Can’t see the wood for the trees?
In the endless forest that is service management, you can get lost in no time. The forest seems to grow continuously. There is a new procedure or guideline lurking behind every tree. Your service desk employees were once able to find their way through this forest, but are becoming lost more and more frequently. Your management expects to be kept up to date on every new branch on every tree, whilst your clients wait to see what will happen. In the meantime everyone meddles in your service and demands transparency. .jpg){kind=spacer}
Organisations are becoming increasingly concerned with the growing pressure to establish business processes, procedures, financial administration and address environmental issues. Across all lines of business – welfare, government, ICT, etc. – this issuing of rules, otherwise known as compliance, has increased. International organisations in particular are concerned with requirements to meet with fundamental standards which are becoming increasingly stringent - consider here the American Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Yet not only in the area of finance, but also in Health and Safety, higher requirements are being put on organisations. There are also European technical guidelines (CE) and ISO norms with which organisations strive to comply.
Insight into your service desk
Indeed (IT) service desks notice the increasing need for improved and more efficient service against lower costs and better agreements. In the first place clients more often expect an adequate level of service which correlates with their questions and problems. In addition the primary business processes are becoming increasingly dependent on the IT infrastructure; networks, hardware, software, procedures, file and document management, etc. have become important links in organisations. Finally the management expects the state of affairs to be reported on. Can your service desk still see the wood for the trees?
The service desk also plays an important role with regard to compliance with a range of standards, for example in order to continue complying with an ISO norm. Nowadays the majority of reporting of procedures and data takes place digitally. A service management application is an instrument which can offer answers to all sorts of questions. Who has which role and which responsibilities? Which docum-
entation is available to resolve a malfunction? Which hardware is outdated and has therefore become a risk? How does the management gain insight into the functioning of the service desk?
Increasing importance of the service desk
TOPdesk consultant Sander Jerphanion visits clients on a regular basis. He sees that the role of the service desk within organisations is becoming increasingly important: “People are generally becoming more aware of the importance of a well-functioning service desk. The service desk is also becoming more of a central desk for all sorts of questions - not only for ICT matters, but also for facilities and personnel.”
Sander recognises the importance of transparency here: “There is pressure on a service desk from all sides to comply with rules and certain processes and to make results more transparent. “These wishes and requirements can come from both the management and clients, as well as external parties. Ultimately all these groups are asking for transparency in the work of the service desk.”
“To meet these wishes and requirements, internal transparency is of most importance for the service desk.” By internal transparency Sander is referring to the service desk employees’ understanding of procedures. “Occasionally it is difficult for employees to recognise why certain rules are introduced. Suspicion or aversion may arise for instance towards ITIL or when having to fill in the various fields in a service management application.”
From abstract to explicit
How do you get rid of this suspicion and emphasise the benefit of registering data? Sander: “Service desk employees need to be convinced that the registration of all these data actually leads to something. ITIL describes for example the registration of the ‘impact’ of a call. This may come across as very vague and abstract to some. You need to make it explicit - describe how many individuals will be affected by a certain malfunction. Every malfunction falls into a category where clients are more or less inconvenienced. This promotes transparency, not only for the service desk employees themselves, but also externally, for clients. Expectations are then made clearer; in particular when agreements in the form of SLAs are involved. It is also a means to remove any anxiousness that clients may be feeling, for example with regard to why one call has a higher priority than another.”
Structurele oplossingen
The reason why a service desk registers data is to prevent guesswork and randomness. Bottle necks and causes need to be found in order to reach structural solutions. Sander: “In order for a service desk to improve, something also needs to be done with the collected data. Data can be used for instance to create reports to provide insight into which type of calls keep reappearing, which problems remain for a longer period, which procedures ensure quicker solutions, etc. and finally to ensure that a better service is provided and client satisfaction is optimal. As soon as this is clarified, then the benefit of for instance ITIL is also realised.”
The question that a service desk needs to ask itself is: how to convert the woolly language of the issuing of rules into the daily activities of the service desk? If the answer to this is unclear, then the performance of a service desk will never improve. In other words - are all involved parties getting the information they are looking for? 
Creating transparency: School Community Piter Jelles
The ITC department of the school community Piter Jelles in Leeuwar-den, the Netherlands uses TOPdesk to create transparency in which investments need to be done each year. They do this with the assistance of a so-called bespoke work report, created especially for them by TOPdesk. Using this report the financial data concerning hardware and software is filtered from the application. Henk Schlingmann, Department Head, explains how they came this far: “The management approached us with the request for an overview of investments for the new school year. For this reason we have created a special report in order to easily generate overviews of investments.”
To create the detailed overviews, all hardware and software purchased by the school community is registered in TOPdesk, including the purchase date and purchase price. Whether the equipment is still present is also checked onsite once a year. Only then can a correct indication of equipment be made.
A number of important things are summed up in the report, such as the total value of all hardware, how much educative and administrative software is in use, the total yearly debit and the debits per location. Henk: “The report is a snapshot in time which gives an overview of each location: which equipment is still functional, what has been written off and what needs to be replaced? By indicating the replacement value of the hardware, we can automatically gain insight into the available budgets. The various schools within our school community indicate each year whether they wish to make new investments. On the basis of the investment overviews we can then see whether there is enough room for such an investment.”
Effective registration of data and reporting based on these data allows us to easily gain insight into the state of affairs. Henk: “By putting the data registered in TOPdesk to good use you can learn a lot about the state of affairs in your organisation. One condition of this is that all data is registered meticulously by the service desk. The importance of careful registration must therefore be communicated to the service desk employees. Only then can you create good overviews for example of the number of malfunctions per location, the maintenance and repair costs. On the basis of figures made in the past you can then make estimates for budgets in the future.”
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