Service Desk Effectiveness in 5 Steps – Part 1

avatar
(Edited)

Getting it inline service desk effectiveness

This is part 1 of a 5-part series on achieving service desk effectiveness. Over the course of the next two weeks, we will be posting a step for your company to improve your service desk. So, let’s get started.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

The digital revolution has transformed how the world works. Modern-day technology pervades all areas of our life. Expectations around information accessibility and speed are greater than at any time before. This relates to the way that we shop, including how professional and important life decisions will be made.

Your company must respond to ever-evolving client expectations in this digital age. It must to be competitive and remain relevant. Likewise, your service desk must become agile and more efficient. This enables support changing organizational priorities as well as capitalize on new opportunities. Also, it will help them meet growing end-user demands. This, in turn, provides for rapid and flawless service. Speed, and pressure to lower costs, are counter to traditional approaches to ITSM. These traditional methods emphasize risk mitigation and control over efficiency and agility. This leaves IT teams constrained and unable to perform to their full ability.

You can find the right balance between going faster and maintaining control. It requires a few new changes. This gets done through working smarter, not faster. Also instituting more efficient ways with which to serve your business. Learn about how you can accelerate your service management plans.

service desk effectiveness smart not hard

STEP #1: Tactical Enhancements for ITIL


The Fact of the Matter

ITIL is a set of suggested IT service management (ITSM) best practices.  ITIL supports interlink individual processes. But, ITIL could become complicated when taken too literally. Especially as more of the processes get implemented. For any set of processes, ITIL could describe as many as 70 or more “best practices” you could put in place. But there are likely six or seven that will offer the most value to your company.

Furthermore, IT teams have operated in silos. Likewise, they have implemented ITIL processes within these silos. That approach has made interlinking an unachievable notion. It impedes efficient service delivery.

Bear in mind, ITIL appeared in the age of mainframes. That was when the waterfall method was widespread. Focus was on process control and risk mitigation, not the time to delivery. Obviously, standardizing processes and lowering risk continue to be significant. But once your team leans too far in this direction, it takes too long to release even standard changes.

The Clever Solution: Employ Lean & Agile Methods in Your ITIL Recipe

You can view ITIL as a handy set of guidelines, not rigid standards. Alter it to your organization’s specific needs, resources allowing, with an emphasis on outcomes. Incorporate the most recent guidance from ITILv4 into your service desk. Especially integrate the advice around Agile and Lean philosophies. Use those attributes of ITIL that can best serve your company and move you to the required outcomes.

Service Desk

Personnel

Start thinking, not about processes, but focus on answers and outcomes. Make sure that your KPIs put emphasis on outcomes instead of performance measurement of unique processes.

Determine how silos in your company might be hampering your group's capability to function. If it is possible, introduce a project-based and/or cross-functional team approach. This helps underscore value streams.

Share plans for approaching work between the teams. Solicit feedback, so you can concentrate on high-value activities.

IT Service Desk Staffing the Right Way

Processes

Begin cutting the work in progress (WIP), like open tickets, change and service requests, and so forth. If queue size is too high, it’s time to discover root causes and modify processes.

Think “lean” and eliminate work that doesn’t produce value. For example, you must cut unnecessary steps in workflows. Then you must streamline and merge forms where feasible. You're also going to start only generating reports that are actionable.

Make yourself “agile” by deploying more minor changes and more regular releases. Instead of the waterfall method, deploy service desk software in sprints.

Start easy. Begin with a small list of processes which need streamlined and standardized. Then select the most impactful ITIL processes from the list. Then you do it again, doing a pair of processes each time.

AI Path

Tech

Start with a standard ITIL processes. This accelerates the deployments and reduces the cost.

Look for a “low-code” ITSM platform. This gives you the ability to adapt these processes to fit your specific needs.

Implement dashboards and reporting that gives visibility on the new KPIs. Remember, these must be outcome and efficiency-based metrics.

Conclusion of Part #1 on Achieving Service Desk Effectiveness

Stay tuned for Part 2 of 5 in this series. You should see it in about 3 days.

If you’ve different ideas and thoughts about improving service desk effectiveness, then please share them here. You can leave your comments, questions, or anything below or Contact Us.



Posted from ITSM Rhino with SteemPress : https://itsmrhino.com/service-desk-effectiveness-in-5-steps-part-1/


0
0
0.000
2 comments
avatar

To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.

0
0
0.000