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October 2010 - Posts

Risk and Compliance trends – a critical component of IT

Published: October 29 2010, 11:27 AM | no comments
by Robert Stroud

As risk management and regulatory compliance take on greater import within organizations, so do the principles of good project management. This is a critical component of your organizations and in my podcast recorded with Tom Field the Editorial Director at Bank Information Security. 

In the podcast we  discuss;

  • - Risk and compliance challenges for organizations in 2011
  • - Risk and compliance trends
  • - Industries that demonstrate leadership

Click here to listen

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By: Robert Stroud
Robert Stroud serves as VP and as Service Management, Cloud Computing and Governance Evangelist at CA Technologies. Robert also serves as an International vice president of ISACA, is part of the Framework committee and was the former chair of the COBIT Steering Committee. Robert also serves on the itSMF...
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What 'Service' means in Service Management and my experience post-itSMF Fusion 10

Published: October 27 2010, 02:04 PM | 1 Comment(s)
by Eric Feldman

I attended an excellent session at itSMF Fusion 10  given by Tom Pierce from AT&T titled "Great Customer Service from IT: Reality or Oxymoron?"Tom spoke about how we, as IT professionals, must look at other industries and organizations to better understand what good customer service is all about. How have these companies satisfied their customers, and how will this apply to ITIL methodologies, and Service Level, Service Portfolio and Service Catalog Management processes?For example, 80% of service providers think that they are providing good customer service, yet only 8% of their customers agree.

And as an IT organization, do you make it easy for end-users to do business with you? Is it easy for customers to access IT services? Think about the features on your cell phone. Which ones do you love? Typically, it is something easy to use. One way to make it easy for people to work with IT is to deploy a Service Catalog - as you cannot realize great customer service without definition and standardization of services. (See my last blog for The Top Ten Reasons to Deploy a Service Catalog Now!).

A good part of what Tom spoke about was culture. It is one thing to want to provide great customer service. But how many of you actually make the effort to successfully create a culture within your organization that is able and empowered to provide great customer service?

A take away from this concept is when hiring staff for a service desk where attitude and aptitude are the primary skills to look for, and not necessarily technical skills. This includes the aptitude to be able to do the work and the attitude to provide great customer service. 

To juxtapose this service culture concept, let us look at other industries and begin by sharing with you my experience travelling home the same day I attended this session. I am sure you all have airline war stories, but in this one, I witnessed poor customer service at almost every touch point between the airline and myself. My direct flight from Louisville to New York was about an hour late due to equipment trouble, and then was diverted to Philadelphia due to weather, 4 hours late. We were originally told that there would be another flight to New York, then we found out all flights were cancelled. I wound up spending the night in the airport for my rescheduled 6:00 am flight.

At 5:30 am, two gentlemen that were on my diverted flight went to the gate and asked if they could fly standby. The airline representative told them the flight was sold out and they need to go to the counter at gate 34. We were at gate one. They did not get on the flight.

When the plane was about to push back from the gate, half the seats were empty. A woman in row 11 got up and asked to change her seat. Here is the exchange I observed:

Passenger:  "May I move my seat?
Flight Attendant in a surly voice, "you must stay in row 10 or higher"
Passenger:  "My, this is a friendly airline"
Flight Attendant in a condescending tone, "Yes we are, aren't we? Maybe you will be happy with the next airline you fly."

In New York, those of us with checked baggage waited for about half an hour until the bags started their slow descent down the conveyer. After another half an hour, only a few people had their luggage. The rest of us were still waiting. The woman from row 11 on my flight went into the baggage office, and promptly waived all of us over. It seems that all our bags arrived the night before.

I retrieved my suitcase and spoke with the customer service representative:

Me:  Why did no one tell us our bags would be here?
Baggage guy:  When your bags are not on the carousel, you come to the baggage office
Me:  And how am I supposed to know that my bags came in last night? (Remember, we were told that all flights were cancelled)
Baggage guy:  When your bags are not on the carousel, you come to the baggage office
Me:  I have been waiting for almost an hour for my bag, all the time watching other people's bags from my flight last night come out. Would it be to much too ask to simply walk to the carousel and let people know that some bags came in last night?
Baggage guy:  When your bags are not on the carousel, you come to the baggage office.
Me:  I got that. One more question. How come my bags were able to arrive last night but I could not?
Baggage guy:  Sir, you are being ridiculous.

How does any service business survive when every touch point with a customer is poor?And here is the irony. This particular airline has one of the highest cost structures of any major airline in the world. You would think they could hire or train people to be more sensitive to the needs of travelers for the money they are spending. Remember Tom's session. Providing great customer service is about culture, and hiring people with the appropriate aptitude and attitude.

Bad customer service, however, is not limited to the people travelling via airline. It seems that the great granddaughter of Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and father of the Bell communications conglomerate known today as AT&T, cannot even get AT&T to repair her telephone service. Ironic as I read this blog discussing a session from an employee of AT&T. 

The CEO of Rackspace told the story of the worst customer service experience of his life. In this case, a mobile carrier gave up thousands of dollars of business as a result of a dispute of only $30.00 per month:
http://community.crn.com/blogs/shadowram/2010/10/14/rackspace-ceo-recounts-his-worst-customer-service-experience

And how about the woman rolling on the floor suffering from an asthma attack who could not purchase an inhaler because she was $1.90 short:
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/local_news/new_jersey/woman-couldnt-buy-inhaler-during-asthma-attack-20101014

So remember, customer service is a cultural issue. You need to find people with the right attitude and aptitude to provide excellent customer service, and empower them.If you want your IT organization to become a strategic proactive partner to the business, try not to hire someone like the flight attendant, the baggage guy, the mobile customer service representative, or the pharmacist in the above examples.

Oh, and that airline I spoke about? I do not want to say the name, but the initials are US. A.

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By: Eric Feldman
Eric Feldman has more than 25 years of experience as a senior architect. With a focus on the areas of service level management and IT asset and financial management, Feldman has specialized in designing and implementing solutions based on CA Service Catalog and CA Service Accounting. He has spoken and...
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Are your ITIL processes going "off the rails?"

Published: October 26 2010, 10:26 AM | no comments
by Robert Stroud

Many organizations I speak to are in the process of a radical business transformation. They're using ITIL to implement a common language, to implement automated, effective and streamlined processes while improving customer service and reducing costs. I am often asked, "where do I start?"  I will deal with that question in subsequent blog posts, but for now, keep in mind that the interaction between the processes is critical to success.  Recently I had the opportunity to video a session with the itSMF USA President Elect and my CA Technologies colleague Robert (Bob) Sterbens to communicate the value of the CA Service Management Process maps and how they can aid you in your Service Management implementation. 

So let's get your ITIL process back on track! We'll let Bob be the conductor on this part of your Service Management journey:

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By: Robert Stroud
Robert Stroud serves as VP and as Service Management, Cloud Computing and Governance Evangelist at CA Technologies. Robert also serves as an International vice president of ISACA, is part of the Framework committee and was the former chair of the COBIT Steering Committee. Robert also serves on the itSMF...
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Use What You Have in New Ways

Published: October 18 2010, 04:13 PM | no comments
by Brian Poissant

Last week I managed to be involved in three global enterprise customer consultations that had a common thread to them.  Their inquiries dealt with their adaptation of our Service Desk architecture to meet specific business needs outside of a "Support" role.  I often get the opportunity to assist our support teams with customer issues that surround "un-supported" or "customized" use of our solutions. 

For example, I have seen our Service Desk application and its underlying flexible architecture used in a variety of ways as customers increasingly leverage their existing investments in technology to deliver innovative solutions, to minimize costs and to increase their ROI.

In the case of CA Service Desk Manager, some customers have turned it into a Customer Relationship Management, Network Management, Machine Maintenance, and Inventory Management solutions.  If you can build functionality into your existing investments that will manage, let's say, "the tracking of your customer's shoe size" and "which shoes they purchased", why would you need to purchase an entire CRM tool? 

Of course, few real world examples are as simple as this, but my point is, we should all be looking at innovative ways of using existing investments, rather than constantly trying to justify the promise of yet-to-be purchased goods.

A responsible project lead will always weigh the pros and cons of changing the intended design and processes behind a software solution. In these hard times, turning something you already have into something you need, with an eye on driving improved business value, is in and of itself the essence of innovation.

I'd be interested in hearing about innovative uses of some of our other products.

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By: Brian Poissant
Brian Poissant is the Principal Engineering Services Architect for CA Technologies. Brian is creating simpler methods for leveraging Cloud Computing as a deployment and development platform for Enterprise customers, with a specific focus area on Service Management. His current focus is on securing the...
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The Top Ten Reasons to Deploy a Service Catalog Now!

Published: October 15 2010, 09:04 AM | 2 Comment(s)
by Eric Feldman

Ever notice how "top ten" lists are popular? From late night talk show hosts, to a multitude of books, articles, and blogs, people love to talk about the top ten of anything. Who are the top 10 pitchers in baseball? Who are the top 10 guitarists? What are the top 10 reasons to vote for a particular candidate, or what are the 10 tallest buildings?

There are even dozens of web sites that do nothing more than publish lists of the top ten of a variety of subjects. While people compile many of these lists from real data, most are subjective.

But this got me thinking about Service Catalogs - why a company needs to establish one now - and came up with my own list of reasons. Working with customers on Service Catalog projects for many years now has given me a perspective of what happens after a Catalog is successfully deployed. Every company or organization has different goals, so I thought of those reasons for deploying a Service Catalog that were common across industries and government entities.

There are many reasons actually, and picking 10 is really an arbitrary number. So here are my top 10 reasons to deploy a Service Catalog now:

1. Business and IT Alignment - involve your business customers in the portfolio and service definition process for transparency and to help elevate IT to a more strategic role. Understanding business needs is the first step towards delivering better service.

2. Involve Executive Management in IT - help remove the perception that IT is a reactionary cost center by showing how a catalog can improve customer satisfaction, reduce costs, increase efficiency, and free up resources for more important project. This can help drive more commitment and spending on IT.

3. Increase Productivity - a Service Catalog with automated workflow can help eliminate or reduce manual processes. The can help optimize resource utilization, support a movement to an agile cloud environment, and reduce operational costs.

4. Facilitate Governance - a Service Catalog that includes calculating and tracking the cost and consumption of service usage can enable greater compliance with federal regulations. Remember Sarbanes-Oxley?

5. Improve Customer Service - an actionable Service Catalog enables notifications and that includes request reporting can increase the communication channel between IT and the business community and reduce reactive calls to IT staff that often spend an enormous amount of time just to follow-up with simple status inquiries.

6. Reduce Cost - You cannot save on IT expenditures without knowing where your money is going. By calculating cost and measuring service usage utilizing a standard cost allocation methodology, you will be in a better position to rationalize budgets and prioritize spending.

7. Support Quality Improvement Initiatives - similar to reducing costs, you cannot improve what is not measured. Monitoring and measuring service request and fulfillment processes will better inform you to where bottlenecks occur and you will be in a better position to take positive action.

8. Build Employee Moral - uncertainty and lack of information are not building blocks for a better workforce. By documenting and publishing services in an actionable and automated Service Catalog, you set expectations, define your value as a Service Provider, and provide the business community with the tools they need to do their job. Also, combine this with reason #1 to create a true business IT partnership.

9. Demonstrate Effectiveness to Management - IT is under greater pressure to reduce operational costs and demonstrate value in the services it delivers. Delivering frequent request and cost allocation reports - even better, automating the generation of these reports - you can keep management informed to help drive strategic decisions.

10. Transform IT to a Proactive Strategic Business Partner - what do you do for a living? That is an important question to ask any IT organization or service provider. What are your offerings? Are they defined in a meaningful and appropriate way for your customers? Are your approval and fulfillment processes defined in a way that can be communicated? What about your service costs? Do you just spend money without any knowledge of where it is going?

Number 10 is the most important reason to deploy a Service Catalog now. A Service Catalog can become transformational to a company in that it forces an IT organization to understand the nature of their business. What they do for a living so to speak. What do they offer, and how can a customer request it. How much do their services cost, and how long will it take to deliver it.

These seems like simple concepts, and on the surface, they are. However, in many cases they are a challenge for many IT organizations just because of the nature of how they started and grew. Let me explain.

A new business startup begins with a plan. This includes a target customer audience, a way to reach them, an analysis of costs, and a projection of profits. This plan is used to acquire funding needed to begin and build the business.

IT organizations on the other hand, typically grew incrementally, often beginning around the support of systems. This grew into supporting networks, applications, and processes. But the fundamental driver was support, which by definition is reactionary. You would be hard pressed to find an IT Organization that was started with the plan to be a strategic partner to the business, although for many companies and industries, IT and the business are inseparable.

Bottom line, a Service Catalog will not magically by itself change your business. But by defining and publishing your services, communicating your value, setting expectations, and managing your costs and consumption, you will go a long way to changing the perception of IT and transforming your organization to a proactive, strategic partner to the business.

For an example of the strategic importance of IT, demonstrating value, and best practice tips in the government sector, please see the Industry Brief "Integrating IT with the Mission":  http://www.ca.com/~/media/Files/TechnologyBriefs/integrate-it-with-mission-brief_199593.ashx

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By: Eric Feldman
Eric Feldman has more than 25 years of experience as a senior architect. With a focus on the areas of service level management and IT asset and financial management, Feldman has specialized in designing and implementing solutions based on CA Service Catalog and CA Service Accounting. He has spoken and...
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