10 Tips for Improving ITSM Metrics and Reports

Nobody gets excited about ITSM metrics and reports. But to know how well you are managing your IT services they're needed. They're needed by the customers and ensure you deliver to contractual obligations.

Teams will often make the mistake of using canned reports within the ITSM tools. Often ITSM metrics and reports only serve the IT side of things. They often provide no value to the business. They can create a great deal of examination, many pivot tables and loads of useless meetings. That is even if people can come to an agreement on how to gather the numbers and what they mean.

In this article we are going to look at ITSM metrics and Reports that matter for delivering value to customers.

1. Start Over With Your ITSM Metrics and Reports

Begin at goals and mission statements. Goals need to be pertinent to your part in the business. These are your intentions and what you want your organization to look like.

Examples:

Change Management – Make sure changes are effectively, efficiently, securely, and safely implemented

IT Asset Management – Protecting and managing your investment in IT assets

Incident Management – Mitigate or resolve incidents ASAP and with little business effect

Be transparent and concise. This establishes the climate for what you want to accomplish. Create process goals, measure them, and be transparent.

2. Make Critical Success Factors (CSFs) Mean Something

Ensure CSFs clearly align with the goals and mission statement discussed in #1.

Take change management for instance. Maybe you have three crucial factors for success for one of the goals mentioned above. Each CSF will begin parsing your important deliverables and outcomes in smaller pieces.

As an example, CSFs for change management may consist of:

• Deliver change effectively
• Deliver change efficiently
• Deliver change securely
• Deliver change safely

To define CSFs, document elements supporting preferred outcomes. Document circumstances, capabilities, and assets required to produce outcomes and meet said goals.

Concentrate on the performance of the individual, team, and organizational levels.

3. Ensure Management of Your Business Through KPIs

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), a degree down from CSFs in the metrics tier. Get granular in measuring and metrics for KPIs. Use these to concentrate on the performance of the individual, team, and organizational levels.

As an example, KPIs for change management could consist of:

• 99.1% of changes closed are successful (Effectiveness CSF)
• 95.3% of changes delivered on time (Efficiency CSF)
• 99.8% of changes produced no vulnerabilities (Secure CSF)
• 5% of major incidents generated from a change (Safely CSF)

KPIs directly convert to CSFs with a distinct line of advancement. The point is to connect metrics from granular metrics to KPIs, to CSFs, and finally to a mission statement.

4. Check to Make Sure Service Level Agreements (SLAs) Help Everybody

Any IT professional who has been around heard the phrase “window dressing”. ‘Window dressing’ for SLAs is when everything related to measurements is “green”. But peel back the layers and there is “red” all over the place.

SLAs created with little thought is bad for the business and everyone in it. The service and business stakeholders must take part when generating SLAs. This makes sure their needs get factored in. The SLA should assist in the reporting of the precise status of the business.

Examples of what this might look like:

• How does the daily service appear?
• What do you need for capacity and availability?
• How will you measure capacity?
• What is good and what is bad?
• What's expected for latency?

Make sure everyone agrees on the targets and thresholds making up the SLA.

5. OLAs Need to Support the SLAs

SLAs are very dependent on their underlying Operational Level Agreements (OLAs). It will not matter if your SLA says a service restoration within 2 hours. If the underlying OLAs do not support 2 hours of resolution time, you will fail to meet the SLA.

When designing SLAs, make sure the individual OLAs support the agreed service level. Ensure there is some buffer time built in.

Underpinning contracts (UCs) are basically SLAs between two businesses.

6. Underpinning Contracts Should Not Ignored

Anyone who has been around IT for more than two seconds has seen those ‘special’ incidents. Do you know the one that comes out of nowhere and explodes in your face? This is usually the case when a third-party organization comes into the picture. Underpinning contracts (UCs) are basically SLAs between two businesses. An example would be a service agreement with the telco who supplies your connection.

UCs also need reviewed to ensure they support the SLAs must align with the SLA.

7. Measure Your Customer’s Experience

Meeting the SLAs is not the end-all-be-all. Yes, from an agreement and contractual standpoint they may meet the need. But, perceived value to the customer is the determining factor for a happy customer. That is what we are looking for.

To keep customers a provider must go beyond SLAs and measure the customer experience. You can still meet the SLA and have a dissatisfied customer. If end-users are complaining about your service desk or technicians, you have problems.

Surveys and self-help articles allow the end-users to review service. This is an easy win and most issues addressed quickly. It allows proactive engagement with the customer’s decision-makers.

Add customer experience and satisfaction measurements to your metrics and reporting. Capture most end-user satisfaction and experience at your organization's interface, the service desk. Collect feedback over the phone, email, self-service portals, and self-help pages and articles

Make sure the end-user experience is similar across all platforms. Then ensure you communicate concisely, professionally, and clearly.

Do not short staff the service desk. Ensure appropriate staffing. Staff it with people who have not only technical skills but people skills as well.

8. Compliance Is Important and Needs Measured

Being transparent is essential to good communication and building trust. Often, it is the law. Laws related to SOX, HIPPA, and Privacy Act and others need measured and reported.

Internal auditing, compliance training, risk management, policies, and governance are typical compliance areas. These metrics and reports are prominent gauges of risk. They are very important to not only the success but can be life or death for the organization.

Example of what compliance metrics might look like:

• Quantity of open compliance incidents/problems
• Quantity of closed compliance incidents /problems
• Quantity of overdue audit incidents/problems

Continual Service Improvement (CSI) ensures the delivery of value to the customer.

9. Continual Service Improvement (CSI) of ITSM Metrics and Reports

Integrating Continual Service Improvement (CSI) into your metrics and reports provides quality management. It makes sure there is constant improvement in the services. It ensures the delivery of value to the customer.

The easiest way to begin a CSI program is to create a CSI register. Use it to record recommendations for improvements. Constantly update the register based on regular status meetings and customer feedback. Put the quick wins in place ASAP and communicate them to your customer and their end-users. It will go a long way.

10. Customize ITSM Metrics and Reports to the Stakeholder

Make sure your metrics and reports target the audience. Different stakeholders need and only care about certain information. A blanket report will not cut it.

Don’t send reports of your budget performance to your service desk technicians. I assure you, from experience, they don’t care. They are only concerned about working end-user challenges. Keep it that way!

Your customer doesn’t care about your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) accuracy either. So, don’t make them sit through a brief on it. Besides, you may open a can of worms you can’t close back up.

Adapt your reports to the stakeholder, make sure you know what they want to see. You can, and should, address this in the SLAs anyway. Don’t add any more or any less. Use CSI to make sure all reports are still providing value to you and the customer. If they are not, use CSI to add value, remove metrics that do not add value or drop the report completely.

Do you have different tips about ITSM Metrics and Reports you would like to share? We ask you to share them here. You can leave your comments, questions, or anything you wish in the section below or Contact Us.

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