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IT Management | Strategic Thinking

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An IT manager called me the other day and says, “What can you do to help me achieve my IT strategy?” Great question, says I; tell me your strategy, and I will see how I can help.

The next five minutes I had to endure metaphors, vaguenesses, and I saw it was coming, “I do not have a defined and written down strategy” (aka, I have no idea what a strategy is but it sounded impressive didn’t it), realization moment.  Can you say, “Awkward?”

How do you help someone who knows they need help, yet is unclear about why and how?  You ask questions.

[Read more…] about IT Management | Strategic Thinking

What you need to know about ITSM before selecting a solution

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IT Service Management (ITSM) is the process of how an IT department manages information systems. If your organization runs IT systems, then chances are you are running some type of ITSM software with some ITIL processes. As most teams utilize IT as a means of delivering services to clients, ITSM is what is used to manage those services.

ITSM includes IT planning, support, delivery, infrastructure, and all other managerial parts of IT businesses. Because all aspects of ITSM are process-based, it is also often referred to as operations architecture. How can ITSM and its tools help your company? [Read more…] about What you need to know about ITSM before selecting a solution

Who Needs IT Service Management Software?

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Any organization that wishes to optimize its business technology would benefit from IT service management software.

IT Service Management Software is also commonly known as information technology service management or ITSM. It is software that allows companies to manage service delivery to its customers and staff include hardware and software maintenance, order management, diagnostics, troubleshooting, and other routine operations.

IT service management (ITSM) refers to the entirety of activities – directed by policies, organized and structured in processes and supporting procedures – that are performed by an organization to plan, design, deliver, operate and control information technology (IT) services offered to customers. – Wikipedia

Organizations need software as a reliable foundation for their ITSM activities.  Without ITSM software the data for processing, evaluating and reporting would be inaccurate or unavailable.

Key ITSM Processes

These are the key ITSM processes that would perform ineffectively without IT service management software:

Problem Management:  The root causes of any issues and what can you do to prevent them from arising again in the future?

Incident Management: How will you efficiently deal with issues that might arise with the IT services?

Asset Management: Establish and manage information about your IT infrastructure which includes software, hardware, skills, staff, and everything needed to maintain and deliver IT services.

Change Management: Assess and monitor the changes that are significant to the delivery of IT and business improvements.

Release Management: How will you put those changes in effect?

Related Content:
ITSM Readiness Toolkit

The core processes of IT services involve a great deal of data that requires recording and categorization. ITSM software can facilitate these important data captures and facilitates categorization and reporting.

While monitoring tools can automatically collect service management data, most information is contained in service desk tickets from service desk staff or other end users directly entering issues into the ITSM software.

Purchasing an all-in-one solution typically provides more benefit than multiple, stand-alone products to handle disparate processes; i.e. help desk software, project management software, customer portal, asset manager, resource manager.

A single, all-in-one solution has built-in efficiencies, related data and reporting should be easier.

TeamHeadquarters, from Entry Software, helps you manage all work in a unified simple-to-use system. It includes help desk, project management, resource management, scheduling, and asset management.

For a free demo of TeamHeadquarters, click here.

IT Best Practices: Run your IT Department Like a Business

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If you are a CIO or IT leader, you’ve likely heard about the changes that many organizations are making to transform their IT departments, from restructuring silos to implementing ITIL. Currently, most IT departments operate with about 70% of resources going toward maintaining the status quo and 30% toward innovation. However, thanks to virtualization and other advances, IT departments can enable themselves to operate smarter and more efficiently, thus refocusing efforts toward long-term strategies and improving IT’s direct impact on the organization.

As stated in a paper by the Economist Intelligence Unit, “The increasing convergence of IT and business processes is challenging the traditional organizational model, where IT and business units operate separately.” Despite this quote being nearly three years old, IT departments at many companies are still working to act on this sea change. [Read more…] about IT Best Practices: Run your IT Department Like a Business

Help Desk ITSM Basics

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SMB’s are struggling with the application of standards within IT. Still considered a black art by business executives, IT Standards are often touted, seldom adhered too, and never perfect. Let’s work through ITIL® to establish the optimum / minimum required for any SMB IT Service Desk.

ITIL®, ITSM, COBIT, ISO20000, ISO27001, TOGAF, USMBOK… there are many “IT standards”. Since all IT frameworks are essentially trying to help you achieve the same outcome – excellent, predictable, minimum levels of service to your customers – we’ll focus on ITIL® and establish what’s important.

To achieve an optimum/minimum for your help desk the following services should be considered:

  • Service Strategy work through ITIL® to establish the optimum / minimum required for any SMB IT Service Desk.
  • Incident management
  • Problem management
  • Feedback
  • Change Management

Service strategy

At the center of your service is your strategy. The service strategy provides guidance to customers and staff.

Optimum: Your service strategy should address service strategy objectives, financial management, service portfolio and demand management strategies. This strategy can be shared throughout your team and organization and used by your IT team to teach customers, make good decisions and provide excellent service.

Minimum: a one-page service expectation that can be announced and achieved, a method of costing and financial recognition, a transparent method of managing your service portfolio and an introduction of your resources and their finite capabilities to the customer. Again, your team and your customers need to have some basic information so they can be part of the solution process and make good decisions.

Incident Management

ITIL® talks about incident management as the real-world of IT – where the fires are put out. Here’s where the strategies are used by the IT team to address day-to-day service requests.

Optimum: To do a really good job with your service strategy you’ll need to automate key functions of your helpdesk. A solution will include basics like service requests (tickets) where you can record, classify, support, prioritize, investigate, resolve, close, audit, and report. For examples of automated service request systems see TeamHeadquarters in action.

Minimum: A procedures based manual system will also provide the structure to deliver an effective service strategy. The manual system will require additional manpower for the accumulation of data into meaningful reports. The biggest challenge with manual systems is the lack of visibility so; if you are going manual then you’ll need to have an auditable procedure that promotes visibility.

Problem Management

Problem management is the practice of resolving the root causes of incidents and relating mutiple incidents to the detected problem. These can be understood through an examination of incidents, feedback from customers and change requests.

Optimum: You will have a dedicated problem manager who will analyze service request trends, change requests, known errors, fixes, and classifications and who will look for root causes and develop actions to minimize impacts. This does not need to be a full time job but requires a responsible resource within the help desk operators in most cases. 

Minimum: Schedule monthly round table discussions with your team to review statistics, discuss trends, change requests, known errors, fixes, and classifications. Make everyone a problem manager, assign them problems, let them find root causes and develop the actions that will minimize impacts.

Service Feedback

Optimum: upon closure of a service request the customer is asked for their feedback. This information is collected and correlated against teams, members, classifications, priorities, and problems. Trends are found and improvements are made.

Minimum: Send an email to the customer when the ticket is closed and ask them for their feedback. Escalate unhappy customers and address effectively. Capture information manually and use this information to identify trends, individuals and problems.

Service Improvement

Optimum / Minimum: All incidents, problems, and feedback systems are required to provide insight into the potential changes for your IT Management System. Many incidents, a few problems, a modicum of feedback, when reduced should provide some obvious opportunities for change.

Roll out changes to the overall helpdesk in small 15 day chunks using the Agile method for project management If ITIL® is your game then you’re going to love our IT Managers Guidebook to ITIL® for SMB’s.  Read and enjoy!

TeamHeadquarters Helpdesk

TeamHeadquarters and Entry Software deliver all the tools required to successfully implement a helpdesk for your IT Team with the additional benefit of providing a fully integrated Project Management System. A leader in bringing these two practices together since 1998, Entry Software has helped thousands of users achieve better customer service and project management.

For more information visit the Entry Software site and signup for an online 30-minute demo with an Entry Software consultant.