Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) recently published their research for Enterprise Trends in the Service Desk for 2009. In this survey they interviewed 158 respondents on the future vision of the Service Desk Strategy at their own organizations. EMA found that enabling Self-Service technologies for their business customers was on the top list of priorities for the Service Desk in 2009. Their study found that 56% of their respondents have already deployed or are planning to deploy a service catalog. Also an overwhelming 82% of the respondents are looking to make improvements in their customer satisfaction of their Service Desk. With the top priorities of the Service Desk being Service Catalog, Self-Service, and Knowledge Management, we can clearly see that the IT strategies for the future will take advantage of the value in placing IT service offerings in the hands of managers and users.
In addition to EMA’s findings we have also uncovered that many CIOs either have placed self-service as a high priority or are looking to make improvements within their own Service Desk. Avaya’s CIO, Lorie Buckingham, cited that Boosting Agility was one of her top 5 current priorities in the August 17, 2009 edition of eWeek. Furthermore, Buckingham, went on to describe that the improvements made over a three year journey would increase the ease of doing business with Avaya and improve their ability to grow business without an increase in IT costs. Moving towards agile IT operations would mean significant improvements in customer and partner relationship management, operational process improvements, and the deployment of increased customer self-service capabilities.
Implementing ITIL process-based tools with an existing process are no joke to ICW Group Insurance Companies’ CIO Kevin Harris. According to a recent case study in Insurance & Technology Magazine, Harris was able to improve ICW’s incident management resolution times by approximately 90% and reducing the help desk personnel costs by 25%. This journey required optimization within Incident Management and integrating their ITSM tool with processes such as Change and Asset Management. “The net result,” according to Harris, “is that we significantly increase[d] overall customer satisfaction.”
EMA also stated in their trend analysis that in 2009, the service desk is still expected to continue its role as a central component in any service support and delivery strategy. Also, that CIOs are continually looking for ways to leverage the service desk to meet corporate expectations for IT service functions despite budget reductions. They also stated that organizations are looking towards process improvements and improving customer service in the Service Desk that will reduce the overall total cost of supporting the business.
Perspective
Many organizations are seeing the value in implementing a strategy towards improving the customer service and reducing the cost of the help desk by providing Self Service capabilities. Be it, the service catalog, a knowledge base, or the ability to open Incident Tickets via the web. As the Internet and Technology have became more a part of our everyday life from being able to buy a book on the internet to the replace of email to the written correspondence we see the technology makes life easier once it has been fully implemented and adopted.
I remember back in 1997 when the web was relatively fresh and new. The ability to send an email directly to a webmaster from a CGI scripted web form made my life easier when I wanted to correspond to a webmaster. This technology allowed me to quickly send the information I wanted to transpose without opening up an email application. Today, I can order a pizza online and visually see each step of the order delivery process along the way.
Sometimes the corporate environment is a bit behind in developing solutions that the consumer culture has already embraced. My perspective is that in the near future, once the service catalog and self-service capabilities become the norm, business customers will be able to track their IT order from start to finish. They will see what department is fulfilling their order and will have an accurate estimated time of delivery for their request. Maybe someday, we’ll hear stories of IT organizations being able to deliver fully provisioned desktop PCs to their business customers in 30 minutes or less.
Sources
Erickson-Harris, Lisa (2009, June 15). Enterprise Trends in the Service Desk 2009. EMA Advisory Note.
(2009, August 17). Priority List. eWeek, [26(14)], 43.
O’Connor, Nick (2009, August/September). Trouble Tickets No Longer Trouble. Insurance & Technology, [34(6)], 19.
