payroll. There is now a single corporate service desk, whereby users call a central service desk number, with queries handled by the respective teams. It is not only the HR department which has seen the benefits of Supportworks - the facilities and property departments are now also interested in using the system. “It was always in our original plan to roll out Supportworks ITSM to other departments. We can use the platform and technology to facilitate a single consolidated service desk, which provides economies of scale and ensures that our customers get a consistent, quality service,” said Gwatkin.
Customer SelfService A particular focus for the IS department is on enabling its users to be more self-reliant, explains Gwatkin. “SelfService through Supportworks ITSM is the next big delivery for us. The benefits of this will be huge – our target is to reduce our current call volumes by 50 percent, giving us a total reduction of 70 percent since implementing the system.” As well as the built-in functionality, Gwatkin and his team have been pleased with the ease with which Supportworks ITSM can be configured, and the support from Hornbill and its customer community. “The project was delivered within three months and within budget, giving us much more functionality than we at first needed. We were able to deliver a lot out of the box, so didn’t have to spend a long time configuring the system to meet our needs. The dramatic improvement in service provision due to Supportworks and more efficient and proactive working has secured our reputation as a department that supports the business and delivers on its promises.” VitAL www.hornbill.com March / April 2010 : VitAL 31
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Deploying the IT service desk As the global economy begins its recovery and with costs being more analysed and managed than ever before, every organisation is being asked to deliver more, with less resources and for lower costs. A real differentiator is the quality of service and support and if these can be more automated and efficient, the business benefits can make the difference between success and failure as Cherwell European managing director Tony Probert explains.
32 VitAL : March / April 2010
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W
hatever the service currently being delivered, the provision of a helpdesk/ support desk is now an established and crucial element of any organisation’s day-today operational management, be it internally and/or externally focused. Customers can be served more proactively and employees can be more productive, if the quality of support they receive is faster and more effective. It is also a huge influencer on the user community’s perception of the IT services delivered within an organisation. Gartner surveys have shown that 50 percent of an end user’s perception of the IT services they receive is directly influenced by the quality of the support they experience. Therefore, provision of a quality service desk operation is no longer an option, it is essential. So defining and delivering the appropriate service offering, selecting and implementing the best software solution is something every organisation needs to get right, especially in today’s financial environment. Which as of today, I believe is leading to many organisations reassessing their current support services and the software tools being used.
Switching to service desk For those organisations operating a traditional helpdesk, the move to a Service Desk environment can be a daunting transition, as the requirements have become significantly more involved than offering a simple ticketing/ call logging service. Alternatively, there are those early adopters of the ITIL-based service desk and with the introduction of ITIL v3 the requirements for delivering ITIL-based services has changed considerably. In principle the requirements and issues involved with the deployment of an IT Service Desk are well documented by the ITIL, given that it has been developed over many years to provide best practice guidelines based on the experience of many organisations that have gone before. That old saying of ‘Not reinventing the wheel’, should be the mantra for anyone involved with or considering such a project. However, my experience over the past 18 years clearly shows that the ‘wheel’ is being constantly reinvented for a variety of reasons. Therefore, it is evidently clear that one size does not fit all and the project to deploy or upgrade an organisation’s Service Desk, albeit helped by the ITIL framework, is different for everyone. www.vital-mag.net
Does size matter? Irrespective of the size of an organisation the principles of deploying an IT Service Desk should be basically the same. What is different will be a) the level of sophistication required, b) whether ITIL is a driving force, c) specific business drivers that are deemed important for such a project and finally d) The need to drive financial cost savings. So, what dictates the sophistication, it is not an organisation’s size. Over the years I have seen many small service desk implementations that have had very intricate and detailed customisation and integration requirements, whilst many larger systems have been quite basic in their solution needs. It just depends on what is important to the operational requirements of an organisation. ITIL is not a focus for everyone, it might be deemed to be too costly and bureaucratic for many companies. However, to have the benefits of best practice should still be very beneficial, so why not take advantage if you can? Every organisation is different and although there may be similar business drivers within market verticals, the individual needs of any organisation will be different to those of their peers and competitors. Finally, many legacy service desk solutions are very expensive to maintain and manage, whereas new technology will be less expensive, easier to manage and more flexible. So it might not be a case of ‘reinventing the wheel’ per say, more a creative utilisation of the ‘wheel’ based on specific needs.
What is driving the need to change? When planning a project to implement or upgrade an IT Service Desk, a key criterion is to review and identify the primary business processes that already exist and what new innovation the project could/should deliver. What is driving the need to change, what if any are the constraints and limitations of an existing solution? It is highly possible that any existing solution is based on legacy technology; is limited in its functional capabilities; has little or no capacity for customisation or scalability, all of which severely constrain the ability of the service desk personnel to deliver timely, efficient and effective support services to their organisation. Having identified the critical business processes that need to be developed and March / April 2010 : VitAL 33
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initiated via the Service Desk team, it is then necessary to re-evaluate any incumbent software solution(s) being used as to their suitability for the new requirements. It is no good having scoped and designed the greatest processes in world, if the means by which they are to be delivered is not just capable of delivering the end result, but more importantly adding significant value, the flexibility to meet changing business needs and future scalability. In either deploying or upgrading a service desk the de facto standard is now for organisations of all size and type to adopt the best practice framework and recommendations offered by ITIL v3. To what extent an organisation is prepared to undertake the considerable investment required to fully adopt ITIL is a commercial decision they need to make for themselves. However, the benefits of the best practice framework cannot be denied but it is not necessarily right for everyone. Some organisations may want to have the recommended best practice embedded in whatever solution they may purchase but 34 VitAL : March / April 2010
not invest in the professional training and certification. At least this way they are able demonstrate best practice by having the required management processes inherent in the software they use. But let’s not beat around the bush here, for any organisation to fully invest in ITIL and especially the v3 release, can be a very daunting and costly undertaking for any organisation. Which is why industry experts such as Malcolm Fry, recognise the issues and concerns. Malcolm says “Many organisations will start the ITIL journey but not complete it, while others undertake the journey knowing they won’t ever complete the implementation. Therefore, organisations need to make sure they have the right basics for implementation at the beginning to ensure they maximise ITIL v3 at implementation and that it is fit for purpose.” To this end, levering his experience and many years of practical experience Malcolm has launched a new initiative, he says “ITIL Lite is an approach to implementing key components of ITIL v3 to ensure a sound basis for IT Service Management either as a starting point for full
implementation or as a deliverable for those not wishing to fully implement ITILv3.”
Entering a mine field An obvious crucial consideration has to be the service desk software deployed and its capabilities of helping to deliver ITIL best practices in an efficient, coordinated and effective manner. There are many solutions available with numerous vendors extolling the virtues of the products and their credentials for being ITIL compliant. This is where it can become a mine field, as all service management solutions are far from being equal. Therefore, careful consideration and evaluation is required to determine the type of solution will best suit an organisation. There are low cost solutions that can provide breadth of ITIL capability but offer little depth of functionality and require bespoke services for future customisation. At the other end of the scale are the ‘enterprise’ solutions which can offer everything an organisation might need but at a cost, both from an initial purchase perspective, ongoing management www.vital-mag.net
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overheads and specialist development resources. However, recent years have seen the emergence of new players offering new technology that is able to readily deliver ITIL best practice, allied to ‘enterprise’ functionality that is easy to deploy and no longer requires expensive ongoing management overheads. So it really is a case of ‘caveat emptor’ (buyer beware), as the solution choice you make could severely affect the success or otherwise of a project and once deployed it is almost impossible to reverse that decision and start again. So work hard to get it right first time and remember it is not just about features and functionality, or the initial project cost, the cost to your organisation over a three to five year time frame has to become a prime consideration.
People, processes & technology So back to the original topic ‘deploying the IT service desk’. Having made a decision about to what extent, if any you are going to adopt ITIL best practice and then selecting the best software solution to meet the requirements of your organisation, the project focus should be around ‘people, processes and technology’. It is not the intention to this article to provide detailed chapter and verse about project management and deployment but here are some tips for consideration. Project Initiation Document (PID): The Project Initiation Document brings together the key information needed to start the project on a sound basis. It should be conveyed to all stakeholders and agreed and signed off by the business sponsors. In short, this is the, “who, why, what, when and how”, part of the project. It defines all major aspects of a project and forms the basis for its management and the assessment of overall success. Methodology: For any Service Management project to be successful, the supplier should have a proven track-record of delivering successful projects on-time and to budget. To do this, they should have a clear, documented, methodology encompassing all phases of solution deployment including scoping, installation, customisation, data migration, training (both for administrators and users), provision of documentation, user acceptance testing, project sign-off and go-live support. Statement of Work (SOW): As with any complex project, effective scoping followed by a detailed Statement of Work is key to ensuring that projects are delivered on-time and to www.vital-mag.net
budget. All stakeholders/business sponsors should have visibility of the Statement of Work document before signing it off. Phase Sign-Off: Each phase of the deployment should be signed-off by both the supplier and the customer representatives (stakeholders and business sponsors) based on the scope of work. Any issues would be escalated to the project manager and addressed before the given phase is signed off.
Risks Then there are the risks that accompany any project. In many instances, not enough focus is applied to risks that may affect the project. This should be a key consideration when developing the Project Initiation Document. Any potential risks identified will need to be mitigated to ensure that the project can progress smoothly. Risks can fall into a number of categories including: Project Risks: Estimates that are excessively inaccurate, too aggressive a schedule, poor management, scope creep (poor change management), large projects not staffed appropriately. Schedule Risks: Project dependencies, parts delays, estimation errors, decision delay, hardware delay. Resource Risks: Outsourcing delays, lack of funds, attrition of resources, people joining the team late, scarcity of skills. Failure to identify and mitigate risks is likely to be a major factor in any failures or delays that occur.
Scope creep Finally, the hidden curse of any well planned project, ‘Scope Creep’. Although a well executed Statement of Work is designed to provide focus on the core deliverables for a project, project managers/project executors must be disciplined enough to refer customer contacts back to the Statement of Work, negotiating project extensions and additional funding, if required. The ultimate objective of deploying an IT service desk has to be to enhance business value, through the delivery of competitive advantage from improved customer service and/or increased productivity of an organisation’s employees, while reducing overall business costs. Although this might seem a high ideal, it is possible with the right planning and choice of software partner.
“Many organisations will start the ITIL journey but not complete it, while others undertake the journey knowing they won’t ever complete the implementation. Therefore, organisations need to make sure they have the right basics for implementation at the beginning to ensure they maximise ITIL v3 at implementation and that it is fit for purpose.”
VitAL
www.cherwellsoftware.com March / April 2010 : VitAL 35
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Achieving a higher standard ISO/IEC 20000 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Why would you go for it? And how would you begin? Rosemary Gurney* explains.
S
ince the early days of BS15000, the fore runner of ISO/IEC 20000, and its subsequent fast tracking to become the internationally recognised service management standard, the sense of achievement which organisations have felt by gaining the accreditation cannot be underestimated. ISO/IEC 20000 is the first worldwide standard specifically aimed at IT Service Management. It describes an integrated set of management processes for the effective delivery of services to the business and its customers. ISO/IEC 20000 was introduced in late 2005 as an elaboration 36 VitAL : March / April 2010
of the more general quality standard, ISO 9000. ISO/IEC 20000 is fully geared towards IT Service Management. It comprises the international quality requirements that IT services must fulfil. Plenty of hard work goes into achieving the standard not only by those running the project of work to implement it, but by those who are the â&#x20AC;&#x153;business as usualâ&#x20AC;? staff who need to be fully engaged in the vision of achieving the standard in order for it to happen. One of the most difficult but also most rewarding things about working within the standard comes from the heavy focus on service improvement,
making it truly an ongoing programme of work.
Why go for the standard? Many organisations choose to be certified against the ISO/IEC 20000 Standard so that they can prove that they provide professional IT Service Management to their customers. When you work within the ITIL frameworks to provide your IT Service Management you can do everything to a professional level and be in complete control of your IT Infrastructure and other resources but you are not able to prove that to anyone. This is because it is not possible www.vital-mag.net
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to comply with a framework. Frameworks are not prescriptive so one interpretation of something can be completely different to another and particularly with ITIL. ITIL is written to encourage an ‘adapt and adopt’ approach ie use only the bits that are suitable for your organisation. If your customer wants to know for certain that you are doing things ‘properly’ then the best way to show them this is with a certification awarded to you by an external body rather than just saying ‘we are doing it right’.
Achieving the standard Some in the industry say ISO/IEC 20000 certification is hard to achieve and then even harder to maintain and that the whole process is painful for everyone concerned. If you speak to people who have achieved the standard and are now in the stage of maintaining it they are very positive about it often saying “this is the best thing that we have ever done”. Once the culture changes are in place, during your initial implementation, then maintaining the standard, particularly the service improvement requirements becomes rewarding rather than hard work. Everyone is involved in the project, leading to people feeling more empowered and the morale within the department increasing significantly. Service Improvements may be small tweaks or may be major pieces of work but either way they lead to things being done smarter (more effectively and efficiently) this means that over time things are cheaper; wouldn’t it be good to be able to tell your customer their IT services will become cheaper year on year?
Where do I start? Many organisations feel that working towards certification is something that they would like to do but they do not know where to begin and so don’t take that first step. In general the first thing to decide upon is the scope of your certification. Which areas of the business are going to be in scope? A service, a department, a location? This information forms the basis of your scoping statement which is what the certificate is awarded against. Once you know the area of the business or service provision to be assessed then you should use the IT Service Management Self-assessment Workbook: 2005 (BIP 0015) 38 VitAL : March / April 2010
to understand where you are now. This is an easy to use questionnaire which you can use for a gap analysis. This can then become your task list or project plan.
Education There is a major benefit to having at least one person within the organisation qualified as an ISO/IEC 20000 Consultant (Practitioner) or alternatively bring someone in specifically to do this work on a consultancy basis. Once you have someone trained they can more realistically decide who else needs to be trained; some may just need some sort of overview guidance, others may benefit from a Foundation level course (EXIN and BCS/ISEB both offer these) and others may need to be qualified as a Consultant (Practitioner) via the itSMF UK Scheme. The itSMF UK scheme allows organisations to be certified (via a registered auditing company) against the ISO/IEC 20000 standard. Success allows them a stamp (certificate) of being a quality Service Management organisation. This stamp shows customers, potential customers and the competition that you are serious about what you do and that you are in control of the services you provide.
The qualification scheme To complement this certification scheme a qualification scheme was devised which trains two different audiences the Auditors and the Consultants (Practitioners). The aim of the Auditors qualification is to teach experienced auditors the specifics of the ISO/IEC 20000 standard and what IT Service Management is all about, the material we are passionate about and where our strengths lie. The Consultants (Practitioners) qualification intended for people who have a high level of Service Management experience and are used to working within various frameworks. Your subject matter experts will benefit from this qualification to enable them to take the organisation through the certification process. A gap exists; the people within an organisation who need to really understand the Standard in terms of what it is all about, the language it uses and where they fit into it in their role, are those who have been left in limbo. Awareness courses were a possibility but with no structured and examined course
ISO/IEC 20000 was introduced in late 2005 as an elaboration of the more general quality standard, ISO 9000. ISO/IEC 20000 is fully geared towards IT Service Management. It comprises the international quality requirements that IT services must fulfil.
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being available there was a hole within the market, making some people decide to sit the Consultants (Practitioners) qualification which covered more detail than they wanted and many found they were not successful. Now for the first time the itSMF UK scheme has a Foundation level course and exam recognised within it, this has been possible by partnering with BCS/ISEB and EXIN and reviewing their syllabus to ensure that it is fit for purpose as the entry level into the itSMF UK scheme. The course serves the needs of giving people an overview which can be examined.
This leads to individuals being able to prove their knowledge and understanding and as the course is at the right level for them it will make for a more positive experience. We at itSMF UK see ISO/IEC 20000 as a major part in the future of our industry. In fact when asked why organisations are considering going for certification against the standard many will cite either competitive advantage or because their customers want them to prove what they do. With this being the case many more people will be involved in this area through time and the
only way that the global rollout of ISO/IEC 20000 can happen is if the Examination Institutes work together to ensure that the market is clear and that the students themselves are able to get the training and achieve the level of qualification that they feel they need at any stage in their career. VitAL www.itsmf.co.uk *Rosemary Gurney is a director at Wardown Consulting Ltd and a member of the itSMF UK Management Board with portfolio responsibility for the itSMF UK ISO/IEC 20000 scheme.
Trying to keep it simple â&#x20AC;&#x201C; St. Helens Council â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Integrating ITIL v3 into ISO/IEC 20000
A
s an organisation we had been ISO/ IEC 20000 certified for less than a year when we started to look at ITIL v3, we were by no means certain that the time was right to undertake the move, and one thing was for certain, that if we did look to integrate it then the process would have to be as painless as possible! The entire section had been heavily involved in our certification attempt and although we had lots of enthusiasm for IT Service Management following this, our primary task was to keep the momentum going internally in sustaining and retaining the standard, and not asking too much of the staff by potentially introducing another set of best practice principles that they would need learn and adopt. Many of the staff would need to be convinced that this was worth the effort after all we were now officially an ISO/IEC 20000 certified organisation so why did we need to bother with v3 at this stage? We sat down as a management team to look at the reasons why we would need to invest in and embrace v3, what benefits it would bring, what it would cost and more importantly what it affect it would have on the section. We knew that in order to maintain our certification under ISO/IEC 20000 that we did not necessarily need to move to v3, but we were also mindful that to deliver and sustain best practice we needed to adhere to general ITIL principles. After some lengthy investigations we decided that on the face of it the move to v3 would support many of the things we had done to attain certification and would put us in a stronger position to maintain it in the future. We decided to move to v3 in February 2008 and we put in place a training programme
40 VitAL : March / April 2010
that catered for those managers who had already gained v2 Managers certificates, and the Foundation refresh for all other members of staff, as the section had some sixty plus people in it we had to ensure that this was a controlled training implementation. We also wanted to give to the staff a clear illustration of our commitment as an organisation to their personal development, but additionally to demonstrate that ITIL was evolving and in a positive way! Following the training we sat down as a team and put together a plan to deploy v3 into the section, the team involved managers, our dedicated Service Improvement team, Process Auditors, and the staff in general. We acknowledged at this stage in our understanding of v3 that none of us were experts, therefore, our plan was to deliver change in two ways, firstly we decided to integrate several key but straightforward v3 concepts into the way we worked, and then to look at the wider implications following that by creating a dedicated team to look at IT Service Management, ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL v3 and what it meant in the longer term to us. To begin with we looked at our roles and responsibilities documentation, we already had a comprehensive set of documents including a process to role matrix, it was very easy for us to adapt this to embrace the v3 RACI model. It clarified the differences between accountability and responsibility and was something that we could immediately share with all staff. We then looked at our Service Desk, which we were in the process of upgrading, and embraced the principles of Service Request Fulfilment splitting out incidents from those
items coming into the Service Desk from those, which were true requests for service. We rewrote our documentation and procedures to reflect this. In terms of the Service Portfolio and Service Catalogue we looked at the way v3 defined these and incorporated some of the basic principles into our infrastructure modifying our current Service Catalogue along the way to deal with only live and retiring systems. Under Supplier management we reviewed our contracts database and, when we looked at v3 found that we in the main already had alignment because of the ISO/IEC 20000 standard and so in effect didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to modify anything at this stage, this was a pleasing discovery because it made us realise that by having the standard we were already adopting v3 almost by default in some areas. We looked at Availability and Capacity management, and made some minor changes to our plan documents to reflect new v3 terminology where it had been used, for example, Service Outage Analysis was now Service Fault Analysis, Meantime to Repair was Meantime to Restore Service, etc. There are a number of other areas in which we have made changes, but these are some of the initial things we have implemented, we are looking at other areas in v3, Demand, Risk, Change, Release and Deployment, and Continual Service Improvement and realise that there is a lot it can teach us and benefit us by utilising it, the important thing that we have learned already is that as a certified organisation it is possible to introduce ITIL v3 at a very basic level without a great deal of effort and without major impact on the standard itself, which is what was important to us.
www.vital-mag.net
NetSupport Manager
‘Remote Support For Any Environment’ NetSupport Manager has been helping organisations optimise the delivery of their IT support services since 1989 and while the use of Remote Control software is now common place, unlike 20 years ago the diverse range of platforms, protocols and physical assets now in use provide PC Management and Remote Control Software solutions with the continuous challenge of being able to offer support to a variety of configurations. The success of NetSupport Manager lies in its ability to continually evolve to meet the needs of any environment. Combining comprehensive multi-platform support for Windows, Linux, MAC, Solaris, CE, Pocket PC and Windows Mobile systems with a range of PC Management tools designed to ensure that critical IT infrastructure is available when needed most, NetSupport Manager offers complete compatibility for today’s business environment. Planning for upgrades and the rollout of new technology is now even easier thanks to NetSupport Manager version 11’s restyled interface. Auto-Grouping of machines by operating system and platform provides an instant overview of your IT environment, you can even identify which laptops or desktop PCs are powered by Intel® vPro™ technology. Complete integration with Windows 7 introduces Touch Screen compatibility and enhanced Task Bar operations to NetSupport Manager’s toolkit.
Be among the first to see new NetSupport Manager v11 at the Service Desk & IT Support Show. See us at
Service Desk & IT Support Show 2010 - Stand 824 27 - 28 April 2010 - Earls Court, London
www.netsupportmanager.com
email: sales@netsupportsoftware.co.uk
telephone: 01778 382270
vital processes
Successful negotiation When it comes to negotiation, David Freedman, sales director, Huthwaite International says it’s time for a more organised approach.
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t a recent conference, a senior executive at a Global 500 company was overheard to say: “If only we could pick up all the money we are spilling in negotiation. It’s a huge number, definitely in the tens of millions.” He went on to describe how his company was in the early stages of negotiation development and still lacked a consistent approach. He could not disguise his real concern: “Our failure to develop the skill of our negotiators across the company will not be evident until it is too late.”
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Other businesses too have recognised the importance of negotiation in improving bottom line profitability and as a result have put together large-scale training programmes. However, too many still lack a clearly-defined strategy in driving such initiatives. Today’s best-performing IT companies show that the key to success is both simple and fundamental. In every case, they have transformed negotiation from an individual competency into an organisation-wide capability. So the importance of process is clear, but in implementing such enterprise-wide www.vital-mag.net
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change, IT companies should not lose sight of the fact that fully-developed behavioural skills remain vital for those members of the sales or business development team on the negotiating front line.
The power of negotiation The contrast in performance could hardly be more stark: between 2007 and 2008, the net income of the world’s top 2,000 companies declined by over 30 percent. Over the same period, the top 25 percent of companies adopting a systematic approach to negotiation achieved an average net income increase of nearly 43 per cent. These companies were identified as world-class on the Huthwaite International/IACCM (International Association for Contract and Commercial Management) ‘negotiation maturity’ benchmarking scale. So how can one explain such a huge variation in bottom line profitability? In the first study of its kind, Huthwaite International and the IACCM interviewed more than 120 major buy- and sell-side practitioners and benchmarked the negotiation maturity of the world’s largest organisations. In particular, it explored how major international companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, HP, Avaya, Invensys and Teradata are trying to improve their corporate negotiating performance. The resulting report – Improving corporate negotiating performance - found one common factor among the most successful of these companies: they have all re-engineered their negotiation capabilities. Despite this, the survey also found that in too many other companies negotiation performance improvement is being ignored, neglected or ineffectively addressed. For these businesses, negotiation is still seen to be a very personal, ‘soft’ skill. Such an approach is no longer sustainable. To secure multi-million pound deals in today’s tough commercial arena requires much more than this for, as the survey highlights, companies with no negotiation process suffered an average net income decline of no less than 63 percent between 2007 and 2008. So what’s the answer? The survey identified ten critical areas which IT companies should address if they are to achieve significant and measurable improvements in negotiation performance. These include standardising and documenting the end-to-end negotiation www.vital-mag.net
process, ensuring consistent inter-departmental collaboration and measuring negotiation success. Though some companies have started on the road to transforming their negotiation practices, few have succeeded in embedding a consistent process across different business divisions or geographic boundaries. This should come as no surprise, as implementing such in-depth change is not easy. As a sales director of another Global 500 company bluntly put it: “We don’t prescribe how our employees should negotiate – there is no bible for this. We have 45 divisions worldwide and it is impossible to have a standard process.” Yet the impact of a successful shift is little short of astonishing. One respondent pointed to a saving of $37 million on a single deal following the introduction of a more structured approach to negotiation. And, as another global head of contract management confirmed: “Before the new process was put in place, the average negotiation cycle time on complex projects over $5 million was 12-18 months. Today 75 percent of those deals are done in less than eight weeks.”
Negotiation maturity In benchmarking the current stage of development of each organisation, researchers adopted a five-phase negotiation maturity model. At one end of the scale, the weakest companies have no process, are purely reactive and rely totally on individual skills and capabilities. In greatest contrast to this, best practice organisations - identified as ‘world class’ - have a formalised negotiation process which is subject to continuous improvement and incorporated into the broader buying or selling process. So where do most companies sit? Overall, the survey identified disappointing levels of maturity in global negotiation standards. Fewer than one in five global corporations have any formalised structured planning tools for the negotiation. The end result is badly-prepared negotiators who feel that success will be based solely on individual merit.
Between 2007 and 2008, the net income of the world’s top 2,000 companies declined by over 30 percent. Over the same period, the top 25 percent of companies adopting a systematic approach to negotiation achieved an average net income increase of nearly 43 per cent.
Focusing on effective change In helping businesses improve performance, the research identifies ten critical areas March / April 2010 : VitAL 43
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throughout the negotiation process which must be addressed if any transformation initiative is to succeed. Changing the behaviour of an organisation may be difficult, the survey concedes: “However, when companies with no process are demonstrably losing millions of dollars in negotiation, the status quo is not an option,” it believes. In focusing on process as key to improving the bottom line, the survey recommends, “at the very least, the implementation of strategic cross-organisational negotiation planning from the very start of the sales or acquisition process, in order to have consistently successful outcomes”. Or, put another way, start as you mean to go on. There is no doubt, of course, that a large number of other factors influence negotiation performance, not least of which is the impact of new web-based technologies and the emergence of professional third party procurement specialists. The directors and senior managers surveyed were in no doubt that the following key performance areas must be addressed in order to ensure the success of any negotiation transformation initiative: • Negotiation process; • Cross-organisational collaboration; • Data collection and analysis; • Preparation and planning; • Approval and escalation systems; • Negotiation training; • Measurement of negotiation success; • Motivation for negotiation success; • Common negotiation standards; • Board level support.
There is however clear light at the end of this tunnel. Any organisation can easily access costeffective behavioural skills training solutions which can have a substantial and immediate impact on negotiation performance. So what separates successful negotiators from their less effective counterparts in securing long-term, mutually profitable partnerships with suppliers or customers? In helping negotiators enhance their ability to achieve win/win outcomes, the best performance improvement programmes have recognised the central importance of behavioural skills, in enabling a creative approach which adds value for both parties. The following two examples show how this works at the point of negotiation. Counterintuitively perhaps, skilled negotiators ask twice as many questions as their average peers, in seeking to understand fully the other party’s position, the reasons for this stance and all possible options for reaching a successful agreement. The best negotiators are similarly twice as likely to test their understanding of what the other party has said, in order to successfully maintain momentum and clarity, and so avoid potential conflict or misunderstanding further into the negotiation. This highlights a common weakness among lesser negotiators, who tend to see negotiation in terms of straightforward ‘horse-trading’ rather than trying to understand – and so respond to – what is valuable to the person on the other side of the negotiating table. By contrast, skilled negotiators have a broad behavioural repertoire and the flexibility to adapt their behaviour to suit the situation.
Skilled negotiators – on their best behaviour
A step-by-step approach
Despite the overall emphasis on process in securing a consistent, unified approach to negotiation throughout the organisation, it will not have gone unnoticed in this analysis that skills training for those at the rock face of negotiation – whether buying or selling – remains a central component to broader performance improvement. Just as the survey found that few global IT or other corporates had any formalised negotiation planning tools, there was a parallel lack of maturity in the area of negotiation training. In particular, just 31 percent of companies questioned have a formalised approach to training, with only five percent reflecting a world class level of maturity.
With little cross-organisational planning, today’s negotiators are typically unempowered and so are constantly having to seek approval or authorisation. It is little wonder that, in such circumstances, success depends solely on individual talent. It may be true that ‘pieces of paper don’t help to generate business’, but as the survey demonstrates, there is no doubt that systems for strategically planning for negotiations are more likely to produce consistently successful outcomes. Moving to an effective negotiation strategy requires the involvement of suitably-trained staff at all levels and across all departments. Equally, a set of common end-to-end processes and
44 VitAL : March / April 2010
www.vital-mag.net
VitAL Drive: IT hits the fairway
Changing the behaviour of an organisation may
I’m working from home today
be difficult, the survey concedes: “However,
Like many thousands of others in early January, Geraint Lewis turns in his copy from the warmth and safety or his home... as the snow falls ever deeper outside.
when companies with no process are demonstrably losing millions of dollars in negotiation, the status quo is not an option,” it believes. standards should be established, which can be properly documented and measured. This is a world away from a naïve reliance on the mental agility and verbal skills of your best salesman, when complex deals worth many millions of pounds are at stake. As with any major change process, buy-in at executive level and the negotiation ‘coal face’ is just as vital. In implementing change therefore, start small and grow on the basis of the success stories generated – for mandating a process without adequate explanation of the benefits and potential payoff is doomed to failure. Each business must therefore be realistic as to the speed and degree of change that can be achieved. They should review their benchmarking data, identify the biggest gaps in current performance and take action on a step-by-step basis. It may be unrealistic to believe that there will ever be a negotiation director sitting opposite their sales and marketing counterparts at the boardroom table. That said, something of such fundamental importance and required so widely simply cannot be left to chance. VitAL www.huthwaite.co.uk www.vital-mag.net
S
now Day – it’s not just a terrible film starring Chevy Chase, it’s a phrase to strike fear into the heart of any boss. The recent bad weather in the UK, once again forced bosses to consider allowing staff to work from home. Even in the 21st Century, most bosses look at home working with a degree of scepticism, they think that their staff will spend the day in their pjs, sitting on the sofa, eating toast and watching episodes of The Bill on UK Gold. The reality is that more and more people no longer face the daily commute to an office; they either work from home or have no office as such, other than a hot desk station that they can sit at on the infrequent occasions that they are in their Corporate HQ. For the unfortunate IT professionals, the trek to work remains a familiar one, sure we can log on from home and monitor the servers, our pda allows us to send and receive emails from the sofa, but to provide that support to the user, we have to be on site, looking over their shoulder, telling them what to do and sighing when they still manage to click on the wrong icon. One final thought, the poor workers that we have all seen, holding meetings in Café Primo on the M5 or in the restaurant in the local Tesco SuperStore, do they have to trek over to their local coffee house in the bad weather to prove to their boss that they made it into work? VitAL March / April 2010 : VitAL 45
vital profile
Out of the box IT A company that offers out of the box solutions to help IT service departments work harder and smarter could be custom-made for an era of economic hardship. InfraVision managing director Nigel Todd explains his company’s philosophy to VitAL.
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nfraVision says it enables IT departments of large and mid-sized organisations in all business sectors, to run as a business; a business with a clear service portfolio for its customers, adding value to the core business of the entire organisation. The company has many years of experience with ITIL, Bisl and ASL; the reference frameworks for setting up management processes within a service organisation. Unlike many other companies, it says it has proved to be capable of turning the theory of ITIL into pragmatic best practice solutions for customers.
46 VitAL : March / April 2010
The company delivers project-based services that make it completely clear from the outset what results will be achieved; what the deliverables will be; what the costs are and the time frame; and also offers hosting and/or support of the solution. In its projects it combines thorough application knowledge with broad knowhow of ITIL. As a consequence it says it has very high standards when selecting software vendors to work with. Indeed, all of its vendors are leaders in their area of expertise. With ‘out-of-the-box’ software InfraVision says it creates tailor-made solutions for the customer. And when implementing these www.vital-mag.net
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solutions out-of-the-box thinking is employed to create a project that fits the needs, budget and time frame. InfraVision’s Business Service Management model is best visualised as ‘four circles’: Service Support: Covers the description, implementation and support of services delivered by IT to the business. Service Support uses processes like Incident Management (Request management), Service Level Management, Change Management and Problem Management. Service Support, like all circles has a very tight relation to the CMDB and therefore Configuration Management. Service Assurance: Covers the monitoring and event generation of your service infrastructure. Service Assurance uses processes like Capacity Management, Availability Management, Problem Management, Continuity Management, Event Management and Security Management. Service Assurance improves availability and reliability of the services delivered by the IT department and enables IT to be proactive. Service Automation: Automates tasks and processes that are usually manual tasks, thus saving time and money. Processes that particularly benefit from automation are; Operations Management, Change Management, Release Management, Identity Management and support of virtualisation. Security: One of the major tasks of any IT service provider is to make sure all services are delivered in a secure way. In today’s environment with its many risks from outside but also from the inside it is of the utmost importance to have a clear strategy around security, a strategy that should be translated into policies for your environment and for every service you offer. InfraVision says its security offerings provide advice and the necessary tools to optimise security policy. At the Service Desk and IT Support Show at Earls Court (see preview on p55) InfraVision will be unveiling two new products from BMC Software; the latest release of Service Desk Express with Alignability, Version 10, and the new joint venture from BMC and Salesforce. www.vital-mag.net
com, Service Desk Express On Force.com, a fully Software as a Service (SaaS) offering being delivered on the Force.com platform. VitAL: What are the origins of the company; how did it start and develop; how has it grown and how is it structured? Nigel Todd: InfraVision was started in the Netherlands, long recognised as the leading country in Service Management, in 1989, it has grown organically and through the acquisition of two companies, Muller Ohlinger and Partners in Germany to form InfraVision GmbH, and the inclusion of Hobbit, a Dutch Service Management company. The UK arm was started in 2008. VitAL: What is the company’s specialist area or product group, if any? NT: InfraVision inspires organisations to move from a break/fix culture to a service-led culture. This is achieved through the delivery of fieldproven – in over 200 companies – processes, procedures and work instructions, the skills and mindset for your staff to embrace the transition and the technology to act as a delivery mechanism. InfraVision provides service, system and network management software and services that enable IT departments of large and midsized organisations, in the commercial and public sectors, to run their department as a business; a business with a clear service portfolio for its customers, thereby adding value to the core business of the organisation – in simple terms, less downtime and more productivity. As the leading Elite partner in EMEA for BMC Software, we specialise in the ITSME product suite and specifically in BMC Service Desk Express with the Alignability Process Model, a combination architected and built by InfraVision.
InfraVision inspires organisations to move from a break/fix culture to a service-led culture. This is achieved through the delivery of fieldproven - in over 200 companies – processes, procedures and work instructions, the skills and mindset for your staff to embrace the transition and the technology to act as a delivery mechanism.
VitAL: Is that specialisation to make the best use of skills in the company or because it fits the company’s world view or has it simply evolved? March / April 2010 : VitAL 47
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Over recent years , as Help Desks evolved into Service Desks and became the central point of any customer, InfraVision has expanded into Security Management and NT: InfraVision has always been a Service Management-focussed organisation and has developed the right group of people to deliver world class Service Management solutions utilising what we believe to be the best tools in the market. VitAL: How has any specialisation influenced the company’s general stance? NT: InfraVision is recognised as leader in Service Management, and will always have Service Management as a central pillar to the company’s offerings, but over recent years, as Help Desks evolved into Service Desks and became the central point of any customer, InfraVision has expanded into Security Management and Network Management as well as the more obvious extensions into Facilities Management and HR. VitAL: who are the company’s main customers today and in the future? NT: We have over 130 customers ranging from smaller organisations with two people in the Service Desk to organisations such as Danone and NATO who count their agents in 100s. Many of our customers have been with us for years, a testament to our practicing what we preach. We see InfraVision helping our customers to deliver more value from their Service Management core, tying in automated Event Management, automated Building Management, Automated Systems Management. As access to the web becomes easier and more mobile, we will exploit the hand held opportunities for Service Management. 48 VitAL : March / April 2010
VitAL: What is the company’s business model, ie, does it select a market and then design solutions to meet the needs of that market or does it specialise in particular solutions and seek markets where those solutions are needed? NT: InfraVision long recognised the gulf between ITIL and a pragmatic solution, between being a break/fix organisation and a service-led business partner organisation and set about developing and delivering a solution that addressed those shortcomings in the market. But, by the same token, organisations are no longer able to write blank cheques for the implementation of such a solution, and as our tag line is IT out of the box, we devised an out of the box solution that is hugely powerful, yet retains flexibility. It has proven a huge success and has led to the expansion of InfraVision in all of its markets.
Network Management as well as the more obvious extensions into Facilities Management and HR.
VitAL: What is the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, ie, ‘green’ issues? NT: In so far as an organisation engaged in our type of business can be, we recognise and support the need for looking after the planet and staff are encouraged to be socially responsible. InfraVision values its most important asset, our staff and encourages a healthy work life balance, regularly bringing the whole company together to address issues and celebrate success, in business and in personal lives. The culture of InfraVision is of a young, vibrant, innovative company that likes to walk a mile not only in our customers shoes, but in our staffs’ shoes too. www.vital-mag.net
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VitAL: How is the company encouraging social responsibility in its customers and the wider world? NT: As will be seen at the Service Desk and IT Support Show in April in London (see preview starting on page 55 - Ed), we will be showcasing one of our larger customers Danone, and their presentation will feature a powerful message on our roles as citizens of the global village and their desire to provide healthy nutrition and water to as many of the world’s population as possible. A goal supported by InfraVision and a message passed to as many of our prospects and customers as possible. Change is possible, but change for the good is not inevitable, unless we make that change be for the better. VitAL: How does the company communicate with customers? NT: We communicate electronically wherever possible, and encourage online forums and presentations, however there are times when human interaction is the only medium that will suffice and we call Customer Councils, onsite visits and attend trade shows where our desires and messages are appropriate. VitAL: What does the product range cover? NT: We offer, in the simplest terms, Service Management, Systems Management and Security Management solutions, either as stand alone entities or, more preferably, as entwined entities. VitAL: What is your view of the current state of IT Service Management and IT in business and the economy in general, the challenges and the opportunities? NT: Given the current economic climate, organisations are becoming more complex and placing ever more reliance upon technology to efficiently deliver their products to their customers. With that reliance comes responsibility for the Service Management teams. These teams are being asked to look after more, often with the same or less resources than before. IT is still seen as a cost centre in many organisations rather than the integral business partner it should be. In such organisations they must transform to a service-led culture or either be replaced or downsized further. Efficiency is crucial and while ITIL offers glimpses of the key to success, it is not the be all and end all that sadly many purveyors would have you believe. Rather it is a component in a complex solution that is attainable, and not at huge cost. 50 VitAL : March / April 2010
We expect to double the size of the business in the next three to five years, depending upon the climate, if the The CMDB is not the Holy Grail, it is achievable and in a short time frame, ITIL alignment is useful but only as long as it delivers tangible value. By all means align to ITIL, but only the parts that work for you, and then do not be theoretical, rather be pragmatic and efficient; does this save us time, increase the service to the customer, and is it affordable? If it’s three yeses, go for it. In this climate we must be efficient, service-led and deliver value, especially in organisations where IT has five or so staff, all wearing many hats – these organisations don’t have the luxury of over manning, expensive monitoring systems – they need to work smarter and harder, and we can help. VitAL: Has the company grown organically or by acquisition and how much is growth expected in the future? NT: To date the majority of our growth has been organic with around 15 percent growth due to acquisition. We expect to double the size of the business in the next three to five years, depending upon the climate, if the downturn progresses our doubling could be sooner as the realisation of what we offer spreads and more organisations see how to save resources with our solutions.
downturn progresses our doubling could be sooner as the realisation of what we offer spreads and more organisations see how to save resources with our solutions.
VitAL: What are the future plans for the business? NT: We will increase the amount of services able to be supported through our solutions, encouraging a Shared Service Centre approach as adopted by the City of Rotterdam where everything from reporting pot holes, to getting password resets, from understanding Civic Services on offer and their availability, to enquiries with the Port Authority goes through one Service Desk. VitAL: Nigel Todd, thank you very much. VitAL
www.infravision.com www.vital-mag.net
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vital planet
Gaining green intelligence Richard Kellet, head of customer marketing & operations at business analytics leader SAS, outlines why the most forward-thinking organisations use analytics for sustainable IT
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ising energy prices, climate change, old hardware piling up in landfills â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all these highlight why sustainable IT projects are growing in importance. Green, or sustainable IT, describes the manufac turing, management, use and disposal of technology in a way that minimises damage to the environment. Aside from the obvious benefits such as reducing an organisationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s carbon footprint and energy consumption, sustainable IT can help companies to adhere with regulations, drive efficiencies as well as boost customer and employee loyalty. Businesses are also beginning to recognise the positive impact of sustainability on brand. Many of the top global businesses are turning to technology, and business analytics in particular, to strategise, analyse and implement effective environmental initiatives.
IT is part of the solution There is no doubt that IT has a responsibility to reduce the negative impact of technology on the environment. This is largely because of the power consumption IT creates. Industry experts estimate that between two and four percent of the wordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s electricity goes towards running data centres and this figure is set to grow. As power requirements for IT continue to rise, political and social pressures increase. This is giving rise to new regulatory requirements and is boosting demand for sustainable IT projects. Sustainability extends beyond the IT department. In fact, of the top 150 companies in the world, nearly all have 52 VitAL : March / April 2010
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a ‘sustainability officer’ overseeing environmental projects across the organisation. At the same time, a greater percentage of IT budgets are now being allocated towards sustainable IT. Gartner estimates that, by 2014, most IT business cases will include carbon remediation costs. Another Gartner study shows more than one third of organisations anticipate spending more than 15 percent of their IT capital budgets on green IT projects, despite the current economic climate. All these factors point to a closer link between corporate social responsibility and IT. The business benefits of sustainability are significant. Server virtualisation and desktop power management has already demonstrated major energy and cost savings, helping to justify sustainable IT projects to the business. Green IT not only helps reduce power consumption and carbon emissions but also drives operational efficiencies and resource optimisation. Becoming more environmentally-aware attracts and retains customers, increases shareholder value, boosts employee productivity and increases brand equity.
Analytics delivering green results The business benefits of green IT are leading some of the most forward-looking global organisations to use new methods of increasing sustainability to reduce their impact on the planet. Companies that have initiated sustainable IT programmes have found business analytics is critical to delivering green cost-effective results that the business can embrace. www.vital-mag.net
In fact many find that sustainability and profit are not mutually exclusive. Innovative organisations are able to find a balance between economic profits and making a positive contribution to the environment. Successful companies will use data, and the intelligence gained from it, for a competitive advantage by improving internal and external efficiencies, accountability and engendering stakeholder loyalty. Establishing a sustainability management framework, powered by business analytics, enables companies to manage, measure and report on environmental initiatives. Business analytics helps calculate a true carbon footprint and set green metrics to measure performance. Companies can track their progress against particular business metrics, such as by business unit or region. This information is vital to understanding how to reduce an organisation’s impact on the environment. Effective measurement improves transparency and is as essential for compliance as it is for social pressure. Using analytics to reduce an organisation’s environmental impact is closely linked with other key business benefits including performance management, organisational effectiveness and risk management.
Predictive analytics Business analytics can predict return on investment for a proposed sustainability programme to determine what will be most impactful on the environment and the organisation’s bottom line. It measures the complexity of corporate initiatives to identify actions that have the greatest impact on its
Industry experts estimate that between two and four percent of the word’s electricity goes towards running data centres and this figure is set to grow. As power requirements for IT continue to rise, political and social pressures increase. This is giving rise to new regulatory requirements and is boosting demand for sustainable IT projects.
March / April 2010 : VitAL 53
vital planet
Sustainable IT checklist: • Implement a plan for reducing and managing waste appropriately, including the disposal of computers and other IT hardware; • Expand grid computing and virtualisation projects; • Include green considerations in procurement processes;
Business analytics helps calculate a true carbon footprint and set green metrics to measure performance. Companies can track their progress against particular business metrics, such as by business
• Conduct an energy-efficient assessment; • Modify physical infrastructure in data centres to gain eco-efficiencies; • Document a policy that states what environmentally sustainable IT means to the organisation; • Design new products that improve environmental sustainability; • Assess where IT can have the most impact on organisational greenhouse gas reduction goals and at what cost.
unit or region. This information is vital to understanding how to reduce an organisation’s impact on the environment. business objectives. This enables companies to determine which business strategies are most detrimental to the environment as well as increasing shareholder value. Sustainable IT initiatives can then be identified for development. The information gained from business analytics can be analysed to identify further opportunities for improvement. IT organisations can implement a broad range of sustainable IT initiatives to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Business analytics can be used to measure energy consumption, expand virtualisation projects, and reduce waste including disposing of computers. Sustainability management can also help to implement green considerations in the procurement process to ensure suppliers comply with environmental policies. It can also be used to conduct energy efficient assessments to inform modifications to the physical infrastructure in data centres. 54 VitAL : March / April 2010
Sustainable IT will also help to reduce operational costs and overall energy footprint. Demand for sustainable projects that help reduce the environmental impact and power consumption of IT is increasing. A higher percentage of the IT budget is now being allocated towards sustainable IT projects and initiatives as part of a larger corporate sustainability strategy. The business drivers for sustainable IT include not only increased environmental awareness but also operational efficiencies, responding to regulations and an opportunity to enhance brand value to gain a competitive edge. Adopting a performance management framework driven by business intelligence and analytics can help organisations establish environmental, economic and social metrics. These metrics enable companies to analyse and implement successful and effective sustainability initiatives. VitAL www.sas.com/uk
Post Italiane Group delivers energy savings Poste Italiane Group is the largest employer in Italy with approximately 150,000 staff. The organisation recently moved from being Government-run to privately-owned. As part of the move Poste Italiane started a special energy project with the support of its IT department. The goal was to monitor and optimise its electricity, fuel and water consumption across its buildings to drive efficiencies and reduce its carbon footprint. The company deployed business analytics with the help of a local IT consulting company, Crisma, to measure and forecast energy consumption and billing. The team classified each energy supplier and building and analysed billing statements based on the level of consumption. The solution enables the business to collect accurate measurement data, and forecasted consumption information allows it to make changes to its operations and maintenance. Luciano Blasi, energy manager for the project, explained, “We are dealing with an overall structure that includes 14,500 buildings, half a terawatt per year in electric power and gas consumption of more than 20 million cubic meters.” In the first year of the project the organisation reduced its overall carbon emissions by seven percent and energy consumption by one percent. The company plans to extend the project to each territory manager, allowing them to monitor their own consumption via a web-based reporting system. This will enable the energy manager to set energy performance objectives for each facility manager to further reduce its environmental impact. Blasi concludes, “Of course reducing costs is a goal but it is preceded by increasing awareness, consumption control, sustainability and reducing our environmental impact.”
www.vital-mag.net
the
vital
Guide
to The Service Desk and IT Support Show 2010
27-28 April 2010 Earls Court, London
Europe’s largest IT service management event The highlight of the service desk calendar, The Service Desk and IT Support (SDITS) Show runs from 27th to the 28th April 2010 at Earls Court in London.
N
ow in its 17th year, the Service Desk and IT Support (SDITS) Show is where the IT Service Management industry converges to see the latest technology and business services. This year’s event will focus on key industry themes including improving business efficiency, reducing operational costs and the future of ITIL. Over 100 educational seminars, workshops, panel discussions, keynotes and hot topic round-tables will examine these themes and more, while visitors can also experience handson demonstrations of over 250 products and services from the most innovative and trusted suppliers to the sector on the exhibition floor. Breakfast Briefings start each day with Hornbill and SDI launching a new white paper on Tuesday. ‘Mind the Gap’ will uncover
56 VitAL : March / April 2010
the scale of the gap between the services delivered by the Service Desk and those the business really needs. Wednesday’s briefing will debate the findings of the latest serviceprovider and end-user research on making the RITE decisions, with an expert panel chaired by Vance Brown, president and CEO of Cherwell Software. Keynotes and panel discussions follow throughout the day with seminar streams focusing on ITIL, service management processes, technology and people running alongside. On the exhibition floor, leading companies in the sector including Citrix Online, EMC, Hornbill Systems, Pink Elephant, Sunrise Software, Axios and Avocent, to name a few, are on hand to demonstrate and discuss the latest thinking and technologies on a one-to-one basis. www.vital-mag.net
Keynote Theatre Corporate demand for increased agility, lower operating costs and competitive advantage is greater than ever. Hear OVUM’s Stephen Mann discuss the opportunities available today to help you work smarter, not harder. Ken Goff explores the dynamics of Problem Management and discusses its power as an essential component of corporate culture.
Seminar Programme Technology; Process; Solutions; People; Performance - now in three dedicated theatres, indispensable education from the specialists to inform and motivate. Sessions include real-life case studies from industry pioneers. Dennis Adams Associates will be presenting a seminar at the show: “Managing the Key IT Production Resource - People” which brings a remarkable insight into motivating the Individual and the team. “The effectiveness of IT is not in technology alone, but technology applied effectively by people,” for an exclusive preview see p60 in this issue.
Workshops & Panel Discussions Participate and interact. From expert-led workshops on the Service Catalogue to panel debates on essential metrics and their applications, these must-attend sessions are great opportunities for personal education and in-depth team learning.
Simulation Zone Lift-off to the moon, manage a check-in glitch at a busy airport, save the day in a dramatic health scare – collaborate and build your knowledge of ITIL and service management in a series of simulations that translate the urgency, fast pace, and impact of IT decisions - with a sense of fun and without the stress!
Hot Topic Roundtables Join one of many roundtable workshops to share and discuss experiences on a host of topical issues. With expert facilitators, subjects include creating CMDBs, the service catalogue, effective self-service, customer satisfaction metrics, and planning your Windows 7 rollout.
Seminar highlights
Keynote highlights
• A new era in IT service delivery, Tuesday 27th, 10.30am – 11.15am. Virgin Atlantic discuss their service improvement programme (SIP) with Fusion – Lara Osgood, SIP programme manager and Carl Chambers, IT service design and development manager, Virgin Atlantic. • Adding value with ISO 2000, Tuesday 27th, 1.30pm – 2.15pm. Tamworth Borough Council illustrate how their implementation of ISO 15000 and ISO 20000 has set the pace for local government service management – Nicki Burton, assistant director of ICT, Tamworth Borough Council. • Power to the people, Tuesday 27th, 10.15am – 11.00am. BBC Monitoring discuss their ITIL implementation – Paul Gibbons, technology support manager, BBC Monitoring. • Don’t call it ITIL! Comet shines with ‘Common Sense’, Wednesday 28th, 12.30 – 1.15pm. Comet explains how best to introduce ITIL to the general business and improve IT’s reputation within the organisation – Rob Gwatkins, IS Service Desk manager, Comet plc (see p30 in this issue for Comet case study). • Staleness in Service Desk staff – How to spot it and avoid it, Wednesday 28th, 1.15pm – 2.00pm. John Fahey, training consultant from STI explains how to assess staleness levels within the service desk and offer strategies to prevent this. • Implementing ITIL for SMEs, Wednesday 28th, 11.30am – 12.15pm. Girish Mathrubootham from Zoho Corporation considers the essential ITIL processes and what’s critical for SMEs to give practical guidance on how to get started with ‘just enough’ ITIL.
The keynote programme includes presentations from leading figures in the industry and panel debates. Highlights of this and the seminar programme are as follows: • The Power of Problem Management, Tuesday 27th , 10.45am – 11.45am featuring Ken Goff, principal lecturer at KGM who will explore the why this should be an essential component of the corporate culture. • 10 Killer Metrics – What are they and why? Tuesday 27th, 12.15pm – 1.30pm. A panel discussion where experienced practitioners will bring their own take on the most important topics facing service desk directors and managers chaired by Howard Kendall. • Work Smarter Not Harder! Practical solutions for the IT Service Desk, Wednesday 28th April, 10.45am – 11.45am. Corporate demand for increased agility, lower operating costs and competitive advantage is greater than ever. Ovum’s Stephen Mann will discuss the improvement opportunities available.
The SDI Zone Improve how your team communicates and interacts. Motivate and develop the leaders of tomorrow. Discuss your own management strategies. Sponsored by SDI, have an informal chat and a coffee with some of ITSM’s leading independent specialists. www.servicedeskshow.com www.vcm.co.uk www.vital-mag.net
March / April 2010 : VitAL 57
show listings show listings show listings show listings show listings show listings show listings
House-on-the-Hill Software
EMC
Stand number: 316
Stand Number: 730
Contact details
Contact details
T: +44 (0)161 449 7057
Company Address:
F: +44 (0)161 449 7122
EMC Tower, Great West Rd, Brentford,
E: support@houseonthehill.com
Middlesex, TW8 9AN
W: www.houseonthehill.com For more than a decade House-on-the-Hill has provided comprehensive service management solutions for more than 500 businesses worldwide. We are specialists in providing complete solutions for any size business on time, in budget and uniquely tailored to your needs. House-on-the-Hill proudly produces SupportDesk; one of the most successful and flexible service management tools in the world. We offer traditional installed solutions as well as subscriptionbased software as a service solutions. A major addition amongst the hundreds of new features for 2010 is SupportDesk Forms. Create attractive branded forms to make the enduser call submission experience simpler and more intuitive than ever. Include pulldowns, free text fields and tick boxes – use input validation and Q&A scripts. Alter the look and feel of each form while logging and escalating the resulting call in your SupportDesk system automatically. Forms can be embedded into SharePoint or intranet pages for quick and easy submission of data and immediate reduction in waste paper.
Contact Details: emcionixemea@emc.com Website: www.emc.com/ionix Transforming Service Delivery for the Virtual Age Drawing on over 20 years experience in developing market leading IT Service Management solutions, EMC’s Ionix for Service Management is designed to simplify and automate your service delivery function in dynamic physical and virtual environments. Join us on the EMC stand at the Service Desk and IT Support Show 2010 to see one of the first showcases of the latest release of this revolutionary IT Service Management solution. Learn how predictive Problem resolution, real-time collaborative Knowledge Management, next generation Asset Management, intelligent workflows and seamless integration capabilities come together to transform service delivery for the virtual age.
Come and meet our team on stand 316 at SDITS and get a chance to see SupportDesk in action. Whatever the service desk environment, we have the solution and expertise to fit your requirements.
Attend an on-stand demonstration of the latest version of EMC’s integrated, ITIL best-practice Service Management Solution and receive a complimentary glass of bubbly from the EMC Show Bar to help us celebrate.
RMS
CHERWELL
Stand numbers: 540/840
Stand number: 910
www.rms.co.uk
Accelerated learning experience
RMS Services – New Look, New Feel, New Products!
When you choose RMS you choose an award winning solution, at this years Service Desk Show we will be showcasing: RMS Ultra Combining the benefits of a client application with the flexibility of the web, Ultra delivers the best of both worlds! The first release of Ultra – agentless asset discovery and auditing, providing invaluable information of your hardware and software assets. Soon be followed by the full ITIL suite of functionality. Traditional licensing or delivered SaaS, Ultra can suit your every requirement. You only pay for what you use! Ultra is fast to implement and, supported by online tutorials, reduces training overheads and cost of ownership. RMS Service Management – V7 With a new, easy to use interface RMS version 7.0 focuses on delivering corporate functionality quickly, easily and with a low cost of ownership. The RMS solutions support a lifecycle approach to ITIL and Service Management delivering seamless integration. Our focus is to assist you to achieve maximum benefits as quickly as possible. Recent inclusions : - Business & Technical Service Catalogue - Online Request Management - Real-time Service Availability - Financial Management - Software Licence Management Providing comprehensive out of the box functionality, with point and click configuration, RMS will have you up and running in no time at all! RMS Self Service The case for customer self service speaks for itself, one of the most cost effective solutions available today yet still one of the most commonly overlooked. With RMS the implementation has never been quicker either. With minimal work we can transition you from what you have (or perhaps what you don’t!) to an up and running service desk solution which also allows customer log in from day one.
58 VitAL : March / April 2010
You should be
Contact details Tel.: +44 (0)1793 680280 investing in Sales enquiries: Peter.andrew@cherwellsoftware.com experiential www.cherwellsoftware.com
training Cherwell Software has been selected as one of three finalists for the Pink Elephant nowtheif most you want 2010 “Innovation of the Year” Award. This award recognizes innovative ITSM products and services released during 2009. Cherwell’s recently released v3.4 now to thrive in the delivers fully integrated Service Catalog, dynamic CMDB visualisation and iPhone mobile technology. Cherwell Service Management™ is designed, from the ground downturn. Quanta trainer, up, using Microsoft’s .NET technology and delivers ITIL best practices ‘out-of-thebox’. With 12 fully-integrated PinkVERIFIED ITIL v3 management processes such as; Incident, Problem, Change, Release,Edwards Configuration, SLM, Request, Will saysService the Catalog use of and Knowledge, Cherwell provides a holistic approach to service management. The solution is quick to deploy (typically 5-10 days) ensuring rapid RIO, easy manage business simulations, in towhich and offers enterprise product functionality for a mid-market price. The Cherwell solution provides a full 360 degree view ofenvironments the records and data that is mission-critical held within your service desk, help desk or customer call centre system. Cherwell has a true 3 tier client architecture that recreated, is Web 2.0 enabled, using Microsoft’s technology are offers the.NET kind of platform. The solution is available via the traditional perpetual licensing model (Cherwell On-Premise) or as a SaaS subscription service (Cherwell On-Demand). Either offering accelerated learning experience supports both a “browser-based” or “rich client” user interface. The Cherwell offering is delivers extensible platform, not only offering serviceAnd thatandelivers most benefits. delivery management capabilities but also enables customers the ability to easily add new custom built applications through the use of customisable business process what experience could be more templates. This is enabled through Cherwell’s unique ‘Codeless Business Application Technology’ platform or CBAT. CBAT’s scope extends from simple customisations challenging than plight of to existing templates by business users through to complexthe business processes implemented by advanced users with the help of Web services-based APIs (for Apollo 13? integration with other systems). In a recent Total Economic Impact (TEI) study by Forrester Consulting, the detailed financial analysis illustrated the potential cost savings gained from the deployment of Cherwell Service Management. Based on information collected via in-depth customer interviews, Forrester calculated a three-year risk-adjusted ROI of 108% for the interviewed organization, with a total payback period of less than 10 months.
www.vital-mag.net
show listings show listings show listings show listings show listings show listings show listings
axios systems
infravision
Stand number: 630
Stand Number: 620
E: assyst@axiossystems.com W: www.axiossystems.com
Claire Meyrick, Sales Manager M: +44 (0)7540 345485 T: + 44 (0)1491 635340 F: + 44 (0)1491 579835 W: www.infravision.com
Axios Systems, the worlds leading provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions has been exclusively committed to ITSM for over 20 years. Continual investment in the ongoing development of our core solution, assyst, is an essential part of maintaining its current best-in-class position. InfraVision inspire organisations to move from a Break/Fix culture to a Service Axios is a global company with customers in multi business Sectors including: led culture. This is achieved through the delivery of field proven – in over 200 Aviva, William Grants, Associated British Foods, Canadian Tire, Ministry of companies – processes, procedures and work instructions, the skills and Defence, Lego, Standard Bank, Birmingham City Council, Qatar Petroleum and mindset for your staff to embrace the transition and the technology to act as a most recently, Kaspersky. delivery mechanism. At the Service Desk Show we will be highlighting our new assyst version 9 InfraVision provides service, system and network management software and product, delivering ITIL process automation via an intuitive Web 2.0 interface. The services that enable IT departments of large and mid-sized organisations, in tool has a focus of providing functionality to help organisations manage business the commercial and public sectors, to run their department as a business; a services to reduce and control costs while improving efficiency through Continual business with a clear service portfolio for its customers, thereby adding value t seems that, unlike the forecasted unable to make rapid transitions – adapting to Service Improvement. to the core business of the organisation – in simple terms, less downtime and more productivity. bird-flu that was supposed to the changing demands within The productepidemic includes our award-winning Self Service portal, assystNET, that of the markets InfraVision offers business a one-stop-shop for all their which interactions service decimate the customers population, the credit-crunch they with operate – will simply fall along the has many years experience with ITIL; the reference framework for setting up IT management processes within a service organisation. Unlike any departments (including IT, Facilities Management, Telecomms, HR etc.), and did not unnecessary turn out to calls be just hypedthose organisationsother thatorganisation, are InfraVision is capable of turning the ITIL theory into viable reduces to theanother Service Desk. It has awayside Messageleaving Centre that and pragmatic best practice. allows business sensitive information be communicated end users up scare. Amongst many other to effects that agiletoenough toand prosper. provides context-sensitive searching, which enables a simple route to information This achievement is only made possible through the combination of the might berequire. attributed to theenables crunchbusiness including, Alignability Process Model, Service Desk Express and InfraVision’s proven that users The portal customers to do more for implementation methodology. By delivering out of the box, ITIL aligned, yet themselves – reducing support effort andofcosts. for example, a rise in the number house Adopting best practice pragmatic and immensely powerful processes, mirrored exactly in the Service Also includedhere in assyst v9 isUK, our new Catalogue provides Theoffering, case forthat adopting best practice frameworks, burglaries in the MPsService expenses Desk Express toolset, and equipping staff to be responsible for their roles and organisations with the opportunity to reduce costs and improve customer functions, the IT division is taken to a Service led approach, delivering tangible, such as ITIL, is that they allow organisations are being scrutinised like never before. service. By offering a Service Catalogue that delivers value to the business, measurable value to the business. Our solution’s ROI averages at 9 months, presented in an easy-to-use, manner, genuinelybetween benefitITfrom the experiences of solutions take more than twice that time to get implemented, let Personally, I don’t believenon-technical the expenses row thetopartnership whilst other and the business can be transformed. The fully-integrated Service Catalogue alonetheir start delivering value. others without being condemned to repeat to be any kind of coincidence. There is no solution gives a complete view of IT services available to the business and Our project led implementation features workshops up front, examining supports the management and automation service demand, from mistakes. It isrequest true to say that not all adopters question about it: right now, times are of hard. the delta between our blue print and your business, and then it is a matter through to delivery. tweaking the model and the solution, tweaking the training material and benefits, With the UK economy in some difficulty, the manage to effectively leverage the of rolling out ready for business. Our customers bear testimony to the reality and A key differentiator is the assyst Service Designer – a powerful and intuitive of course, since there are many challenges Retail Price Index (RPI) for April showed the success of aligning with InfraVision. design tool to quickly model services and offerings in line with industry best practice. monthly drop since records began to be overcome when dealing with significant biggest Be inspired, be transformed; be a customer of InfraVision.
I
in 1948 according to a recent report from the organisational change. However, it is fair to say BBC. The same source also quoted a similar that the adoption of best practice, for many, worrying trend in the Consumer Price Index has been instrumental in the achievement of serviceelephant (CPI) – the government’s preferred measure for organisational BCS, The Chartered Institute for ITexcellence in the field ofpink inflation. At present, it is also reported that the management. The current state of the art in Bank of England is trying to forestall deflation service management is ITIL Version 3 which Stand number: 526 Stand number: 505 in the UK by cutting interest rates as a means was released in the summer of 2007 replacing www.bcs.org Contact the older Version 2 best practice and is now details of stimulating the economy. Tel: + 44 (0) 118 903 6824 reaching maturity. During such difficult economic times, it is BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, promotes wider social and info.europe@pinkelephant.com economic progress through advancement informationPerhaps the biggest change in ITIL v3 is quite natural for us, boththe personally andoffrom www.pinkelephant.com technology science and practice. an organisational perspective, to begin pulling the embracing of the concept of the service As a global professional services organisation, Pink Elephant provide IT Service We bring together industry, academics, practitioners and government to share is notpublic an entirely new idea ofManagement course: Transformation Services for organisations around the world. in the belt by curbing untilthe things getof newlifecycle. knowledge, promote newspending thinking, inform design curricula,Itshape Through policy and the public. Asinevitably the professional membership accreditation body could find it in ITIL v2 if you knew whatour Resourcing, Support, Consulting and Education services Pink better; as,inform of course, they must. So youand for IT, we serve over 70,000 members including practitioners, academics and students, Elephant exists to optimise IT Services for our clients. Our approach has been you were looking for; and the same basic within many organisations, there is significant in the UK and internationally. A leading IT qualification body, we also offer a range of honed over 20 years of supporting the implementation of IT Service Management widely recognised and end-user pressure beingprofessional applied from abovequalifications. to cut idea is also to be found within Enterprise best practices which is a considerable undertaking and requires a proven ISEB is a division of The Institute and is in an areas international body created to man once said, implementation methodology to underpin it. Architecture. As a wise ‘there operational budgets particularly that examination raise the standard of competence and performance of people working in IT. We’re Having guided and supported 100’s of projects, we have refined our methods is nothing new under the sun’. However, that may bethe perceived to be something of a luxury; leading way in qualifications for IT professionals – delivering more than 380,000 and amassed a significant understanding of how to implement best practices, exams in over 200 countries. Our qualifications are internationally recognised and are concept and often, training programmes are one of the said, the successful translation of thisand probably more importantly, how not too! available in Foundation, Practitioner and Higher levels in 8 major subject areas: of change within organisations is our speciality. first candidate-items to make it onto the list. In into operational activity holds the promise Embedding • ITIL/ IT Service Management • Software Testing transforming units that serve the business this article, we will consider why your company We specialise in improving the quality of IT services through provision of quality • Sustainable IT • Business Analysis into real strategic assets able toresources deliver and the application of recognised frameworks, including the IT should reverse that logic; and, far from cutting• Systems Development • Project Management Infrastructure organisational change effectively and rapidly, Library (ITIL®). Involved with ITIL since its inception in 1987, Pink back on training, should right now, be actually • IT Governance, Information and Security • IT Assets and Infrastructure Elephant has contributed to version 1 , 2 and 3 of the ITIL library, including the bringing about real business benefits. investing. Delivered via a network of high quality accredited training and examination providers, re-write of the IT Service Support set of ITIL books delivered in 2000. As part of the breadth and depth of ISEB’s portfolio encourages knowledge, understanding and Such agility enables organisations tothe improve The primary reason to invest in training – ITIL V3 Refresh we continue to be recognised as industry experts by being application in various disciplines. This allows candidates to demonstrate their skills selected as lead authors for the Continual Service Improvement book. theirability speed-to-market whether is for anand individual an organisation in specificitbusiness IT areas or which measure competence, and aptitude, with new or changed to promotethe career development and provide for employers. Elephant have a culture developed in providing services. Unlike many of productedge offerings; improve their abilityPink to cope –helping is to facilitate transition from one state toa competitive our competitors our culture has not been born in supplying ‘products’. Therefore, ISEB specialist another. For this reason, service management with significant organisational change including, if you are trying to turn your organisation into a ‘Service Organisation’ it makes We have a vision for the future of ITSM that incorporates not just ITIL®, but other sense for example, andtotouse a company which is a service-based company – not a producttraining in particular, becomes vitally important relevant standards and frameworks, through the development of the ISEB mergers Specialist. and acquisitions; company capability forbased making in timesmore because Wetough plan to economic make certifications relevantitforwill thebe job roleimprove providing organisational professional Advice provided by Pink Elephant is impartial, objective and unbiased. We have recognition and tie this all in with SFIAplus so we can map out career paths. those operations that can adapt quickest to rapid adjustments and course-corrections that no vested interest in selling anything other than our experience and knowledge We believe that developing careers is more important than just gaining credits. changing circumstances that will be strong may be deemed necessary both in theofpresent, IT management best practices in the best interests of our clients. This is what Certification via ISEB as part of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, gives that defines us as a company. and future, economic situation. Furthermore enough toadvantage survive, and anda route eventothrive, underIT Professional professional the Chartered status (CITP) the present economic climate. Competitors, the ability to ensure that Business Change
Service management training in particular, becomes vitally
important in tough economic times
because it will be
those operations that
can adapt quickest to
changing circumstances that will be strong
enough to survive,
and even thrive, under the present economic climate.
www.vital-mag.net
March / April 2010 : VitAL 59
sdits show preview
Team management and motivation One of the key themes at this year’s Service Desk and IT Support show is ‘Team Management and Motivation’. Colin Shewry, Birkman Method consultant at Dennis Adams Associates explores the benefit of a personality profiling tool in understanding motivation and developing teams.
M
ost IT managers accept that managing IT is as much about managing people as it is about the technology. Unfortunately, they are often given little opportunity to develop skills for managing and motivating people, other than that learnt through the hard knocks of doing the job, the sink or swim approach to development. Increasingly though, some managers are looking for help in accelerating their management development. We all have our own perceptual filters through which we see the world. Even as you start to read the following example, you will find it hard not to make assumptions about the characters coloured by your perceptual filters.
his work, he is an action orientated manager. More than that, his external and internal motivators are also centred on getting the task done. It is therefore not surprising that when others appear to delay action, he gets frustrated. Bill knows he has to sort out today’s critical issue, even if it means having a bigger problem next week, after all, there might not be a next week if we don’t act today. John’s profile shows his natural position is focused more on the impact of actions on people as well as how the task fits strategically. John is naturally creative and will think through the options before taking action. John knows that the future is just as important as today and will always choose to delay if he believes that his team will have a bigger mess to clear up next week as a result of hasty action today.
The ops manager and his system admin
Do it right or do it now?
Ops manager Bill had a row with his SysAdmin team leader John. Bill had asked John for a deployment to be done by the end of play today and he refused. John is always delaying things, it’s not that John is slow and Bill does recognise that sometimes John has some really creative ideas, but when Bill asks him to take action, John always delays. Bill is finding this intolerable and is considering disciplinary action. Then a friend introduced him to a coach who used a personality profiling tool. The results begin to explain why the conflicts occurred. Bill‘s profile shows his natural position is to focus on the task and to make it happen now. Making things happen is how he goes about
These two profiles have considerable creative tension between them and account for much of the ‘do it now’ versus the ‘do it right’ battles. Both views are valid and actually complement each other, but without understanding why and how they can work together, Bill will eventually decide that John is always being difficult and will need John to move on. In turn, John will see Bill as short-termist and not caring about the impact of his decisions on the team, which is translated to, ‘does not care about his team’. It is the team that always has to sort out the mess of Bill’s thoughtless insistence on immediate action. With help from the coach, the fires between Bill and John were put out and they learnt to
60 VitAL : March / April 2010
www.vital-mag.net
sdits show preview
understand and value the differences between them. Bill now uses John’s creativity to get ahead of problems, bringing action forward and changing the order of actions. This reduced the number of times actions became critical. John now knows that sometimes Bill needs action now, but can explain to the team why it’s now and how they can sort the quick fix out later. It’s perhaps not surprising then that the use of established tools such as personality profiles is beginning to take a foot-hold, as forwardthinking managers realise the benefits of really understanding their team and are provided with strategies for capitalising on the diversity within that team.
Can personality profiling really help? While it is true to say that some people remain sceptical and hesitant to engage with what some see as psycho-babble, increasingly managers are looking for anything that will equip them to do their job more easily. Certainly there are many big and small companies that use profiling tools and see them as invaluable. When personality profiling tools are introduced, people go through a process starting with anxiety about what it will show, through scorn at the questions; astonishment at the results; desire to compare; anxiety that my insecurities might show and finally genuine enthusiasm in the tool. However, it is not a fire and forget solution, it needs to be carefully introduced and a minimum knowledge base needs to be established with a strong support package to provide value over time and real changes. Coaching is a series of private conversations, which enables an individual or team to improve their performance faster and further, than an individual or team could achieve on their own. It is a powerful supporting framework that will keep the profile tool alive until a sufficient knowledgebase is established to make it self-sustaining.
Motivation and behaviour There are many aspects to motivation and its influence on behaviour. Pay, promotion, success, self esteem, credibility, our moral framework and even our dreams and desires, all impact on our behaviour. “Tell me how you will measure my performance and I will tell you how I will behave” www.vital-mag.net
Profiling tools are a tangible way of seeing the relationship between internal and external motivators and usual productive behaviour. The external motivators (Birkman calls them ‘Interests’) give a good understanding of the type of things that will energise and motivate us. However, they are secondary to the internal motivators (Birkman calls these ‘Needs’). This is important because if peoples’ internal needs are met over time, they will behave in their usual productive way. Conversely, if those internal needs are not met over time, then people are likely to exhibit counter-productive stress behaviour and longterm motivators disappear over the horizon. The Birkman Method is the only tool that reveals these motivators and the relationship between them. (See Fig1).
Understanding what is going on Taking just one aspect as an example, the Birkman profile analyses the way we relate to people in a group. We know statistically that 80 percent of people will be seen by others as usually very sociable, outgoing and friendly. It is part of our nature to treat people in the same way as we see them behave, and so we are generally sociable and friendly back. At the same time, we also know that most people’s internal motivators require them to have time alone with a few close friends and minimal group meetings. So when a member of the team suddenly withdraws, becomes a bit unfriendly and avoids meetings, they may be simply expressing their internal need for time alone. This insight gives you a practical way of exploring why they are withdrawing and by addressing this you will see them return to their usual productive self.
Developing people The IT industry in general has a reputation for investing in technical training (database administration courses etc), but typically it tends not to invest in the ‘people skills’ needed for managing teams Managing and motivating teams is incredibly complex. Although we all know some basics that can encourage or deflate a colleague, a personality profile tool, with coaching and support, does give a much clearer understanding. Data on a whole team gives a real insight in to the team dynamics, the contrasting motivations and behaviours and how to capitalise on them. VitAL www.dennisadams.co.uk March / April 2010 : VitAL 61
directory
Hornbill Systems
Wardown Consulting
Ares, Odyssey Business Park, West End Road, Ruislip, HA4 6QD
Prudence Place, Proctor Way, Luton, Bedfordshire. LU2 9PE
6 Rickett Street, London SW6 1RU
T: F: W: C: E:
T: W: C: E:
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020 8582 8282 020 8582 8288 www.hornbill.com Sales info@hornbill.com
Supportworks’ Enterprise Support Platform (ESP) provides a fully integrated platform for automating and managing Service Management related processes. Supportworks ESP is the foundation of Hornbill’s ITIL, Helpdesk, Customer, HR and Industry Support solutions. Supportworks ITSM is certified Pink Verify Enhanced.
InfraVision
Delegate House, 30A Hart Street, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, RG9 2AL T: F: W: C: E:
+44 (0) 1491 635340 +44 (0) 1491 579835 www.infravision.com Nigel Todd n.todd@infravision.com
InfraVision inspire organisations to move from a Break/Fix culture to a Service led culture. We enable clients to be ITIL aligned and therefore more efficient in 12 weeks with BMC SDE. Be inspired; be transformed; be a customer of InfraVision.
01582 488242 01582 488343 www.wardownconsulting.co.uk Rosemary Gurney rosemary.gurney@wardownconsulting.co.uk
Wardown Consulting was established to help businesses capitalise from the substantial benefits that IT Service Management can deliver. Our consultants boast a wealth of industry experience and are accredited to deliver ITIL v2 and v3 training.
organisations wishing to protect their data and information without inhibiting their people. Our chosen solution, DriveLock, ensure IT security policies are both people- and information-centric.
Towngate East, Market Deeping, Peterborough, PE6 8NE T: +44 (0) 1778 382270 F: +44 (0) 1778 382280 W: www.netsupportsoftware.co.uk C: Colette Reed E: colette@netsupportsoftware.co.uk
Kepner-Tregoe provides consulting and training services to organizations worldwide. We collaborate with clients to implement their strategies by embedding problem-solving, decision-making, and project execution methods through individual and team skill development and process improvement. Clients build competitive advantage by using our systematic processes to achieve rapid, targeted results and create lasting value.
50 Barwell Business Park, Leatherhead Rd
62 VitAL : March / April 2010
and data loss prevention solutions to
Quayside House, Thames Side, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1QN T: +44 (0) 1753 856716 F: +44 (0) 1753 854929 W: www.kepner-tregoe.com C: Steve White E: swhite@kepner-tregoe.com
Atlantic House, Imperial Way, Reading. RG2 0TD
Acknowledged worldwide as niche, independent, IT Service Management Education and Consulting providers. Having trained more people than any other company in ITIL related subjects since 1987, we have contributed to all 3 versions of the ITIL books.
Emereo provides end-point security
NetSupport Software
Sunrise Software
+ 44 (0) 118 903 6824 + 44 (0) 118 903 6282 www.pinkelephant.com Frances Fenn info.emea@pinkelephant.com
0871 717 7294 www.emereo.eu Andrew Smith marketing@emereo.eu
Kepner-tregoe
Pink Elephant
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emereo solutions (uk) ltd
Chessington, Surrey. KT9 2NY T: +44 (0) 208 391 9000 F: +44 (0) 208 391 0404 W: www.sunrisesoftware.co.uk C: Angela Steel E: welcome@sunrisesoftware.co.uk Sunrise is a leading independent provider of service management software solutions for IT and across the organisation, with a customer base of over 1000 blue chip and public sector organisations.
NetSupport are developers of desktop management and remote control software packages. The product range comprises NetSupport Manager Remote Control, NetSupport DNA Helpdesk (providing a web-based ITIL-compliant helpdesk), NetSupport DNA Asset Management Suite and NetSupport Protect desktop security and recovery.
G2G3
Panama House, 14 The High Street, Lasswade, EH18 1ND T: F: W: C: E:
+ 44 (0) 131 461 3333 + 44 (0) 131 663 8934 www.g2g3.com David Arrowsmith info@g2g3.com
G2G3 is the leading provider of communication tools, gaming solutions and simulations that propel enterprise IT and business alignment. Headquartered in the UK, G2G3 has a strong global network of partners supporting the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. www.vital-mag.net
directory
Dennis Adams Associates
avocent landesk
House-on-the-Hill Software
Tel: +44 (0)845 055 8935 www.dennisadams.co.uk info@dennisadams.co.uk
Dukes Court, Duke Street, Woking, Surrey GU22 7AD
Dennis Adams Associates IT Management Consultants enable clients to:
T: +44 (0) 1483 744444 F: +44 (0) 1483 744401 W: www.landesk.com C: Sarah Lewis E: sarah.lewis@avocent.com Avocent delivers IT operations management solutions that reduce operating costs, simplify management and increase the availability of critical IT environments 24/7 via integrated, centralized software. This includes Systems Management, Security Management, Data Centre Management and IT Service Management.
l
l l
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uild high performing IT Management B teams Implement effective IT Strategy reate empowering IT Processes C and Procedures Establish Production Supportable Technology Roadmaps Be visibly Accountable to the Business
Cherwell Software
unipress software
Brinkworth House, Brinkworth, SN15 5DF
UniPress Software – London
T: + 44 (0) 1793 680280 W: www.cherwellsoftware.com/contact
2 Sheraton Street
Cherwell Service Management delivers ITIL v3 best practice ‘out-of-the-box’ including: Incident, Problem, Change, CMDB, SLA, Knowledge, SelfService and is PinkVERIFY certified. Our unique CBAT development platform empowers users to fully customise screens, workflow processes and develop additional business applications. The Cherwell solution is available via a standard license model or ‘On Demand’ SaaS service.
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EMC
Connaught House, Portsmouth Road, Send, Surrey, GU23 7JY T: F: W: E:
+44 (0) 1483 213 200 +44 (0) 1483 213 201 www.infra.co.uk infra-info.uk@emc.com
Based on ITIL best practice, EMC’s IT Service Automation & Operations solutions deliver end-to-end IT Service Management, visibility and control by enabling and improving the Service Desk function, servicecentric CMDB population and federation, as well as key processes.
www.vital-mag.net
UniPress Software Ltd London, W1F 8BH + 44 (0) 8450 646566 + 44 (0) 8450 636261 unipress.co.uk sales@unipress.co.uk
Web Help Desk is a 100% web-based helpdesk solution which provides a low cost of ownership, ultimate portability and simple implementation. A totally cross-platform solution, Web Help Desk has a diverse feature-set that will allow you to fulfil any submitted request more efficiently and effectively.
127 Stockport Rd, Marple, Cheshire SK6 6AF T: F: W: C: E:
+44 (0) 161 449 7057 +44 (0) 161 449 7122 www.houseonthehill.com Tim Roche info@houseonthehill.com
Specialists in providing comprehensive solutions for any size business on time, in budget and carefully tailored to your needs, House-on-the-Hill produces SupportDesk; the most flexible ITILcompatible Service Management solution on the market. House-on-the-Hill provides comprehensive solutions for over 500 businesses worldwide.
TEST MAGAZINE
31 Media, Media House, 16 Rippolson Road, London SE18 1NS T: F: W: C: E:
+44 (0) 870 863 6930 +44 (0) 870 085 8837 www.31media.co.uk Grant Farrell grant.farrell@31media.co.uk
The European Software Tester is a publication designed specifically for individuals and organisations aligned with software testing. With independent, practical, and insightful editorial T.E.S.T aims to inspire its readers and provide its advertisers with a clearly defined route to market.
IT Service Management Forum
e-Warehouse
. 150 Wharfedale Road, Winnersh Triangle, Wokingham, Berkshire. RG41 5RG
e-Warehouse Ltd, Hampden House, Hampden House, Monument park, Chalgrove,Oxfordshire , OX44 7RW
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T: 0845 299 7539 f: 08717143802 w: www.oxygenservicedesk.com c: Victoria Eggleton e: oxygen@e-warehouse.com Oxygen Service Desk is a process automation engine that simply interprets your pre-defined business processes and then mobilises the actual process, pushing work tasks to people and to systems, streamlining how the processes run across your entire department or organisation.
0118 918 6503 0118 969 9749 www.itsmf.co.uk Ben Clacy ben.clacy@itsmf.co.uk
The itSMF is the only internationally recognised and independent organisation whose sole focus is on the on-going development and promotion of IT Service Management ’best practice‘, standards and qualifications. The forum has 14,000 UK members and official itSMF chapters in 44 countries
March / April 2010 : VitAL 63
secrets of my success
David Amizade Tufin Technologies
VitAL: Name, company and job title please? Married? Kids? David Aminzade: David Amizade. I am 60 years old, married with two grown up children; any girls of marriageable age can apply via the magazine as I am getting impatient at not already being a grandfather. The company is Tufin Technologies, a vendor producing software that reduces the cost of firewall operations and change management. I am job director of Sales for Northern Europe. The main goals of the role are to build and motivate a successful channel and generate demand for the product amongst the larger UK companies. VitAL: What got you started in IT? DA: I’ve never been an IT or security techie, that’s why I can explain what the heck our product does. I spent most of my career in the telecommunications industry. My early career was in industrial electronics from there I moved into production engineering, business planning and finally sales and marketing where I have stayed for the last thirty years in some guise or another. VitAL: Was there any one person or organisation that was your inspiration? DA: The Dalia Lama – especially his book, ‘How to remain happy when dealing with moronic purchasing managers’. I also learnt much from two senior sales people in STC John Tate and Keith Ganney. They taught me that that almost no negotiation was evenly balanced and the fist part of a negotiation was to understand where the balance of power lay and negotiate accordingly. VitAL: What was your first IT job and what was your first major IT triumph? DA: I’ve never had an IT job but I did own a Triumph Stag! My main claim to fame is that when working for Standard Telephone and Cables (a subsidiary of ITT), I was heavily involved with launching the word’s first credit card verification 64 VitAL : March / April 2010
terminals to American Express. The first machine was installed in the French office of American Express in 1977. When working for Check Point Software, Guy Hoffman and I brought to market the first and still the best cellular firewall which sits in a cellular network and does for the radio protocol what a regular firewall does for the IP protocol. In this achievement I must acknowledge the role of John Morton of Vodafone for the patient way he educated us in the ways of the mobile world. VitAL: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? What did you learn from them? DA: I once asked a large lady CISO when the baby was due (there was no baby). Now I only discuss babies with those I have impregnated.
I once asked a large lady CISO when the baby was due (there was no baby). Now I
VitAL: What do you like best about your job? DA: The freedom to be myself; the freedom from any man management responsibilities; the ability to sink or swim basically by using my own judgement; the business and personnel ethics of the Tufin senior management and the good humour of most of my colleagues.
only discuss babies
VitAL: What is your biggest ambition? DA: To retire early; to be a single figure handicap golfer; to write a book along the lines of ‘How to invent a religion’ exposing how organised religion has corrupted the credo that they espouse and has been the main way by which people were and continue to be divided, manipulated and oppressed. To travel the old silk route, to speak fluent Italian and to be a imaginative cordon bleu cook; and to be blessed with lots of grandchildren and to have the time, energy and money to enjoy them.
impregnated.
VitAL: What are your hobbies or interests? DA: I am a keen if as yet untalented golfer and I enjoy playing a system of bridge that relies on spontaneous bidding. Also in my form of bridge you are not allowed to discuss any hand after it
with those I have
is finished. I have owned a house in Puglia (Italy) with a very good friend of mine for the last five years, where I enjoy spending time and finally I love to cook all types of food. There are only two kinds of people those that eat to live and those who live to eat. I am firmly in the latter group. VitAL: What is the secret of your success? DA: Early exposure to Kryptonite; the benefit of having made many mistakes but only once; the love of a good women and the support of a set of excellent partners. VitAL: David Amizade, thank you very much. www.tufin.com www.vital-mag.net
UKCMG Annual Conference 2010 Training, Education and Collaboration
17th & 18th May 2010 Oxford Belfry Hotel, Thame, Oxfordshire Planning for a Brighter Future CAPACITY MANAGEMENT
PERFORMANCE ASSURANCE
SERVICE MANAGEMENT
z/OS TECHNOLOGIES
Conference Highlights The conference is an opportunity to participate in a leading event welcoming a host of end-user speakers, renowned experts and industry partners. This event offers presentations from world class experts helping to educate your team and business â&#x20AC;&#x201C; planning for a brighter future. The agenda includes three half-day workshops on Capacity Management, Performance and z/OS Technologies from Ron Kaminski, Dawn Haynes & Scott Barber and Peter Enrico, all from the USA. There will also be teleconference sessions with Barry Merrill and Cheryl Watson. Following the success of the panel discussion at the US CMG conference, UKCMG introduces a new panel session â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Why test and why model? The event covers both technical and service management areas and is an excellent platform for keeping abreast of IT developments. There is also an opportunity to network with industry vendors at the exhibition running alongside the conference. The delegate registration is open and an early bird discount is available until the 9th April 2010. The delegate attendance price has stayed the same as 2009, offering excellent value for money. Official Media Sponsor
For more event information visit www.ukcmg.org.uk
Career progression not credit collecting! Everyone seems to have a view on ITIL® and as a leading Examination Institute which is part of the Chartered institute of IT we have listened to these views. We have a vision for the future of ITSM that incorporates not just ITIL®, but other relevant standards and frameworks, through the development of the ISEB Specialist Certificates.
As part of our vision we aim to: • • • • • • •
Recognise individual job roles and career requirements Make the ITIL® journey relevant Provide recognition for people at all levels Be relevant in the work place for IT Professionals Develop professional recognition through the Chartered Status Link to Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) and SFIAplus Ensure mapping to the V3 scheme
We believe that developing your career is more important than just gaining credits. Certification via ISEB as part of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, gives you that professional advantage and a route to the Chartered IT Professional status (CITP).
Come and visit us at Stand 526 at the Service Desk and IT Support Show and discuss the new ISEB Specialist Certificate with us.
ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries. MTG/AD/746/0210