Computer Economics recently published a research paper which states that 28% of companies outsource their Help Desk. This number is line with the overall outsourcing of IT functions of 28% as well. Human Resources are next in line for outsourcing at 15%, followed closely by sales and marketing at 14%.

Given the fact that these three business functions are primarily people driven we can safely say that IT is more aggressive as a business unit to outsource than the rest of a company. Actually, let me restate that for those of us in the IT business: The Help Desk is two times less strategic and valuable than those other functions!

Why should companies view the Help Desk as more important and strategic than Human Resources, or Sales & Marketing? What has IT done in the last 5-10 years to put strategic value on the Help Desk? Training? Not so much; as ask any Help Desk Manager if they are spending more today than five years ago on training their support staff.

Ah, it must be technology that IT is spending money on for support. Don’t think so, just look at the overall IT spend over the last 3 years, as the downward trend continues. I know, it is more resources! Again, ask any Help Desk Manager if they have increased their staff to meet the business demand?

Yet in all of this most Help Desk Managers will tell you that work has increased, and volumes are up. With the exception of this “little recession” we are in, year over year volume increases exist in most support organizations. Ask any Help Desk Manager how the last upgrade went or configuration change in the network over the weekend…

I often ask, will it ever get better for the Help Desk? Here are a few reasons why it doesn’t look good;

1. At a macro level we are shifting to a contractor based workforce. By 2016 it is estimated that over 40% of the workforce will be contactors. All commodity based positions will be outsourced or eliminated (If you didn’t figure this out, most Help Desk work is considered commodity based by the business) and only Knowledge Workers with specific skill sets will work within companies. Don’t believe me? Ask where your receptionist is. Most mid-sized and small companies have eliminated that position already.

2. Gartner estimates that over 40% of IT budgets will be controlled by the business in the next couple of years. Hmmm, if I am a business unit leader am I going to spend money on Help Desk that even IT hasn’t invested in (see my points above), or am I going to find someone else that can do it better and cheaper so I can use my time and money better? Take a guess!

3. The Help Desk value to a company has remained finite for over a decade. Ask a Help Desk Manager what their service level agreements were 5 years ago, and what they are today. Chances are they are same. While the metrics may have increased and the Help Desk answers the phone faster the reality is that most Help Desks have not updated their service level commitments to match what the business needs. Case in point: why doesn’t the Help Desk answer 80% of their emails within 30 seconds? They do this for their phone calls, and even chats.

Whether you are for or against outsourcing you have to be objective and look at other factors affecting companies today. The reality is that in most companies the Help Desk continues to drift further from the center of the organization.  There really is no Single Point of Blame (SPOB) as this is really the evolution of business more than the Help Desk having a target on its back. Don’t worry Help Desk managers; the CIO right now has a bigger target on their back, as most analysts have them extinct within companies within five years.

Hey, look at the bright side… Airline companies today outsource 67% of significant maintenance work of their aircraft. Hey Help Desk, you are over two times more strategic in value than those useless Ten ton tin cans in the sky! Enjoy your next flight, and for some comedic relief on outsourcing, click on this video.

I recently met with four of our clients, each from a large, name brand organization.

All of these people stated that right now, their key initiatives and mandates revolve around improving Customer Service and the customer experience with respect to their Help Desk / Service Desk.

I found this to be a bit curious. Customer Service has long been a focus of a well managed service desk. Why the renewed focus in 2009?

Is this the same in your organization? Are you renewing your emphasis on customer service? Or is it just business as usual? Post a comment and tell us why!

Recently, I was speaking with a colleague of mine, Cindy Allingham.  Cindy has over 25 years of experience in IT and is a former VP of IT at a national bank in Canada.  We started talking about why ITIL initiatives have such a low rate of success, and I was truly amazed at the perspective she had to offer.  This is part one of our conversation (through email).

MJ –

You mentioned that ITIL initiatives haven’t realized their apparent goal of cutting costs.  Perhaps you can help me understand that a bit.  Wouldn’t Change Management – implemented correctly – reduce failed changes and save money?  Am I being naïve!?  Let me know what your experience has been when you say it makes things efficient rather than explicitly reducing costs.

Cindy Allingham –

Once upon a time, back 25 - 30 years, when IT was all mainframe, things in operations were very much more organized. They had to be, because they wouldn’t work otherwise. Processes were developed and put into place to handle incident, problem, change, release, upgrade and many others. There was no such thing as ITIL, but IBM, major banks, and insurance companies in Canada all had their own forms (some very sophisticated) of these kinds of processes.

As the 1980s and 1990s moved along, think of all the changes in technology and business usage there were!!!!! Can you image how much in business changed (and IT jobs too) when networks were introduced to link PCs? When the Internet made it possible for electronic communications outside of individual corporations? And then all the flurry of activity for Y2K. In the meantime, technology was streamlining itself too, in order to reduce the need and cost for human intervention to operate it. For instance, in the early 90s the rule of thumb in large corporations was to staff networks with one administrator for every 10 workstations. Imagine these days - one administrator usually takes care of an entire network of 1500+.

We have talked in the past about how Y2K meant a huge amount of work and money, interrupted the technology activities of most companies for a few years, and then because it seemed such a non-event, resulted in lack of business faith in IT. In the early years of the new millennium, businesses began to demand for the first time that IT account for itself, measure itself, prove to the organization that it was worth the money.

ITIL became popular in many organizations beginning in the early 2000s because it was a way to measure, monitor and manage IT in a formulized way, and IT could justify its activities. By this time IT needed to find ways of occupying many staff who had become unnecessary through technology streamlining, and improving process and measuring IT performance was a great way. Business was relatively happy because for the first time they were seeing what IT was providing and how they were doing it. Those preaching the ITIL gospel had opportunities for new specializations.

However, by 2003/2004, organizations had slimmed down considerably from pre-Y2K, and there was continued pressure from business to reduce IT operational costs by reducing staff. ITIL processes required reinstatement of roles that had disappeared in the late 90s; Incident managers, Problem managers, Change managers, Help Desk specialists, Release managers and specialists, process and project experts. This was acceptable while businesses could see returns - ITIL could help IT show what value they were providing and what levels of performance were being achieved. But as the economy started to tighten, businesses wanted to keep getting these things along with ever-decreasing costs.

MJ is a Director at B Wyze Solutions.

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

Hi All,

Ok…this is a bit of a long one, but since proper Incident Management is the cornerstone of any ITIL implementation, it’s time well spent.

Goal:  Implement Incident Management

Let’s say you want to implement Incident Management.  You’re not alone; most Service Delivery Managers agree that the proper incident management is among their very top priorities and must be done immediately.

So how come it never works out the way ITIL prescribes?  Why, after 5 strong years of hearing about ITIL in Canada do we see companies unable to execute Incident Management properly?

What’s Incident Management?

To refresh our memories, the major goal of Incident Management is to restore a service to normal operating levels if something goes wrong.  It’s an overly simplistic definition I know, but it works for our discussion.

Where Incident Management breaks down

If Incident Management is not being done well, then any one of the following is likely to be occurring:
- Tickets are not being opened/closed correctly (if at all).
- Tickets are not being documented correctly.
- Poor handoff between tier 1 support and escalation groups.
- Tickets are being left in the system past negotiated SLA’s (i.e. Severity 2 tickets remaining open after x hours)
- etc.

Who’s to blame?

Now, let’s look at who’s responsible for the bulk of the above activities…Service Desk Analysts.  So, let’s blame Service Desk Analysts for not taking care of tickets, not documenting, not handing off tickets effectively…right?!?

No.  Most incident management implementations consist of one or more of the following:
- Forcing process education down Service Desk Analysts’ throat
- A focus on documenting, rather than institutionalizing, process [How many ITIL implementations consist of leaving a phonebook of documented processes??]
- Reprimanding Service Desk Analysts on a monthly basis for not adhering to Incident Management best practices.

Based on the way that Incident Management is implemented, is it any wonder why Service Desk Analysts don’t adhere to best practices? 

How Push-only strategies have eroded the institionalization of Incident Management

Think about this:  imagine your bosses giving you a presentation on how you are going to do your job every minute of every hour.  How likely are you going to be to follow their process, especially if you’ve been in the job for over 6 months?

So why do we expect Analysts to adopt the procedures that we feed them?  The typical way that Incident Management is implemented amounts to nothing more than a Push Marketing Strategy, whereby Management simply force the process down the Analysts throat.

The opposite of a Push Strategy would be a Pull Strategy, whereby Management invites Service Desk Analysts to weigh in on the ideal way to handle incidents as they come into the desk. 

Implementing Incident Management will likely result in a fundamental change in the way Analysts think and act at the Tier 1 level.  In order to institionalize this kind of change, we must involve the person that’s going to execute the process in order to ensure institutionalization.

Recommendations

1.  Let analysts know that you’re implementing/performing CSI on the Incident Management.  (Awareness)
2.  Provide Analysts with a quick 10-minute presentation on Incident Management, outlining the goals of restoring IT services asap and how it relates to Problem Management.  (Awareness/Push strategy via Advertising)
3.  Now that they know the goals of Incident Management, facilitate a meeting/solicit proposals for incident management process flows from the Analysts.  Let them know well ahead of time that the process that’s decided upon will be implemented and managed closely so that they have an incentive to participate. (Pull strategy via Incented Participation)
4.  Once you think you’ve created the Incident Management process, present it back to the analysts and ask them to poke holes in it.  (Pull strategy via Incented Participation)
5.  etc.

Phew!  This soapbox was just about to buckle…

Michael Jagdeo is a Director at B Wyze Solutions.

I’ll use my blog posts to share interesting ideas/frustrations/stories from my conversations with ITSM Management.

Incident Categories - AWESOME perspective!
1.  Ticket comes in.
2.  Ticket gets categorized based on what the Service Desk Analyst believes to have caused the incident.
3.  Ticket get escalated.
4.  Ticket gets closed by 2nd or 3rd level.
What’s missing here?  What is the categorization that 2nd or 3rd level would use to classify the ticket!?  That’s the true classification you’re looking for.

Balancing what is new and what is efficient
We’re in IT, and IT is cool to us.  That’s sometimes the reason that network, security, and applications groups want to implement new technologies.  However, IT is a service to the business, and as such we must ensure that we balance what is new and what is feasible given business needs and budgets.
When considering new technologies, make sure you perform a:
- Benefit Analysis
- Cost Feasibility Analysis and
- Risk Analysis
Good questions to ask:
- Should we implement a new solution now, 6 months from now, or next year?  
- How will the change interact with other changes already scheduled?

MJ