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ITSM Kaizen

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“What gets measuredgets managed.”

Peter Drucker

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The IT Help Desk of Today

In IT organizations today, help-desk operations leave a lot to be desired. Instead of being models of efficiency and service, many are mired in costly, time-consuming processes. As a result, people requesting service are often forced to wait in long telephone queues or for someone to respond to their service request via email. Meanwhile, service costs add up.

These same processes typically have no mechanism in place to obtain feedback on the effectiveness and quality of the service provided. Without closing this loop, IT cannot thoroughly evaluate the help-desk services being delivered, or identify needed improvements. At the same time, if help-desk performance is assessed based solely on the number of incidents handled per day or per week, IT will be operating without a complete view into the issues and trends impacting help-desk services. This keeps IT trapped in an inefficient, reactive mode that further erodes as service requests increase.

What are your top three services and how is each performing? (Do you manage an Exchange server or provide 24/7 email service?)?

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IT Service Management Practice of the Future

The future looks brighter for organizations thatemploy IT Service Management (ITSM) to its fullestextent. In that world, IT benefits from a best-practiceapproach that refocuses the help-desk function onimproving and expanding service delivery in supportof enterprise goals.

Under this approach, IT automatically captures andanalyzes data related to what services end usersactually want and need IT to provide, as well ashow they want them delivered. Through this focus,IT acts more like a business – actively solicitingand incorporating end-user requirements to modify,develop, and deliver useful, high-quality help-deskservices. And because IT has complete visibility intoservice usage, costs, and interdependencies, it canapply the necessary resources and controls to costeffectively and consistently maintain service levels.

What are you doing to obtain a strong service view of your help-desk operations and function in a more strategic manner??

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“Be not afraid of goingslowly; be only afraid

of standing still.”

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The Road to Get There

The fear of change is easier to overcome whenyou have a plan of action. As you consider how toget the best results from ITSM, be sure to involvepeople who know your business issues. Identifypotential day-to-day or week-by-week improvementsto your help-desk operations, and then start makingthem. For example, a first step could be to offloadbasic help-desk functions to a contractor, so yourskilled employees are only handling critical activities.

As you capture and analyze data, find otheropportunities for change and initiate new practicesin those areas, as well. Look for redundanciesand eliminate them, or establish better ways toorganize service ticket data. Continue applyingthis methodology over time to achieve ongoingimprovements.

What are you currently doing to retool processes and better utilize your service-desk staff? What technologies and tools are you implementing to support these efforts?

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ITSM Kaizen

ITSM Kaizen, which leverages a philosophy of continuous improvement, offers a five-step approach that lets you move forward with confidence as you enhance your service-management capability.This includes:

• Building a proper configuration management database(CMDB) to identify and understand the relationships between and among all your IT components

• Creating a roadmap that defines how to assess and gather data related to your current organizational and technical capabilities

• Extracting the data needed to analyze and optimize processes

• Implementing improvements

• Combining the results into a business case that proves IT’s value

Can you easily perform these steps (or embrace continuous improvement) based on your current understanding of your IT environment, service requirements, and the related data available to you?

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ITSM

People

Method

Process

Tool

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Kaizen vs. Leap

It can be tempting to follow IT strategies for changethat focus on a big, up-front payoff. But thosesame approaches take time to develop and a lotof planning to implement. And if they fail to deliverexpected results, your organization will have to dealwith issues related to operational and end-usersatisfaction, and may also lose critical stakeholdersupport for future projects.

Instead of a big leap – and a big risk, ITSM Kaizenadvocates small steps that lead to smaller, butmore predictable, IT wins. For example, a serviceimprovement that captures $100,000 in projectsavings can be used to fuel innovation elsewhere,such as a new proof of concept.

Are you overlooking the smaller IT changes that you could be making to continuously drive savings, support innovation, and contribute to your company’s revenue goals?

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“When the wind ofchange blows,

some build walls, othersbuild windmills.”

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Change

Even when you start small, fostering change can be difficult. To be effective, change needs to occur across the primary components that enable it: people, process, and technology. Of the three, people typically present your greatest challenge. The existing way of doing things creates natural inertia, with pending change causing trepidation and concern about the ability to successfully adapt.

To prepare for and achieve a smooth transition, you need to evaluate your IT talent against your new requirements. This includes clearly communicating what’s changing, and then providing any needed training around new IT processes and tools. In addition, you need to convey how the change will benefit your enterprise from the get-go. This will help ensure you receive the executive commitment and top-down funding for technology investments that support proposed IT changes.

What are you doing to change the mindset of those around you, so you can make progress toward desired IT improvements??

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“Tell me and I’ll forget;show me and I may

remember; involve meand I’ll understand.”

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The Importance of Data

ITSM Kaizen depends on data, because data is what brings to light inefficiencies, trends, and opportunities for change. Without the right data at hand, you won’t be able to make informed decisions about where to initiate improvements and how to prioritize change going forward.

Instead, you need to establish processes to capture and analyze real-time data, as well as provide custom dashboards for easy viewing of, and reporting on, key service metrics. Armed with this data, you’ll gain greater insight into what your star performers are doing, and where unnecessary delays and waste are occurring. You can then decide what additional training may be required to help underachievers – such as Lean Six Sigma and ITIL certification – and how workflows could be streamlined to optimize service delivery and costs.Combining the results into a business case that proves IT’s value.

Are you able to use the data currently available to you to effectively guide the performance of your IT staff, or make meaningful service improvements??

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Lower the Cost Floor

Lowering the cost of services can be comparedto lowering the cost of goods. For example, if youcan squeeze excess costs out of the productionprocess, you can reduce the cost per unit andsubsequently lower the price of your products tobe more competitive.

In a service environment, you can apply a similarapproach to eliminate waste by first identifying allthe costs involved in delivering a specific service.

Once you have this understanding, you can workwith the people involved in the process to pinpointincremental areas of improvement where you couldcut costs. The savings you achieve from theselower-cost services can then be plowed back intoother technologies or initiatives that supportenterprise innovation.

Can you quantify your service cost per unit? Are you working with people who know how to adjust the levers of your service delivery processes so you get the greatest bang for your buck?

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ITSM Kaizen offers a structured way to help you understand your current level of service capability and expense, while assessing related service impacts on enterprise operations.

From this vantage point, and with the help of those closest to service processes, you can begin to institute small, but ongoing changes, to continually improve service operations, cut costs, and provide significant value to your company.

Working with Unisys, you can implement ITSM Kaizen best practices so that the process of change is less daunting, and the results more rewarding.

To learn more, go to unisys.com/ITSM

About the Author

Andrew Harsch is the Director of Portfolio Marketing at Unisys where he focuses on the Global Managed Services portfolio and the disciplines of ITSM and IT operations. Prior to joining Unisys he was the Senior Manager for the Remedy ITSM suite at BMC software. Mr. Harsch is a graduate of Iowa State University.

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Unisys and other Unisys products and services mentioned herein, as well as their respective logos, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Unisys Corporation. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

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