Building a Service Desk:

The Key to Customer Service

 IT Organization Challenges

IT Transformation Challenges
Best Practices • Budget pressure – do more with less
Process Improvement • Protecting enterprise assets and
Common Engineering information
• Enabling faster and consistent
innovation
Driving Enterprise Budget Pressure
Efficiencies &
-SW/HW • Deliver value-add IT projects on-time,
Managing Legacy within budgets
Improvement
• Reduce complexity
Centralization/
Integration • Eliminate Fragmented / Shadow IT
Aging Workforce • Manage proliferation of new
technology
• Aging workforce / resource constraints
• High availability, near non-stop
services

Few areas of business are more challenged than

Information Technology
 The Aging Workforce Challenge The Knowledge Drain

 Skilled government
workforce shrinkage =
forced adoption of new
technology
Retirement of Growing
 60% new jobs will require
Talent
Baby Boomers Skills Gap Shortage skills of 20% of the current
workforce
 Seventh largest economy
in the world (State of
Difficulty of Recruiting California) predicts 50%
60% loss of State IT staff in 5-7
% of Respondents

50% years
40%
We anticipate that 20 to 40% of our workforce
31% will be eligible to retire in the next few
years…Most of those anticipated retirements
20%
will occur among workers with hard to replace
10% 9% skills such as COBOL.”
0.0% 0.0
Much Somewhat About Somewhat Much - KY CIO, Mike Inman
Easier Easier The More More (“IT a Slam-Dunk in Kentucky State Government”,
Difficult Difficult Todd Newcombe Government Technology’s Public CIO
Same
Magazine.)
Best Practices
ITSM Structure
COSO
Control
Frameworks
COBIT

IT Security
App. Dev. (SDLC)

Quality System
IT Planning
Service Management

Project Management
ITO
Management

ITIL CMMI ISO PMI IT ISO

Quality Strategy
Frameworks ASL PRINCE2 Six Sigma

IT OPERATIONS
Industry Benchmarks for High Performing ITO
 Consistent metrics for end user satisfaction
 Measurements and metrics affect ITO behavior
 Documented and agreed upon SLAs and OLAs
 Documented and enforced change management process
 Single point of contact for service delivery
 Designated service delivery manager
 Reports that are meaningful in terms of the business
 What is ITIL?
 Information Technology Infrastructure Library
 Documented best practices
 Focused on aligning IT with business
 Began in UK in the 1980’s, now in version 2
 Version 3 newly arrived
 It is the de facto global standard
 Process-led approach
 Adoption drivers:
 compliance
 quality
 off-shoring
 competitiveness
 customer requirements

February 14, 2008

Process Management
ITIL Objectives
 Reduce Costs  Tune Capacity
 Improve End User Satisfaction  Increase Throughput
 Improve Reporting  Optimize Resource Utilization
 Improve Availability  Improve Scalability
 Progress by Process -- 2006 to 2008
2006 2008

Service Desk Incident IT Service Change Availability Financial Release Configuration Capacity Problem Service Level
Management Continuity Management Management Management Management Management Management Management Management
Management for IT
Services
2008 CMM Process Maturity

Service Desk
5.0
Availability
Incident Management
Management 4.0
3.0
IT Service Continuity
2.0 Problem Management
Management
1.0
0.0
Capacity Configuration
Management Management

Financial
Change Management
Management for IT …
Service Level
Release Management
Management
IT Transformation Buckets

Business IT Infrastructure IT Science IT

• ERP • Data Center

• Supply Chain • Network • Lab Management
• Financials • Telephony • Super Computing
• Human Resources • Help Desk • Science HW/SW
• Procurement • Computing
• Collaboration
Large $ Investment Early Win Large $ Investment
Highly Customized Best ROI Highly Customized
Complex Less Resistance Complex
Disparate Fewer Barriers Disparate

SECURITY

GOVERNANCE

MANAGEMENT OVERSIGHT
Transforming to a Service Desk
Why Transform?
Change the internal IT environment
 Improve employee perception of help desk work
 Increase accountability of work quality and performance
 Reduce impact to other IT staff
 Meet end user and business expectations

Improve efficiencies, reduce cost, and increase customer confidence in IT

 Increased 1st call resolution
 quicker restoration of service for the end-user
 decrease reactive work passed along to other IT support groups
 Improved ticket quality
 facilitates reporting
 provides better information for business decisions
 Convergence of functions (e.g. telephony/ data/ security)

Extend the range of services offered by IT

 Customer change requests
 Maintenance contracts
 Software licenses
 Service Level Management
 Configuration Management
 Availability Management
 Financial Management for IT Services
 IT Service Continuity Management
Start with a CMM baseline followed by a Roadmap
Baseline
 Assess IT environment across the enterprise using ITIL framework
 Develop baseline/capability maturity model against industry benchmarks
 Comprehensive assessment of people (current staffing skills), process, and
technology

Roadmap
 Develop TO BE environment
 Perform gap analysis
 Prioritize based on your criteria (cost savings, end user satisfaction, etc)
 Implement
Benefits to Assessment/Baseline
 Provide list of quick wins – low to no cost with short timelines
 Provide potential costs savings
 Provide project prioritization based on ROI or other criteria
 Provide input for business case development
to management
 Provide potential efficiencies to improve customer
satisfaction, streamline operations, and focus
on managing information
 Provide Findings document that addresses:
 Process re-engineering
 Process automation
 Infrastructure consolidation
 Skills development/training
 New tools/techniques
 Provide industry benchmarks and best practices
 Provide roadmap (both what and how) for transforming IT
support
Service Desk Concept
 Under ITIL model, the Service Desk becomes the first single point of contact for all IT
 Best practice is to begin by consolidating help desk & deskside
 Determine Service Desk scope and scale (can begin with traditional PC support)
 Approach
 Broaden areas of responsibilities and capabilities for Service Desk agents/technicians. May
include messaging, PDAs, parts management, remote location support
 Increase Capabilities
 Develop triage scripts for key applications and hardware that technicians can use to
troubleshoot problems and/or provide “how to” information to end users
 Use an online knowledge base
 Provide agents with checklists
 Provide remote access tools so more work is accomplished at the Service Desk
 Develop and implement communications for all end users
 Assess and implement other efficiencies
 Centers of Expertise
 Call routing/management
 Queue management
 Web self service (more than email)
What does it take to build a service desk?
 Willingness to change
 Business case to demonstrate to management the benefits and cost
savings
 ITIL training in incident, service management, and problem management as
well as the Service Desk function
 Project Manager, or ITIL SME, to tailor the processes to your environment
 Project Manager, or ITIL SME, to implement the processes and small,
dedicated team to execute
 Communications plan and good execution of the plan
 Commitment to management by metrics
 Definition of and adherence to SLAs
 Upper management buy-in
Benefits of a Service Desk
 Better service for end users – one belly button
 Increased customer satisfaction
 Improved ability for IT to be proactive, not reactive
 Increased productivity of IT staff across the ITO
 More visibility into and control of IT services for IT management
 Short term savings
 Long term savings
 Increased accountability for adhering to service levels
 Increased internal communication and teamwork
 Reduced number of visits to deskside and number of field techs
Challenges
 Staffing reorganization
 Skill levels & training needs
 Process changes for IT and end users
 Resistance to writing triage scripts/Lack of intra-organizational cooperation
 Appropriate enabling tools – ACD, IVR, BSM software (Remedy, CA
Unicenter, HP Openview, Peregrine)
One Tech to the Desktop Concept
 Consolidates related support functions with the Service Desk
 Functions can include:
 Telephony
 Video conferencing
 Collaboration tools
 Server support
 Network administration support
 “Super Techs” provide support from the wall to the desk
 Super Tech is trained and certified for telecom & PC break/fix
 Super Tech trained to do physical hardware moves
 PC break/ fix tech functions as backup to telecom
 Agents address both telecom and PC calls
 Telephone vendor provides support in back of the wall (PBX)
Case Studies
Large Western Healthcare System
Overview
 Is a not-for-profit system of hospitals, a health plan, and a growing medical
group; 7 Hospitals, 30 Clinics, 490 Physicians, 450,000 members
 9,500 Employees
 6,500 Workstations
 425 Applications
 450 Servers + Mainframe
 17,000 Telephones / Lines
 12,000 Network Ports
Objectives
 Align IT to the needs of the business
 Transform the Help Desk to a Single Point of Contact Service Desk
 Seamless delivery of services that could not be duplicated for a similar cost
by insourcing
 Create a flexible and mutually beneficial delivery model and contract that
has risk and reward tied to performance against the Key Performance
Indicators
 Utilize the ITIL Best Practices framework to become more efficient and at
the same time increase end user satisfaction
 Increase Customer Satisfaction
ITIL Transformation Plan Initiatives
 Improve Help Desk agents’ professionalism and team environment
 Increase Help Desk agents’ technical excellence
 Increase the number of first call closures
 Implement quality assurance team
 Silent Ticket Monitoring
 Secret Shopper
 Customer Surveys
 Key Performance Indicators and metrics reporting
 CA Service Desk call tracking tool upgrade and customization
Incident Management Implementation
 Implemented a 24 X 7 Service Desk (SD) team
 Consolidated multiple SD phone lines into a single IVR based phone line
 Clearly defined and documented the Incident Management flow process
 Upgraded Service Desk tool to Computer Associates (CA) version 11 with additional functionality
 Incident ticket notifications are sent to the user informing them of the open ticket and Incident
number for tracking purposes
 An Incident ticket being updated to a resolved status, has an automatic notification sent to the
user informing them the Incident is resolved.
 If the user agrees with this status, the incident is closed.
 Implemented a Technical Knowledge Base (KB) within CA tool for the SD Agent to reference while
on the phone with user
 Assigned a KB Administrator to ensure the quality of KB documents, prevent duplication of
documents, and periodically review old KB entries
 Implemented a more professional in-coming call script that all SD Agents are required to utilize
 Required all IS Applications teams to update their on-call applications list to ensure proper ticket
assignment. Linked “On-Call” with Applications list for better ticket routing.
 Clearly defined and documented a ticket escalation process and mis-assigned ticket process
 Linked Incident Service Request (ISR) form with Applications list for better ticket routing
 Implemented Auto Notification of newly created tickets that pages the tech. If the tech does not
acknowledge the ticket assignment within 15 minutes, system pages tech.
 Required SD agents to capture more details in Incident ticket creation including what
troubleshooting they had attempted
What Happened
 Customer satisfaction increased significantly
 Substantial reduction in service escalations to IT management
 ITIL initiative created a very collaborative environment between Kemtah and
Client
 Delivered tangible results in the areas of incident management and change
management
 Transformed the Help Desk function into a single point of contact Service
Desk
 Service Desk has consolidated activity of other IT vendors
 Morale is up and turnover is down
 New career paths for staff
 Day-to-day production management is facilitated by process documentation
 Early successes with incident management and change management have
paved the way for success with configuration management and release
management
Large Mid-West Health Services
Overview
 Leading U.S. healthcare provider
 Based in Nashville, Tennessee
 Supports healthcare markets in Albuquerque, NM and Tulsa, OK
 10 acute care hospitals
 1 Multi-specialty physicians group
 1 health care plan
 1 medical laboratory
 Over 10,000 end-users of IT services
Requirements
 Implement an upgraded Business Services Management Software platform
 Implement an end-user support strategy that is standardized across the
Client’s markets
 Maintain customer facing IT staff within the markets
 Improve the productivity of the IT department
 Implement a best-in-class Service Desk to align with the Client’s business
strategy
 Control and reduce costs
Project Objective
Develop an upgrade implementation plan for Client’s CA-SD Service Desk
environment that will address IT and business requirements, including a
CA-SD system upgrade approach, risk management, schedule, and
dependencies.

 Key activities:
 Assess the end-user IT support operations
 Validate IT work flows
 Validate the functional requirements with stake holder groups (clinical,
financial, revenue cycle)
 Identify “gaps” in current/desired process
 Provide definition of recommended functionality additions
 Gain consensus with stakeholder group representatives on a strategy to
move forward
 Develop plan to move forward with the implementation of the CA-SD
environment
Solution
Develop a future mode of operation or “To-Be Model”:
 Implement IT organizational support and governance for the transformed Service
Desk environment
 Implement a quality assurance program for IT end-user support
 Customer Survey
 Audits
 Develop customer approved Service Level Agreements
 Standardize the end-user IT support processes between the markets
 Enable the efficient of flow of end-user requests between work groups
 Enable the ability to keep the end-user informed of the progress and status of
their IT request
Project Results
 Implement an upgraded Business Services Management Software platform
 Increased quality of work produced by all IT support groups
 Service Desk is more productive and is resolving more end-user support
requests
 Other IT support groups have more time to spend on proactive activities
 Improved reporting accuracy of IT end-user support activity
 Increased level of confidence in IT by end-user
 Increased employee satisfaction
Questions?

Stephen V. Wade
505.917.7096
swade@kemtah.com