Toronto, ON and Atlanta, GA - B Wyze Holdings Inc., today announced the acquisition of a majority position in Virtual Support Options, LLC , a provider of virtual workforce management solutions for the service and support industry.  The newly acquired company will now operate under the brand B Virtual Inc (www.bvirtualinc.com ).   B Wyze Holdings Inc. will now add B Virtual Inc. to its existing portfolio of companies which includes B Wyze Solutions (www.bwyze.com) and MindMuze (www.mindmuze.com ).

Prior to the acquisition, B Wyze Solutions (a wholly-owned subsidiary of B Wyze Holdings Inc.) was the exclusive partner for Virtual Support Options in Canada, selling and delivering the innovative products and solutions of Virtual Support Options for the support industry’s remote workforce.

“The Strategic alignment of our organizations and desire to further expand the delivery of remote workforce solutions to our customers and partners in Canada demonstrate our commitment to the support industry,” says John Towsley, Co- CEO of B Wyze Holdings Inc. 

“B Virtual will focus on assuming a leadership role in keeping IT Service Support jobs onshore and providing thought leadership to the IT Support community,” adds Rick Beaudry, Co-CEO of B Wyze Holdings Inc.   “Tim Dewey has a track record of operational excellence and thought leadership in Global IT Support Services”.

Tim Dewey, the founder and CEO of Virtual Support Options will remain the CEO of the newly acquired company.  Mr. Dewey states, “B Virtual Inc. services offers tremendous opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and boost service levels for companies. Virtual Support Teams service customers at a cost that’s competitive with offshore outsourcing rates but at higher service levels; Innovative training techniques developed by MindMuze now offer our customers cost-effective training of remote resources, without disruption to the business. The ability to combine the the holdings of B Wyze Holdings with B Virtual will transform how the service and support industry perform.” 

About B Virtual (formerly Virtual Support Options)

B Virtual provides Virtual Workforce Management solutions for the service and support industry. Exclusively focused on best practices for the Virtual workforce, B Virtual offers customers Education & Training, consulting, and sourcing services specifically designed for the Remote workforce.   B Virtual’s CEO, Tim Dewey, has an impressive track record of operating IT Service Support teams to a highly recognized industry standard. 

Rick Beaudry, Co-CEO of B Wyze Holdings, is a proven visionary in eLearning and ITSM, working at a strategic level with Toyota, Loblaw, Rogers, and a host of other large organizations across North America.

ITIL’s Missing Process:  Behavioral Change

Unless you’re seriously committed to changing the fundamental culture and behavior (behaviour, in Canada) in your IT organization, ITIL isn’t for you.   Changing behavior is not an “event”.  It does not happen as a result of training courses.   Training may be a catalyst to get everyone on the same page, but the science of behavior change is more complex and requires commitment. 

ITIL bears no resemblance to a software implementation.   ITIL will never have a final “look of done” (ah yes, except for that binder that was left behind after $$$$$$$ was spent to document the processes).  

It requires a commitment to Kaizen - continuous improvement requiring continuous effort.  It’s the foundation of Toyota’s corporate culture.  Kaizen should be the philosophy of your ITIL efforts.   

Next Steps – What are the Best Practices on Behavioral Change?

Next week I will post my interview with one of North America’s top experts in organizational behavior change.  She has researched the importance of stimulating the desire to change through the delivery of a disorienting dilemma.  

We will discuss how this research into influencing behavior change can be utilized by today’s IT Managers to improve the results of their process improvement initiatives.

Rick Beaudry is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of B Wyze Holdings Inc.   B Wyze Holdings has incubated and grown two successful startups – MindMuze and B Wyze – and is now launching its newest brand B Virtual Inc.    Each of the B Wyze Group of companies is focused on integrated products and services for mid to large global organizations.   B Wyze Holdings has been recognized for 5 consecutive years as one of Canada’s fastest growing companies by Profit Magazine.

Christine Whittle is a seasoned Manager of Service Delivery with a background from PWC and Brookfield Asset Management.  She weighs in on Cindy Allingham’s column, ITIL Misunderstood…

Wow, great topic of discussion.  While I hear and agree with much of what is being said, I see things a little differently…

ITIL by any other name

ITIL has existed since pretty much the beginning of IT, though was introduced to North America a little later then UK and Europe. A lot of IT departments follow ITIL generally but don’t call it, “ITIL.”  What IT department doesn’t recognize that when they have a lot of issues about the same thing that there might be 1 culprit out there?!  These IT departments are performing Problem Management whether they realize it or not.

MJ:  Correct!  Anyone that worked in operations in the ‘80s practiced strong change management because, heck, it just made SENSE.  Did they call it change management, create RFC’s, etc. per se?   Probably not.  But they were operating using best practices.  The ITIL best practices were published back in ’86!

Best Practices, Not a ‘Solution’

And while we all tend to talk of ITIL as a solution, it is only a set of best practice ideas which require consideration and planning based on your business.  It is not the answer to any IT problem.  Rather, it helps guide us to making good choices for running IT as a Business in full support of the Company we are there to support.

MJ:  GREAT point.  I think somewhere down the road people started thinking ITIL was like implementing SAP.

Can ITIL Save You Money?

Yes! And it does so by:

1.    Ensuring that IT develops and follows standards and processes that reduce the down time of end users through Incident Management.

2.    Reducing the number of incidents by identifying and resolving root cause problems through Problem Management.

3.    Reducing incidents and problems by formalizing the process to gain approval for Infrastructure and Application changes to reduce business impact.  (for an article that discusses the nuances of Problem Management, click here)

4.    Reducing incidents through monitoring of systems for capacity and availability management. Fast resolution to actual/potential service outages it facilitated when IT can anticipate threats in the environment.

MJ:  All strong points.  It’s important to keep in mind that, in the initial term, there are costs that have to be incurred in order to carry out the ITIL best practices (i.e. hiring a Problem Manager, Process Designer, etc.). 

That said, while the initial ROI given the costs involved may not be immediate, as we move ourselves away from firefighting by building relationships between the Problem Management group with Infrastructure and Application Management, we now start adding value to the business because we can help enable their strategy.  Keeping an application up 80% of the time is not considered a value-added offering by the business.

So, I should implement ITIL, right?

Wait a minute.  If your IT department develops their own best practices that makes sense to them and allows them to delivery service in a cost effective manner, why choose ITIL? Why waste a lot of time and energy developing something that is already available and has taken all sorts of businesses and requires into consideration to develop a great framework for us to use?

I think the most important thing we all need to remember is that IT is here to support the business. We must find ways to reduce business downtime and increase resolution times, because in doing so we prove our worth to the business. The business also must determine what downtime they can accept and therefore how much they are willing to pay to ensure that level . . . Hence SLAs!

MJ:  While a company, without knowing anything about ITIL, can become good at providing IT services without ITIL based on hard work and common sense, they will never become great without consulting with a best practices body of knowledge, whatever it’s called.  I’m not saying create a project to implement ITIL. But at the very least, one should consider the information contained in a relevant best practices BOK and evaluate whether certain aspects could enhance service delivery.

At B Wyze, we believe that there is one huge process that is missing from most ITIL implementations.  It’s a process that your consulting firm doesn’t talk about.  It’s a process that requires negotiation, facilitation, and team-building between the IT silos.  It’s a difficult process.  It’s a process that nobody wants talk about it because it requires uncomfortable conversations with uncomfortable people.

Rick Beaudry, Co-CEO at B Wyze, will weigh in on this process very soon…

Christine Whittle (ITIL) is a Senior Service Delivery Manager with over 10 years experience in IT.  She specializes in Operations and Service Delivery improvement using her experience in ITIL processes, best practices, and focus on business requirements to help IT departments mature.  To contact her, please leave a message at 1.888.418.4230 ext. 222.

Michael Jagdeo is Director Recruitment Services for B Wyze Solutions.

My conversation regarding why ITIL implementations fail continues with Cindy Allingham, Sr. Consultant…if you’re new to the series, click here for part 1.

Cindy:  … there is a danger in getting caught up in the improvements and losing sight of the actual operation. I call that ITIL Overload; it occurs when more effort is expended on the process than on the results.

How can we identify ITIL Overload? Here are some symptoms:

Cindy:  Excessive delegation of responsibilities by process owners

When specific process-owner duties, such as decision-making in Change Management, are delegated by middle-management to the lowest level possible, it indicates that the organization has little respect for the process. Yet this happens frequently due to resource reductions, and results in lip service to the process. If middle-management or the designated managers don’t have the time to own the process then it needs to be simplified.

Cindy:  Performance measurements don’t relate to the business, but remain relevant to IT only

When there is too much focus on ITIL process, and not enough on results or operations, performance measurements often resemble foreign languages, as far as business is concerned. If you are in a manufacturing company, who cares how many incidents were addressed within 2 hours? At the very least, measurements should be made at the application level, and expressed as impact to the business. (How often I have heard business users complain that IT told them they had provided 99% availability, but the actual application was down 20% of the time!)  If IT management wants to assess whether ITIL process improvements are making a difference, focus on impact on the business.

MJ:  Altogether now!  “The Purpose of ITIL v3 is to expand upon ITIL v3 by focusing on aligning the IT Services to the Business Needs.”

Cindy Allingham (ITIL, PMP, CGEIT) is a Senior Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in all aspects of IT. With several years at the IT executive level, she has an extensive portfolio of experiences in the financial services and government sectors. She specializes in ITIL consulting, project management, and operations improvement.  To reach her, please leave a message at 1.888.418.4230 ext. 222.

Michael Jagdeo is Director Recruitment Services for B Wyze Solutions. 

My conversation regarding why ITIL implementations fail continues with Cindy Allingham, Sr. Consultant…

Cindy:  … there is a danger in getting caught up in the improvements and losing sight of the actual operation. I call that ITIL Overload; it occurs when more effort is expended on the process than on the results.

How can we identify ITIL Overload? Here are some symptoms:

Cindy:  Disagreement among IT management about who owns / is accountable for various processes

If no one is sure who owns a function or process, or multiple groups claim ownership, it is pretty obvious that not much is going to get done. With ITIL functions, however, it is even more critical to establish how accountabilities and ownership will flow between the various functions. If the organization is too small to have adequate separation of duties (i.e. the Incident Manager is also the Problem Manager) the process needs to be simplified. If the organization is too big to have a close functional relationship between the various functions (i.e. the Incident Manager and the Problem Manager are in totally different sections of the company and don’t need to communicate) then having ITIL processes is almost useless.   ITIL process improvements realize their true value when they dovetail together.  This dovetailing MUST be encouraged at a senior level.

MJ:  ITIL v3 tries to address confusion of ownership via the RACI matrix (intended to delineate the various ways people can get involved in a process):

·         Responsible - Those who do work to achieve the task

·         Accountable hose who are ultimately accountable to the correct and thorough completion of the task

·         Consulted - Those whose opinions are sought.

·         Informed - Those who are kept up-to-date on progress.

Cindy:  Various processes proceed in isolation (separate tools, data duplicated in multiple places, processes don’t link up or share)

ITIL Service management processes were designed to fit together. They can certainly function on their own, and most corporations initially implement them in isolation because it is easier to do so. However, if the various processes are all operating in isolation, ITIL’s advantages will be lost and the various processes will actually interfere with one another. (Imagine, for example, Change Management and Release Management operating separately.) If ITIL process resources are spending all their time focused on individual functions, and not on making them all work together smoothly, this problem will actually continue to get worse. Attention must be shifted to integration of the processes, and this will result in streamlining.

Cindy Allingham (ITIL, PMP, CGEIT) is a Senior Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in all aspects of IT. With several years at the IT executive level, she has an extensive portfolio of experiences in the financial services and government sectors. She specializes in ITIL consulting, project management, and operations improvement.  To reach her, please leave a message at 1.888.418.4230 ext. 222.

Michael Jagdeo is Director Recruitment Services for B Wyze Solutions.