Ivanti Blog: Posts by

Artificial Intelligence Goes Mainstream

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 20:18:19 Z

Earlier this year, I predicted that Artificial intelligence (AI) would move from innovation labs to mainstream workflow projects this year. In IT organizations, I believe service management teams will lead this trend. Here’s why.

Barriers to AI

A few years ago, I attended an IT Service Management (ITSM) conference. I sat in on a couple of speaking sessions billed as AI. But really, what I heard were service management automation presentations. To be frank, some vendors have added to the confusion around what AI is and how it can help IT organizations. Gartner highlighted other barriers to AI adoption by IT in one of their blogs:

Barriers to skills – acquisition of new skills are required
Fears of the unknown – including understanding the tangible and intangible benefits
Finding a start point – finding use cases and defining a strategy

I believe all these factors contribute to why AI has been slow to go mainstream until now. Organizations had yet to figure out the value that AI could bring and justify budgets. Projects were confined to research labs until that value was revealed and could be justified to executive teams.

AI Use Cases Revealed

But there has been a marked increase in the adoption of AI in the last few years. According to the 2019 CIO survey results published by Gartner, between 2015 and 2019, AI implementations reportedly grew 270%. From 10% in 2015 to 37%. By the beginning of 2019, 37% of those surveyed had implemented AI in some form or another. Add to that a prediction by Forrester based on their research. They predict that in 2020 companies will be laser-focused on the value of AI, accelerate adoption, and overcome data issues. It becomes clear that the importance of AI is recognized.

How does that relate to Enterprise Service Management (ESM)? Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) analyst organization researched the primary use cases for AI. They found that 70% were focused on integrated operations (availability, change management, performance), self-service, routine service desk processes (incident, problem, request), ESM, and major incident response. To put this into perspective, the research found 6% of use cases were focused on SecOps, 3% Internet of Things, 8% DevOps, 15% integrated asset and financial planning (in many organizations, I see this banded under ITSM and ESM).

The CIOs questioned in Gartner’s survey mentioned previously also identified chatbots as the main AI-based application in their enterprises. Chatbots is one of the main areas of adoption that I see in our own customer base to provide better experiences for end-users. Vendor developments also fuel this adoption. IDC found that chatbots, knowledge curation, and incident/request routing were the three big categories of AI features and capabilities that vendors were working on in helpdesk software.

Automation Synergies

EMA’s research also discovered synergies between automation and artificial intelligence. The value of automation is now widely recognized. The same survey highlighted that 67% of organizations were automating simple to complex tasks already. Only 4% had no plans to automate. Since AI recommendations drive automation, this also supports the premise that AI is finally going into mainstream projects.

If you intend to take your project out of the lab and into production, then there are things you need to consider. I’ll wrap up with EMA’s top two recommendations from those surveyed:

Educate users ahead of time
Prepare for the change in your IT team and understand process changes and impacts.

My prediction and others from my colleagues are available to hear in full on in this recorded webcast, The Future of Enterprise Service Management.

Data Center Servers – When a Patch in Time Saves Nine

Tue, 03 Dec 2019 17:54:53 Z

A patch in time saves nine; the title of this blog is borrowed from an English proverb – a stitch in time saves nine. Stitch a hole or tear as soon as you discover it to prevent the hole from becoming more significant and needing even more work to fix it. As software patch management goes, that’s pretty good advice.

Free Solution Brief: Patching for the Data Center

And I know you already do all you can to keep end-user system software up to date and secure. But can you say the same about all the servers in your data center? When threat actors are continually probing systems to identify what they can compromise to infiltrate your environment and access sensitive data or spread wide to other systems to form an attack, it’s a question you need to be able to answer yes to at any given moment.

Patch Management in Data Centers

The complexity of patch management in data centers is different than patching end-user machines. Maintenance windows are generally much shorter. Multiple configurations mean many are straining to keep server software up to date with the latest software patches and updates for operating systems and third-party applications, such as Microsoft Windows® and VMware vSphere® Hypervisor systems.

However, BlueKeep’s exploit of a common vulnerability in the data center in May 2019 was a stark reminder of the need to keep data center server patching top of mind. BlueKeep was a remote code execution vulnerability that enabled attackers to use Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services to attack unpatched computers running older versions of Windows, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. To make matters worse, BlueKeep is wormable; once it exploits one vulnerable system on the network, it can propagate to others giving attackers almost unlimited access. At the time, Microsoft even took the unusual action of releasing patches for versions of Windows that are no longer supported.

Has it changed anything? If I bet a dollar for every un-patched server available, I’d be sitting on a beach in Hawaii. Meanwhile, security and ops teams around the world will be stitching late into the night when the next harmful exploit appears. Reportedly, in October, there were 700,000 public-facing systems (excluding those behind firewalls) running RDP that were still vulnerable to BlueKeep.

Even if organizations take the time to patch physical servers, we know that virtual servers are sometimes overlooked. This oversight leaves the business exposed and ignorant of the risk. It’s understandable to a point. Waiting for virtual machines (VM) to boot up, patch, and then power down costs time and budget. But, whether a system is on the network or disconnected, patch compliance and delivery of software updates is a necessary step to stay ahead of attackers. Consider also templates. Many data centers run VMware, but how many patch templates in vSphere more than once or twice a year? How much more efficient would it be to patch templates in-line with production solutions. When a new server spins up, it will meet your production baseline already.

Keep Your Organization Secure

With many organizations relying on manual processes and juggling different tools for patching Windows and Linux, the management complexity grows. And that leads to added time to patch, with more points of potential failure, and generally greater risk in the data center. Yet the time it takes to discover, define, deliver software-update packages, and apply patches is critical in defeating attacks. Historically, 50% of vulnerabilities are exploited within a window of two to four weeks from release. It took fourteen days from the time that CVE 2019.0708, the BlueKeep vulnerability, was made known with the availability of an update to a confirmation that a full exploit had been achieved. Make no mistake; it’s a race to beat the threat actors. Patching all your servers, hypervisors, and templates in a timely, accurate, and controlled manner from one patch management system will give you a head-start.

If the thought of introducing another agent and adding another potential point of failure leaves you cold, or, adding more monitoring tasks to overwhelmed staff is impossible, think agentless. Agentless tech can discover, detect, and present what needs doing solving the problem of treating all your systems equally. Patch your offline virtual machines (VMs) in conjunction with online VMs and physical servers, all in an automated way, and without adding to your footprint.

Earlier, we talked about the complexity within your data centers. That manifests in many ways, from the configuration of your servers to constraints on execution, such as the need to reboot in a specific order. To save time and money while ensuring the entire data center environment is protected, aim to automate every part of the server patching process. Through automation, build-out checklists by scripting complex workflow steps to support the patch management process. Scan for missing patches and deploy patches across the entire environment on client workstations, physical servers, virtual servers, hypervisors, and templates.

Ensuring that you are patching all your servers no matter what their status or operating system, as well as hypervisors, and templates in the data center in a timely and precisely controlled manner is your defensive “stitch” to keep your organization protected and its reputation intact against attackers seeking to compromise systems.

Did you know “a stitch in time saves nine” is an anagram for “this is meant as incentive,” so what are we waiting for?

ITAM: Back to Basics

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 00:29:05 Z

The start of a new year always provides the impetus to take stock of the previous year and assess what’s been working and what has not in your IT environment. And, that review should include your IT asset management practice, guidelines, and definitions.

If you looked back at your last year of IT asset activity, how many of these would you say yes to?

Missed opportunities to reduce spend or alter licensing models at asset renewal and vendor negotiations
Insufficient trusted asset data or single source of truth leaving you exposed across IT disciplines
Unable to provide instant status of software that you have purchased installed and used
Repeated internal and external audits without a framework that enabled rinse and repeat
Cost reduction initiatives that hit asset management budgets
Lost key ITAM personnel reducing available resources

Did you answer yes to two or more of the above? Then it’s time to ring in the changes.

With ITAM data increasingly used to support other IT disciplines such as security controls and service management end user support, it’s even more critical to review last year’s wins, losses, and risks, then plan to mitigate them in the year ahead with new or refreshed programs, ITAM policies, and strategies based on changes in your environment over the past year.

But it’s easy to forget the basics, so here are a few reminders to kick start your activity.

Decide what ITAM data you need

When it comes to your ITAM data, start with the end in mind. Rather than collecting every piece of data because you can or realizing you don’t have sufficient data or the right type of data, pinpoint the data you need in order to make informed decisions that map to your business outcomes and then work backwards.

Implement policy that ensures ongoing data accuracy

After defining the data you want to collect, you need to ensure that in six months, a year, or two years, you are still extracting accurate data and have access in a timely manner. Instigating an effective policy will help you stay on track.

Establish asset criteria

Not every asset is created equal, by which I mean some assets are business critical, more valuable, or pose a greater security risk than others. Not all assets should be managed in the same manner, in fact not all assets require stringent management and will avoid you boiling the ocean. Establish your asset criteria to determine which to manage. But there is no room for complacency. Once established, the criteria should be reviewed regularly, as your business and IT environments are constantly changing.

Manage the complete lifecycle of your assets

From purchase through to usage and then disposal, managing asset lifecycles is a real no brainer but sometimes forgotten in the haste of pushing assets out the door. It allows you to better optimize usage of those assets and helps expose risks such as how an asset is disposed of, not forgetting the data that resides on that asset.

Conduct regular portfolio reviews

This one activity alone could provide considerable cost savings. You’ll be in a better position to reign in or altogether avoid uncontrolled asset usage. Undertaken regularly, your reviews will assist you in seeking out opportunities for portfolio rationalization, ridding your program of asset duplication and reducing asset overlap.

Determine an audit process

There’s no avoiding some audits, but a little preparation goes a long way. Rather than running around with your hair on fire when an audit does come your way, follow established processes to reduce the pain, time taken, risk, and potential costs involved with audits. If you don’t have an audit process in place, it’s time to bring your stakeholders together and develop one that everyone agrees to and then communicate it out.

Implement robust software reclamation processes and policies

Your software asset management strategy needs to include the ability to review software usage data that enables you to automatically reclaim unused software and redeploy it to waiting end users. This should also give you the teeth you need when renegotiating with vendors at the time of renewal if the level of usage has dropped. And, let’s not forget the importance of reclaiming software or shutting off access as end users leave your organization to give you an accurate count of usage as well as the obvious need to prevent ex-employees accessing your data.

Consider automation of asset processes

Automating your asset processes will give you true bang for your buck. From slashing the burden on already stretched IT personnel and your budget to reducing human error and exposure to risk, automation saves everyone a headache. If your asset management is a manual, time intensive discipline that doesn’t allow you to perform some of the activities outlined above, it’s time to take action.

Take some time to consider the above reminders to put yourself in a stronger IT Asset Management position. A little time now will help you control your costs, mitigate your risks, and deliver the assets your end users and the business needs at the time they are needed. And of course, it goes without saying, we’re here to help should you need any advice, guidance, or software and hardware tools to assist you in your review.

And check out our free IT Asset Management resources to move beyond basic discovery and optimize your hardware and software performance.

Stack the Deck in Your Favor With Unified IT

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 22:13:26 Z

Have you ever played a card game with a strong hand, but wished the deck had 53 cards so that you could win? Is that what it feels like in IT at the moment? A great set of IT teams working with disparate IT systems and manual processes that need a winning card?

Are any of these concerns on your mind right now? Rising IT costs with business stakeholders dissatisfied with how IT is supporting the business. An upcoming, time-consuming software audit. A recent all-hands to the pump security breach. A team in manual Windows 10 migration purgatory. A new industry compliance standard or an M&A project looming. The odds feel like they are against you. You don’t have an ace up your sleeve to give your teams the help they need to make it easier, and faster to win.

You could throw away the chips you have, do nothing, and wait to see the hand you are dealt. But what’s the impact on the business? What does that mean to the IT organization? What does that mean to you? You hold some of the cards, but you need a way to win every day, every week, every month and every year. Instead of waiting for fate to deal you the hand you need, it’s time to stack the deck in your favor.

Because of the fragmented way that we organize IT around functional expertise—IT service management, security, asset management and endpoint management—some of the challenges faced are self-inflicted. With experts choosing tools independently, we’ve unintentionally created IT islands. Teams without a common purpose using siloed tools that are complex to integrate and therefore difficult-to-use. In IT operations you need to allow teams to focus on innovation to solve business problems as well as enable continuous improvement for the ever-changing pace of the industry your organization operates in and this cannot be accomplished in siloes.

The truth is that IT teams cannot operate in vacuums. You need tools that give your teams a window into each other’s disciplines. They need to know the context of services, assets and security to the business to make IT effective. They need to pinpoint what assets to secure and manage to defend in depth. They need to detect breaches or risks and then respond proactively and immediately. They need to manage users from onboarding, role changes through to retirement. They need to be able to distribute software automatically when end users raise requests. They need to deliver amazing, secure user experiences. You must solve asset, endpoint security, and service management challenges for your teams with ease, and at speed or your job is on the line. You can’t do these things without unifying your IT.

It’s time to blur these functional lines and bring teams together. Work in a cohesive organization that cross-fertilizes and optimizes across IT rather than within IT teams. You need to stack the deck by pairing IT toolsets to create powerful outcomes. You need to streamline and automate processes removing tedious, low-value add operational tasks. You need the IT organization to win every challenge they face. You need to add value back to the business so that the rest of the business wants to play with you rather than bet against you.

Unified IT is more than interconnected IT; it’s about the outcomes that come with it. Unified IT brings free-flowing information so that teams become more operationally aware of their environment and other teams to see clearly risks, costs and opportunities. Unified IT automates processes and workflows across IT to deliver more satisfying and personalized experiences, faster. Unified IT speeds up work, freeing time to investigate new opportunities and new innovations. Unified IT enables the support of new strategic initiatives to create a competitive advantage for your business in spades.

Want to Know More?

If you are attending the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference in Las Vegas, you can visit us there or check out this page for more info. We’ll be talking about and demonstrating Unified IT solutions that enlightened IT pros are already reaping the benefits from. You can also hear from our experts who will be presenting a session titled Automate Your Operational Workflows to AWS and Other Clouds, on Wednesday, December 5 at 9:15am in the Veronese room 2404. And if that isn’t enough come along to our booth and try your hand at our own version of Casino Wars.

Not attending Gartner? Not a problem. Contact us and the Ivanti team can have a one to one chat with you to explain more and clear the path for your unification projects.

The Criteria Behind the Curtain: 2018 Gartner MQ for ITSM Tools and 2018 Gartner Critical Capabilities for ITSM Tools

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 21:36:43 Z

The 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities for ITSM reports were published recently. If you want to know how Ivanti fared, download the free reports below:

Many of you review, analyze, and use the reports as a shortlist tool to select a set of vendors and ITSM products for further evaluation. When you read the ITSM MQ report, you need to look beyond the Quadrant graphic. Your criteria are largely unique to your environment, your operation and your users. Examine the detail to get the full picture. This blog offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the submission process that the vendors undertook.

Firstly, the timing. The submission process kicked-off in February 2018. Vendors receive word from Gartner if they are selected for initial review. The communication included this year’s vendor and tool inclusion criteria. This changes year to year. For example, AI/Ops were introduced into the Critical Capabilities criteria for 2018.

The 2018 Gartner MQ for ITSM Tools criteria require that the software under assessment must include a set of functionalities defined by Gartner such as Incident management, SLA management, analytics, and reporting. There are inclusion and exclusion criteria for qualification to get recognized in the Gartner MQ for ITSM Tools. You can read these in detail in the report .

For inclusion in the 2018 Critical Capabilities for ITSM Tools, Gartner focuses on products that offer IT service support functions that focus on product usability and the ease of use of out-of-the box best practices. Gartner also focus on next-generation support capabilities specific to mobility and the use of big data, machine learning and social collaboration capabilities to increase effectiveness and efficiency levels. To be included in the 2018 Critical Capabilities research, all products evaluated must:

Be available to be bought separately and be actively marketed by their vendors
Include functionality for IT incident management, problem management, change management, IT user self-service (for knowledge and request management), IT KM, IT service support analytics and reporting, and SLA service-level management with regard to incident and service requests
Have been generally available and been deployed in customer environments as of 1 March 2018
Have appeared on at least 3% of Gartner client ITSM tool shortlists3 during 2017 or have provided a personalized demo and pricing for at least 120 prospects, with either an annual subscription contract value for ITSM software of at least $150,000, or a perpetual license contract value for ITSM software of at least $315,000 during 2017

Or:

Have been the primary large-enterprise-focused ITSM product offered by a vendor appearing on the 2018 ITSM Magic Quadrant

Alongside the criteria, each vendor receives a market analysis survey, a tools analysis survey, and an ITSM Critical Capabilities demo script guideline. All ITSM tool providers review the information and confirm that their product meets the inclusion criteria.

From here on in, the fun begins. Vendors submit a set number of customer references that meet a list of criteria. This includes customer worldwide location, size of end users base that IT supports and software version employed. Finally, the customer must be using the ITSM tool to support and automate at least five processes from a list of seven presented. Customers had 15 days to respond to a Gartner survey. At no stage are the customer responses disclosed to the vendors.

Meanwhile, all vendors were feverishly responding to the ITSM MQ Market Analysis Survey. This assesses the ability to execute and completeness of vision. The survey requested information such as; customer programs, patents and percentage of customers that have upgraded, among many other data points. In parallel, the Product Analysis survey for the Critical Capabilities report is filled out. This survey requests information such as pre-built integrations aligned to the Gartner mini-suites. The survey requests pricing for a scenario of a set number of IT users and business users among other information.

Demonstrations are recorded covering over 50 points such as “Demonstrate the ability to configure process workflows with minimal scripting.” The duration of the recording must not step over an hour, a feat to comply with itself.

The surveys and recordings were submitted in the last week of March. This is important to note. The report published in August takes account of the ITSM cloud and on-premise software functionality that was available as of March 1, 2018, only. Think about this, and ask the right questions when you meet with software providers.

Before publication, vendors can review the write up of their ITSM Magic Quadrant strengths and cautions. Vendors also receive their individual scores for the Critical Capabilities.

The categorization for Gartner MQ is in the report. It's worth exploring the scoring and weighting. For example, for the completeness of vision axis; Market Understanding and Innovation are weighted high but Vertical/Industry Strategy is not rated. For the ability to execute axis, the Product and Sales Execution are weighted high but Overall Viability and Market Responsiveness are weighted as medium. These are important aspects to consider as you review the report information relative to your own needs. If you are a Gartner client, I’d encourage you to book a call with Gartner. Dig deeper into these reports to understand which vendors truly match your needs.

I invite you to check out the weightings as well as see what Gartner say about the ITSM market and the different vendors that have been positioned.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools, 16 August 2018, Kenneth Gonzalez, Rich Doheny, Chris Matchett.

Gartner, Critical Capabilities for IT Service Management Tools, 22 August 2018, Rich Doheny, Chris Matchett, Kenneth Gonzalez.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Spreading the Message of Unified IT

Tue, 15 May 2018 16:15:26 Z

It’s “go-time” here at Ivanti! Our own customer conference – Interchange (#Interchange18) is taking place in Dallas this week. I’ve just arrived and yes EVERYTHING is bigger in Texas including my breakfast ham and cheese croissant, which was about the size of both my hands!

This same week, Ivanti staff are also attending Gartner IT Operations Strategies and Solutions Summit (#GartnerIO) in Florida. This year's Gartner IOSS conference is packed to the gills with noteworthy sessions. Here are a few of our top session picks:

Monday, May 14 - Workshop: Build I&O Metrics That Matter and Communicate Value to the Business, Robert Naegle (@robertnaegle)
Tuesday, May 15 - Gartner Essentials: The Five-Year Automation Scenario — Automate I&O to Drive Efficiency, Improve Reliability and Reduce Cost, Terry Cosgrove (@terrycosgrove)
Wednesday, May 16 - Future of Service is Cognitive - Vidhya Srinivasan
Wednesday, May 16 - Gartner Essentials: IT Service Management in 2018 and Beyond, Chris Matchett (@ITSMChris)
Thursday, May 17 - Using Customer Experience to Transform Your ITSM Initiative, Ken Gonzales (@ken_gonzalez)

Pay Us a Visit

Once you’ve taken in a few sessions and you’re grabbing a well-earned coffee or a tasty lunch, come and hang out at the Ivanti booth. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the sessions, get an idea of your current IT problems, and help you find practical solutions.

Even as you attend Gartner IOSS, we know you’re juggling escalating requirements with siloed IT tools, communication, and teams further incapacitated by information overload. We’re hearing it from everyone in the trenches right now. These debilitating issues are increasing your risks and costs, making you slower to respond and leaving your users and business exposed such that you’ve probably actually got one eye on the conference and one eye on your email inbox.

Let us help. Stop by the booth, or send us an email, and allow us to show you how to break down those IT siloes, increase visibility, share data, and automate processes. We’re here to help you respond to user demands and market changes, comply with regulations, and secure the entire organization – all while reducing costs. We call this The Power of Unified IT. And, we are on a mission to spread the Unified IT love at Gartner IOSS.

Unified IT Explained

Here’s what we mean by Unified IT: Your service desk team is grappling with open software request call queues threatening to jump off the wall board. Users are calling with their requests and tying up analysts by calling back for status checks, because it appears that all software licenses are otherwise deployed. Finally, a license is purchased adding to an increasing IT spend. But, IT teams are forced to wait until users visit the office that IT resides in, to deploy the software. That’s all just plain frustrating to the IT team watching their performance metrics plummet along with their morale and the productivity of the business user waiting for their request to be fulfilled.

The Ivanti Way

By adopting a Unified IT approach, there is most certainly a better way. Here's how it works with Ivanti's integrated IT solutions:

Give your teams the power to automate any software requests through self-service - reducing call wait times and call backs, while improving the customer experience.
Take advantage of integrated approval workflows and license compliance checks without manual handoffs that frequently become points of failure.
Before purchasing additional software and adding to rising costs, current software license usage is checked as part of the process and reclamation of automatic unused software is achievable, optimizing software spend.
Why wait for end users to appear in the office? Deploy the software automatically to only applicable user devices without delay, as part of the process.
Close the loop on the original request and automatically close it out.

With this approach you’ll free up and better manage your IT team resources and benefit from efficient operations at reduced costs. At the same-time you’ll be in in the fortunate position to know what IT assets you have and how they are used, enabling you to optimize spend and provide audit defense. That’s Unified IT; IT Service, IT Asset, and Endpoint Management processes - all working together for you.

Get Answers

The Ivanti team will be on the booth at the IOSS Summit hoping to talk to many of the lovely IT delegates about more Unified IT solutions, from Windows 10 migration to security detection remediation and isolation solutions. Those of you attending Interchange in Dallas, well, you’ll hear much more about this throughout the week.

For more information on Ivanti's annual user conference, including our first ever Interchange in Europe, visit https://interchange.ivanti.com/.

Looking for resources and information on Ivanti solutions and our unique approach to Unified IT? Visit us at https://www.ivanti.com/.

Security Reporting and Analytics With Xtraction: Make Security Data Work for You

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 22:26:32 Z

If your organization is like many we encounter, then you are undoubtedly facing shifting issues affecting your security posture.

You are trying to handle the crushing task of meeting security specifications with inadequate resources. You are also charged with proving the integrity of the security data behind compliance reports without adding expenses.

These challenges are aggravated by the number of cybersecurity solutions that you are attempting to manage.

In a recent Ivanti webinar survey, it emerged that over 40 percent of you are juggling five security solutions or more. What's crystal clear is that these solutions—each with their own reporting interfaces—fail to provide a complete, integrated view of the risks to your environment.

Over 90 Percent Use Spreadsheets

Grappling with multiple tools from multiple vendors creates gaps where attacks can be launched, adding to risk and cost, and increasing the pressure on already overextended teams and your IT governance.

The perspective from a single tool or a single set of metrics provided by separate tools can lull you into a false sense of security as decisions are based on limited views. On the flip side, attempting to scan and correlate the masses of data provided by individual security tools is a mammoth task that takes precious resources. With so much data hurtling towards you from different sources responses slow and risks increase as the number and type of security threats evolve unchecked.

How are you dealing with this right now? An overwhelming 93 percent of our webinar audience admitted that they routinely resorted to spreadsheets to aggregate and manipulate data from their security tools. This heightens the risk of error laden results.

With increased cyber-threats, new regulations like GDPR, and the demands to prove compliance, you need a different approach. One that delivers unified, up-to-the minute, meaningful and actionable IT security reports. You can’t afford to wait for the completion of manual work that potentially contains inaccuracies. You need the confidence to know that the ‘meaning’ was derived without risky data manipulations in spreadsheets.

From recent security breaches, it’s fair to say that the first cut is the deepest when it comes to your reputation. The cost of inadequately protecting your environment can literally put you out of your job or your organization out of business.

Yet it’s hard to know where to focus your decision-making attention with a multitude of data in the wind. What's superfluous becomes another headache that distracts security teams.

Focus on the Top Three

Here at Ivanti, we believe there are three important areas for reporting that provide focus for the outcomes that you need to achieve.

Assess how your environment is performing against the top 5 Critical Security Controls as defined by the Center for Internet Security. Build your defenses.
Know the age of missing patches from your endpoints to realize the attack area and restrict your threat exposure.
Ensure data governance. Achieve different goals and perspectives from the same core data records, without compromising that data.

But how do you concentrate on these top three when you are still juggling five or more tools?

Reporting & Dashboard Solution: Xtraction

The best way to achieve this focus is with Ivanti reporting and dashboard solution, Xtraction. It provides self-service, real-time reporting. You'll get beautiful, sleek dashboards without effort, expense or inaccuracy. Xtraction brings intelligence to IT merging security vendor-tools data into one place. From here it’s a snap to highlight trends, assess risks, and financial impact that are key to your business.

Unify IT Security Data

Raise visibility. Connect to the data from the various security systems in your organization and view it in Xtraction. Determine the missing patches that you care about. The critical devices across the organization. The security tasks such as scanning, deployments and account maintenance. Filter out the noise by assembling all that critical information in Xtraction.

You’ll see everything in one, clean easy to generate, easy to read and easy to filter dashboard or a set of dashboards. View data in many ways, shaped on different interests and requirements of the audience. All without compromising the accuracy of the underlying records. And, for a complete unified IT view, it’s easy to include data from other IT systems.

Security data matters now more than ever before. Getting your reporting and analytics right enables significant benefits. Convert the large volumes of data generated by your security tools into a set of focused dashboards. Provide clarity that is currently lacking. Fuel insight to determine exposure, the acceptable level of risk, and to prioritize efforts to act and protect the environment.

Interested in learning more? Check out the on-demand webinar, hear more about the top three and see Xtraction in action.

Data-Driven Decision Making Is Key to Supply Chain Success

Wed, 31 May 2017 19:34:36 Z

A study by VDC cited these top three warehouse improvement initiatives for 2016:

Get orders shipped faster
Improve perfect order rate
Improve labor optimization

Now you know what you need to improve business readiness, and here's how to achieve each of these initiatives:

To get orders shipped faster, you need to understand whether your bottlenecks are related to labor, technology or process.
To improve your perfect order rate, you to need to gain insights into data such as employee training and mobile device reliability.
To improve labor optimization, you need to understand when workers are waiting for devices to free-up or trucks to unload palettes for scanning.

A recent third-party logistics study found 98 percent of those surveyed stated that data-driven decision-making is essential to future success of supply chain activities and processes.

Working in mission-critical supply chain retail warehouse or logistic environments, it’s clear that you can’t afford to just trust your gut instinct. Underutilized staff or penalties for late shipments more directly impact your bottom line and likely your take-home pay.

It really does make sense to give your organization a data advantage. By combining data from multiple sources such as warehouse, mobility and asset management systems alongside IT service desk information in single a view, you’ll be able to perform the analytics you need to make data-driven decisions. But you need those analytics at the speed of your operation not when your data specialists can fit you in. You need to make sure you can easily access, visualize and drill into your data yourself.

Discover your data

Get alerts about critical data that impact shipments
Visualize your device population – current utilization, offline devices
Share real-time views across sites of available devices and pickers

Gain insights

Understand the average scanner battery life and lifecycle
View the impact of software updates and patching on worker productivity
Drill-into employee service desk requests at peak times

Take action

Make adjustments to operations based on real-time data
Set meaningful productivity and order accuracy goals
Redeploy labor and devices at peak times

Once you start to discover the data trapped in individual systems and link that together in one place to obtain insights, you’ll be able to take data-driven action that improves your operational productivity and reduces your operational costs.

5 Things You’re Doing Wrong With ITSM

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 21:23:25 Z

As we talk to IT service management teams looking for new ITSM tools to solve problems on the service desk and beyond, quite often the issues they face are deeper rooted than an outdated, too complex or badly implemented ITSM tool. Below are some of the top problems we often encounter.

1. Ignoring the service needs of your users

A lack of awareness of the service needs of your users means service expectations will not be met and there is a risk of users looking elsewhere for solutions than in your service catalog.

This poses a significant risk to the business as organizations become exposed to potential security breaches, data loss, and noncompliance of software licensing policy as well as creating issues of scalability and supportability for you.

2. Providing poor user experiences

Poor end user experiences lead to dis-satisfied users resulting in lower adoption rates. If you are attempting to implement self-service or a multi-channel communications strategy for your end users, that is solely focused on the benefit to your ITSM team, without creating experiences that match those end-users encounter outside of the work environment, don’t be surprised if these initiatives suffer from lack of adoption.

3. Failing to embrace process automation

If you aren’t automating at least your most basic ITSM processes and workflows you are missing more than one trick. Without automation, as a process progresses and hand-offs take place tasks are more susceptible to human error as well as operating at sub-optimal efficiency and speed.

4. Communicating the wrong metrics

ITSM operational metrics focus on the performance of the ITSM team and tools, e.g., first contact resolution or number of service requests logged in a given day. They are great for describing the current and past operational environment, but don’t show the value or impact your team has on the business.

These traditional operational based metrics are not the figures that business leaders understand or use to make strategic decisions that ultimately affect your budget and resources.

5. Lack of agility to support business change

Keeping the lights on is no longer enough. The mind-set of merely supporting and maintaining email systems and the like rather than that of the innovator who enables business strategy, adapts to changes and opportunities as they arise for the business to gain leadership, market share, and operate in a competitive environment is detrimental to the health of the ITSM team. Failure to adopt an agile operating approach removes your seat at the management table and risks the team becoming irrelevant.

If you recognize any of these problems above, congratulations, you have taken the first step on your path to improvement.

Reporting and Analytics: A Sad Story of Cold Pizza

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 18:17:08 Z

It’s 3.30 p.m., you’re sat in a meeting with your management peers and your CIO. You’ve been asked to pull together an IT Ops report for Service Desk trends in the past 12 months for an 8 a.m. meeting tomorrow morning.

4.00 p.m., back at your desk, you ask your reporting specialists for help but they’re on a deadline themselves so the best they can do is a data dump.

4.30 p.m., you receive a spreadsheet with multiple tabs for multiple data sources. You roll up your sleeves, this could take a while.

5.30 p.m., great! You’ve managed to create a bar chart of major incidents from one dataset. But how do you map that on top of all incidents from tab 6?

6.00 p.m., still trying to figure it out. You order pizza, it’s going to be a long night.

7.30 p.m., you’ve handcrafted a trend line and overlaid it on your chart – brilliant. Pizza has arrived!

7.35 p.m., you need to cross reference datasets from sources 3 and 5 and to show the correlation between all requests and aging requests – what’s the lookup calculation!? You find yourself running around the building trying to find someone… anyone that is a whizz at excel formulas.

7.45 p.m., no joy; start mapping the data by hand.

9.00 p.m., your laptop seems to be running slower. The fan has got louder. You cross your fingers, hit save and pray to the spreadsheet gods.

10.00 p.m., OK we have some graphs, they aren’t pretty, the labels for the emergency change graph isn’t displaying and it no longer links to the original data source, but it’s done!

11.00 p.m., graphs cut and pasted into a presentation. You switch off the lights and head for home. Pizza’s gone cold.

Midnight, kids are in bed, dog has his legs crossed waiting for a walk, you have to be up in a few hours to brief your team before the meeting.

7.55a.m., head for a meeting with report printouts, pass the data specialists eating your cold pizza.

8.30a.m., the report is a hit! But wait, you need to what – take the trend graph between July and October and drill down on the data to each record that caused the peaks!

9.00a.m., back at your desk trying to remember what you did last night.

9.15a.m., give up, start from scratch. Thinking about tonight’s pizza toppings. It’s going to be a long day.

Somewhere along the line as our IT data sets have become more complicated the reporting tools we use are no longer meeting our requirements and, in many cases, spreadsheets have become the most widely used reporting tool in organizations. It’s not uncommon to see people huddle round a spreadsheet, labouring over column B1:R5 to find out that one single piece of data. Yet they can be the most soul-destroying, time-consuming, inefficient and painful way to spend an evening. And I bet if you looked out your office or over the cubicle wall, another IT team is trying to do the same thing. If that isn’t food for thought, think about whether data integrity has been compromised through this manual work. There was an article in Forbes titled Microsoft Excel Might be the Most Dangerous Software on the Planet, describing the risk and financial costs of excel spreadsheet used in the financial industry – all of the points apply.

But, what if you you could easily report on ITSM process trends, ITAM computer warranty titles expiring in six months, compliance to computer standards or anything else that you need without help and be able to refresh those datapoints automatically, drill down as you discuss the data in meetings – why wouldn’t you?

It’s possible today, here and now.

Want to know how? View the recording of our recent Xtraction webinar here.

Let’s make 2016 the year you aren’t stuck in the office afterhours with just you a spreadsheet and a cold pizza for company.

What Do School Uniforms and ITSM Tools Have in Common?

Wed, 14 Oct 2015 17:22:32 Z

Fall / Autumn, whatever you like to call it, is upon us. Leaves are turning burnt orange and ochre, the night time darkness is arriving earlier and earlier and there is a morning mist in the air as kids go back to school for the start of the new school year. Ahh yes, those ritual back to school activities; the excitement of seeing friends they’ve missed over summer and buying new pencil cases or lunchboxes plastered with their favourite characters, well that’s how kids see it. For parents, back to school means another nightmare scramble to buy school uniforms and gym kit because little David, Karen or “Apple” has outgrown their uniform, moved schools or spent the last year skidding across floors and put a hole in the knees of every pair of school trousers. That’s one fabric performance test manufacturers don’t do! Now whether you are a parent or not, we all know how expensive school uniforms can be over a long period because they just don’t last. Why – well kids grow and mature, seasons change requiring different performance out of fabrics and, in some schools, as a child progresses to the next year the colour of the uniform changes. But savvy parents are on to this and buy accordingly. They don’t buy the size the child currently is, they buy a uniform just that little bit bigger so their child can grow into it, not so big that they are tripping over hemlines but enough to suit the growth rate of their own child. And here I reiterate their “own” child. They don’t buy the size that fits the tallest child in class and assume their child will grow by the end of the year. Similarly, child A and child B may be the same age and in the same year, but their daily school environment, needs and expenses will be very different depending on the subjects that they take. You can’t assume they will pick the same courses and require the same gym kit, lab coat or cooking apron– parents buy what suits their child’s size and the school environment they will experience.

Why the little sojourn down school uniform purchasing habits? Well I wanted to illustrate that outside of work we adults are careful to know and understand ours and our families’ requirements and spend our salaries wisely. We don’t have the time, the money or the energy to go through some of these spending processes more frequently than we need.
Why then do we seem to leave that sensible head at home when we enter the work environment? All too often, speaking to those looking for new ITSM tools, the request is to replace an existing tool to do the tasks and activities it currently performs. Let me get this straight. You’re looking for a new tool because it didn’t give you the anticipated value, but you want to purchase another tool that’s exactly the same as the one that you are ripping out? The service management outcomes your organization wanted to achieve three years ago, when you bought the tool, are the same that they want in the next three years? Your organization hasn’t moved on in their activities, size of personnel, breadth or organization structure, abilities of personnel, types of hardware, software and services they need to use. And you’re telling me the industry that your organization competes in hasn’t changed in three years; no new environment to compete in, no new legislation, no new competitors, or no new buying habits?

Let’s try again. What value did you not achieve with your current service desk tool and why did you not achieve it? More importantly, thinking back to our school uniform purchasing scenario, how do you want to grow and mature your service management environment? What service management outcomes do you want to achieve in the future, and what value do you want to provide to your business?

The good analysts at Gartner recently wrote a helpful research note that espoused that common sense “school uniform approach” suggesting that service management tool acquisition be based on both current and desired maturity¹. Gartner followed up with advice to “select vendors on their ability to offer solutions that meet short-term and long-term requirements that align with the IT organization's I&O maturity roadmap.” According to Gartner, “Seventy-six percent of organizations are unaware of their current placement on the maturity scale; therefore, they are unable to develop roadmaps in order to improve.” In the same way that many of you ask vendors about their product roadmaps to ensure they will be investing in their solutions in the future, before you even speak to a vendor, you need to understand your current and future service management maturity path and develop your own roadmap. Understand what activities your team undertake now: incident, request, etc. and what they will do and need to support in the future.

There are two other reports from Gartner that are worth reading in conjunction with the one mentioned previously, the 2015 Gartner Critical Capabilities report for ITSSM and the 2015 Gartner MQ for ITSSM. In these, Gartner helpfully categorize vendor maturity by their tool capability to help you align ITSSM tools against your roadmap and ensure you aren’t buying a tool that is too advanced or too basic for your needs. Both of which can cause long term issues from overspend and underutilization or tools that don’t have all the functionality required for a more mature environment. Worth a read to help you save some money and understand what you need to ask vendors about when you do finally engage with them.

Well that’s about all I have to say about autumn, school uniforms and tools for now. Time to go rake up those dratted fallen ochre and burnt orange leaves from the garden – didn’t think that one through when I planted the seeds!

1. Gartner: IT Service Support Management Tool Acquisitions Must Be Based on I&O Maturity(G00276415), Katherine Lord (@lordkatherine) and Chris Matchett (@ITSMChris)

Are You Still Using Windows XP?

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 09:00:28 Z

It’s been over a year since Microsoft announced the end of life of Windows XP. Some of my colleagues’ previously blogged about the reasons you should consider migrating from XP. They talked about the security risks of running an out-of-date OS, which can impact enterprise productivity. According to a study by the Ponemon Research Institute, the average time to contain a cyberattack is 31 days.

We also highlighted that a migration strategy was an opportunity to identify additional IT concerns and make corrections. These lingering IT concerns are a potential drain on resources; from IT infrastructure and asset management, to increased calls to the service desk, providing a 2-for-1 benefit that makes good financial sense.

Despite this, according to Net Application stats, one year after Microsoft officially ended support for Windows XP, approximately 15% of the market is still using XP. Well one year on, we’re giving you a third reason to migrate –your spiralling total cost of ownership.

For organizations that entered into a Microsoft Customer Support Agreement to mitigate XP risk, your total cost of ownership is increasing year on year. Last year the XP CSA cost per PC running XP was $200. For the second year of the XP CSA, the list price doubled to $400 per device with a cap of 5000 devices or $2 million. And, for year 3, the price is expected to be between $600 and $1000 per device, as Microsoft increases the pressure to get organizations off XP. So you’ve got an OS asset that’s depreciating in business value but skyrocketing in terms of total cost of ownership. How does that stack up for you?

Are you still using Windows XP? We’d love to hear about your experience. If you have a moment, take our short survey and let us know your plans.

https://landesk.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_ea1oS9phB9PMoHX

10 Ways to Improve Your First-Contact Resolution

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 20:58:20 Z

First-contact resolutions provide a quicker return to productivity for end-user customers and so, unsurprisingly, it is one of the biggest drivers of customer satisfaction on the service desk. It is also key to providing the right customer experience. For the service desk, the faster a call is resolved the lower the costs, so it’s important get this right. However, focusing efforts on just closing a call quickly will drive the wrong behaviour. Interaction needs to provide resolution in order to prevent repeat calls from your end users. Here are ten step you can take to increase your first-contact resolutions.

Identify Call Types - Recognize that not all calls can be solved on first contact. Pull a report on total incidents and incidents resolved. Analyse your Incidents, and those that have been resolved, to understand which call types your team can resolve at the first opportunity and those that won’t end up re-opening later, which you would need to escalate. This will provide you with the basis for accurate benchmarking of what is an achievable percentage for first call resolution in your own organization.
Define SLA / OLA contracts - Your staff must be clear on the definition of “resolved.” In some organizations, “resolved” is when the issue is passed off to second line.
Reduce Escalations - Target those call types that should be resolvable on first-contact call but are being escalated. Review the skills of the staff that pass on those calls to assess whether additional training is required. Check the processes you have in place to resolve those incidents and ensure they are not encouraging particular behaviours. Your system should allow you to easily modify these processes without coding, if necessary.
Offer A Knowledgebase – Increasing your first-contact resolution requires technically skilled staff with access to knowledge. Provide analysts with a simple-to-use and searchable knowledge base that offers information as an analyst is typing in an incident window. Analysts that follow tried and tested solutions will hasten resolution and ensure it is a first-time fix. Knowledge creation itself doesn’t have to be hard, you can enable knowledge creation as analysts work with a simple check box “create knowledge” on resolution.
Utilize Remote Control Technology – With remote control from the service desk system, you can provide your analyst with two wins that make them more efficient. Firstly, by integrating remote control right-click access from within your Service Desk system, your staff won’t need to leave the Service Desk environment to login to an alternative remote control system and then switch back. Secondly, by allowing the analyst to do anything on the end-user’s device, it will enable the end user to solve their problem without having to pay a visit. It will save valuable time and increase your first-call resolution rate.
Provide Incident Templates – Providing Incident templates to end-user customers for the most frequently occurring Incidents, such as ”printer toner low” or “access a network drive” can be a quick win. This will ensure that your analysts receive all the information they need to resolve an issue, as quickly as possible, without chasing back and forth to an end user for additional information – “which printer, which office building etc.”
Implement Self Service – A good self-service operation will deflect certain calls such as password resets, how-to questions or service requests rather than having an end user sit in a call queue.
Harness Automation – Where it makes sense in a process, use automation to resolve issues and requests such as password resets and software request fulfilment.
Publish Noticeboards – Use self-service noticeboards to alert your end user customers about known errors and include work-arounds. Provide them with instructions in the end-user facing knowledge base that can be easily implemented without calling the service desk, or information about services that may be down or up-and-coming changes to services.
Celebrate and Recognize Staff – Use your team dashboard to report on improvements in first-contact resolution and recognize those staff members that contributed the most to this metric.

If you have any others from your own experience that you think readers could benefit for, please comment!

The One Service Management Team Productivity Hack You Need To Know

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 19:04:23 Z

Take a look at the photos of physical workspaces at the LANDESK office.

The first is a base-level configuration that all staff in any department start with; desk, chair etc.
The next is one of our customer support managers; notice he needs two screens to monitor to his teams activity and another for other work.
The third is the workspace of one of the problem managers, who has three screens to show information from their testing environments, which are elevated to the position that gives her the best working experience.
The final is an analyst that, among other vital pieces of equipment, requires a headset to take calls easily.

Every employee starts with the basic desk and chair, then, depending on their role, they add in the right pieces of hardware, software or information, in a specific layout in order to have the most productive environment to do their job.

So, if different job roles require a physical workspace that matches their jobs, why would we not provide that same role-based workspace environment on screen to aid productivity and provide the best work experience?

Think about each role in your service management departments, starting with IT. Rather than providing a one-size fits all, consider what each role needs access to in order to their job. And just as importantly, what don’t they need which would clutter their view and reduce their efficiency?

An analyst for example requires access to the tools, workflows and knowledgebase to reduce resolution time and fulfil requests for services, with a dashboard view of their workload. A service desk manager will need to see team dashboards, have the ability to create reports, and manage assignments.

The same goes for roles in other service management type environments such as HR. They’ll need a view of their HR processes and dashboards that help them manage this specific function.

So it seems obvious - this one productivity hack that you need to know to make your teams more productive - create the ideal experience for your key roles to consume services, view and act on data they need to do their jobs.

How? Take a look LANDESK Workspaces https://www.ivanti.com/solutions/needs/provide-applications-to-users

The Million-Dollar Question: How Easy is it to Upgrade or Change Your ITSM System?

Wed, 29 Apr 2015 19:55:53 Z

I attended the HDI show in Las Vegas and I’ll be attending the SITS show in London later this year. It is a great opportunity for me to meet lots of IT folk from the service management industry. When I talk to these good folk about why they are attending the event, I often get the same response. They are experiencing similar challenges and are there talking to ITSM tool providers about how they can improve their current situation.

What is that challenge?

The main challenge these people face is about being able to upgrade their current solution, or at least be able to make changes to it easily, whether the solution is on premise or in the cloud. This is usually to take account of variations in their ITSM environment. Upgrading to the latest versions allows them to take advantage of new features, functionality or user experience, but this can be a costly proposition. Some of the concerns I hear include:

“The solution has been heavily customized or hard coded, so it’s a difficult to upgrade or even make a change.”
“We’ve lost the original in-house developer skills.”
“We don’t have the time to train people on coding.”
“The cost of hiring a consultant is as much as a new solution would cost.”
“Last time someone did it they brought down the live system.”
“They are new to the role and have never done one and don’t know how.”

Any of these sound familiar?

When people discuss these things with me at the booth, I try to establish what they want to achieve from their service management operation beyond just simply upgrading. I cross my fingers and hope that it’s more than simply putting the processes they have now in a new or cheaper solution, or to “implement ITIL.” I try to understand what the ultimate goal of their ITSM journey is. I help them to look at not only upgrading their solution, but to focus on what the new solution will do better than what they are currently doing. For example, I’ll answer questions about SLA management, discuss how to easily introduce a knowledgebase, and possibly show them our self-service user interface, all while watching as their eyes light up. They frequently ask for more information to take away, or ask for a business card. I love this part, we’ve made a connection. I could say thank you and good bye, or I hope to hear from you soon, but I don’t.

Once Bitten…

I’d consider myself irresponsible if I didn’t give them more guidance than that. Think about it, they came to the booth because they have concerns about an upgrade or change, but without the proper input they are likely to make the same mistake again. You may say, ‘well it’s a booth and a 10 minute conversation’, but the challenge is not limited to just conversations at the booth. I’ve seen too many RFPs where we get asked lots of ‘check box questions’ that don’t actually provide any real guidance to help make the decision. RFP’s may contain question like, “Are you certified on the 15 ITIL processes?”, “Can you do password resets?” or “Do you have data centers outside the US?” But, once again, provide no opportunity to address the main concerns regarding upgrades or making easy on-going changes to an on-premise or cloud solution.

…Don’t Be Shy

Remember to ask the question, “What would we need to do to make a change or upgrade later down the line with your solution?” Hopefully, if you are talking to the right vendor, they will talk to you about how easy it is to configure without the need for costly developers or the need to work with source code. Maybe they’ll mention how you won’t need to customize to the point that you can’t upgrade without breaking what you have, and will provide you with a test environment at no extra cost so that you don’t have to make changes to a live system. They should reassure you that, in the unlikely event of an issue, there are backup and restore options. And, perhaps most importantly of all, they should assure you that if you have to contact their support team, they won’t need to learn about your code each time they run into a problem.

If they are a responsible vendor, they will probably give you some additional advice whether you choose to go with them or not. They may provide suggestions for creating test plans, or ways to keep your users notified at each stage, and may share other experiences they have learned along the way.

If you forget to ask this question during a booth visit, vendor call or presentation, don’t feel bad, it happens. But when you are back at your desk, and you consider the interaction you had with a vendor who didn’t talk to you about these kinds of things, you might want to reconsider your long or short list. There is a reason the title of this blog is “The Million-Dollar Question”, it’s because if you don’t ask this question, it could become a million dollar ongoing cost and maintenance mistake.

Meet the LANDESK Team at HDI Conference 2015

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 09:30:25 Z

On March 23-27, the HDI, a global IT Service and technical support association and training body, will host its annual IT Service and technical support conference and expo at the Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas.

What Will You Hear?

This four day program gives service management professionals, from executive to analyst, the ideal opportunity to gain new knowledge and achieve service management excellence in their own environments. If you are attending, you can look forward to five keynotes and over 80 breakout sessions. You can meet and engage with speakers and practitioners, listen to content, and gain valuable insights into how formal procedures, processes and industry tools improve performance. And of course do a little networking at the bar after hours.

Who Should You See?

If you are attending the HDI conference, we know that you’ll be going to as many of the practitioner presentations to understand what your peers are doing. We also recommend that you check out these sessions:

Self Service and Other Customer Support Myths, Brandon Caudle @Brandoncaudle Session 106, Wednesday 25, March, 10:15 am
Making IT A Strong Strategic Business Partner, Troy DuMoulin @TroyDuMoulin Session 301, Wednesday 25, March, 3:00 pm
Banishing the Heroes From Your IT Kingdom, Kirstie Magowan @KirstieMagowan Session 502, Thursday 26, March, 11:15 am
In the Future Will IT Support Exist, Matt Hooper @VigilantGuy Session 801, Friday 27, March, 10:15 am

You Want To See New Innovations, Integrations and Demos?

LANDESK is not only just attending, but will be showcasing our industry leading end-to-end service management software. In addition, we’ll be giving attendees a sneak preview of a new and ground breaking innovation that will help service management professionals to resolve issues faster by empowering end-users. This will be the first opportunity for anyone, anywhere in the world, to see this beautiful new piece of shiny, jaw-dropping innovation that will make your lives a whole lot easier.

We’d love you to meet with our ITSM experts and learn the latest product capabilities tailored to your IT management needs. Take a tour of our service management solution: incident, problem, change, CMDB, end-user work space with industry-leading service catalog as recognized by Gartner, and of course witness an awesome piece of goodness to be unveiled at HDI. What’s more, we’d love to talk to you about our LANDESK One Integration partners, some of whom will be showing casing at the expo too. - @Xtraction @PrinterLogic @Avatier @xMatters_inc

And There’s More

What more can you expect from us – an exciting Go Pro camera giveaway each day, a virtual reality experience that you can take home, and a friendly welcome from all the staff, including myself – I’m a first time visitor travelling over from the UK especially to meet as many of you as possible –look out for the mad Brit with the weird accent and say hi! (and no I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in Downton Abbey I’m afraid)

So stop by our booth #516

to learn how LANDESK can help you bring end to end service management to your environment, ask to see our new innovation or just say hi!

What Makes a Culture of Great Customer Service?

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 10:00:57 Z

There are a lot of opinions about customer service:
How should it be done?
What should be avoided?
How can you tell if you’ve succeeded?
And if you check social media these days, you will see many examples of what happens when there is bad service.

So how can we make things better?

The other day, in a Tweetchat organized by Roy Atkinson (twitter @HDI_analyst) of the HDI, Marsha Collier (@MarshaCollier), Greg Ortbach (@gregortbach), AlHopper (@alhopper), and other participants provided some great suggestions, that I thought were worth sharing.

In general participants felt that the impact of internal culture on customer service was huge.

“Culture isn’t a slogan, it’s not a tee-shirt or a mug. It’s what people actually do.”

“Internal culture is the foundation of any customer service operation whether internal or external.”

“An employee’s experience translates into the customer experience and customers can pick up the underlying culture in the same way they can tell if an agent is smiling.”

Here are some additional thoughts and suggestions from the participants.

1) Where does a customer service culture originate?

“If you want enthusiastic loyalty from your customers or IT end users, you must first develop it with your agents. You won’t satisfy customers with dissatisfied agents.”

”It’s the responsibility of the C-suite to provide the support, systems passion and commitment to that culture. Then it can take root and thrive throughout and organization. It should start at the top but it takes groundswell to turn it into reality. Every part of the organization needs to live and breathe it and be held accountable. Everyone must buy in for it to be genuine and sincere. A team can have great service culture but when an organization doesn’t support them then the cross teamwork will suffer. Culture can destroy the team and the team can destroy the culture.”

“Culture should start from the first hire. It should be explicit in the job description. It’s easier to teach a skill to someone who has a great attitude than teaching a skilled person to have the right attitude.”

“One radical idea which has worked is actually involving the client or the end user employees that your agent will service in the last stages of interviewing.”

“A good customer service culture
cannot be an afterthought in the business.”

2) How should a customer focused culture be conveyed to new hires?

“Although culture must be harnessed from the top down, existing employees truly convey the culture. It cannot be conveyed by motivational posters on the walls, an employee handbook that no one reads or insincere emails from leadership that have not bought in themselves.”

“A strong culture will sustain a strong customer service department. But you have to keep adding the right people –on-boarding, training and more training – it’s ongoing, never go to autopilot.”

“Whatever you do don’t throw new hires straight on the phones.”

“Customers whether internal or external should not be the practice ground for new hires. “

“Use a buddy system harnessing your best customer service staff. Leaders should practice what they preach in front of new hires. They should mentor new hires not leave them to their own devices or bring in their values from other organizations which may not be in-line with yours. Managers should set team goals and nurture a passion for quality customer service.”

3) How much do policies matter to an organization’s culture?
Are they an accurate reflection of it?

“Policies are as good words on a document unless they’re effectively implemented and practiced.”

“Policies that get in the way of action don’t show a great care for customer service. Policies either support or destroy a great service culture.”

4) What are some elements of a culture of good customer service?

“Outstanding service values are inherent in the organization. That organization will be focused on experience before profits and customer service will be a factor in any final decision making.”

“It starts with hiring people who value customers. Good staff know when it’s ok to go counter culture to care for the customer, but they won’t stick around long enough. A culture of good customer service includes empowering the workforce to serve as needed without retribution for people who think outside the box to resolve issues.”

“Trust creates a good culture. Mistrust destroys a good service culture.”

“It’s important to treat the front line as the most important employees. They are closest to your customers. Involve them in planning and decisions. Celebrate them and recognize above and beyond service.”

5) As an organization grows, is it easier or harder to keep a consistent customer service culture?

“Keeping a consistent customer service culture depends on the number of silos the company has developed and how many transactional leaders there are trying to claim territory.”

“If the rows in the garden have been planted in an orderly fashion, it’s much easier for consistency as they grow.”

These are some interesting opinions, don’t you agree? Now it’s your turn:

What have you done to foster good service culture and skills in your department?
(Please provide your answers in the comments)

ITSM: Context Paints a Bigger Picture

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 19:39:59 Z

In a previous blog I introduced the concept of context. In this blog, I’d like to expand on this topic and provide little more understanding of what I am thinking about here.

Let’s face it, although technology aids productivity at work, to some extent it’s created an era of depersonalized contact. These days it’s more likely I will send a black and white impersonal email or text message to a co-worker or a group of people than walk across to their desk and have a more friendly conversational exchange. Which means I miss out on learning more about the “person” that I am communicating with; what they like, even what they do on a daily basis which would help our future working relationship.

And I think that’s true for most of us.

Create A Colourful Canvas

What if everyone viewed the world in black and white only? How would you spot a red warning light? By embracing the use of contextual information to add colour, organizations gain a great understanding and have ability to do more to support their business users and the technology they need. They can once again reconnect and build better relationships in a scaleable way counteracting that de-personalization. Departments such as IT can now give business users a better experience than they would get if they went out and found their own IT solutions.

In the simplest terms context enables better understanding of the business users of IT and the environment that they operate in, if you like by painting the bigger more colourful picture. Similar to what we are seeing in our use of technology outside of work, the ability for IT organizations to provide context is made possible through the use of tools such as sensors, social media tools, mobile technologies and location based data all providing additional information about end users, their preferences, roles, the services and devices they use and more. And, if you are using a system with mature service management capabilities you can easily bring that relevant, personal information into your ITSM system to harness it.

Two-speed Working

IT and in fact any department using mature service management systems can see what it needs to see and do what it needs to do- both to offer to end users and make; relevant choices, actions or deliver content in the context of a support or service activity. This enables them to provide a context enriched experience and gain added value from existing services.

In addition, I think that using context positions the business and IT teams to innovate while still providing solid, efficient operations. With context you gain agility and speed of action so you can embrace the unexpected. Gartner, Inc. recently termed this two-speed working as bi-modal IT or bi-modal business.

So, context provides IT teams or any department the opportunity to innovate for the business while keeping the lights on for existing services. You can enhance the perception of IT, improve business productivity and offer guidance that is of genuine value.

Want some specific scenarios about where context fits into your world? Take a look at this video.

Introducing Service Desk 7.8 in the age of context

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 14:25:12 Z

I’d like to introduce you to our latest service management release, packed full of goodness to put a spring in your step for the New Year, but that’s not all, keep reading to learn about an exciting competition that you can enter.

Ahh, yes a new year,– time to make a new start at work; forge new relationships, be more efficient, be more productive and leave work at a reasonable hour! We see all around us that those that succeed at work and in building relationships do so through a combination of being more focused cutting out time-wasting activities while making personalized and consistent contact with fellow workers. But here’s the rub, many of us don’t have the time to search out more details about people we work with to make those personalized engagements. We resort to static, one-size fits-none engagement. Hold on though, because the newest major release of LANDESK Service Desk changes all that for IT service management (ITSM) analysts, or anyone in the business using service management to improve their departments; HR, facilities, R&D etc. And our focus for this release, as you might have guessed from the title, is “context”.

Giving Context to Service Management

In our previous major release, we focused on improving Engagement – IT engaging more with the business and having the right tools in place for business users to engage with IT. That is still very much top-of-mind in many service desks and other departments, and to make that more effective we think you need to add context. Because what’s more engaging when you have a conversation?– “Hello, who’s calling, please tell me the model number of your laptop, please hold while I check our other systems to see what software you have installed” or “Hi Andy, so you have a problem with your laptop? – you have a Macbook Air don’t you? ….thanks so confirming you are all fixed? By the way how’s your new iPhone 6 working out for you? I see you’ve been doing a fair bit of international travel lately – is that going to continue, do we need to look at raising the cap on your roaming data allowance?” A right time experience is a powerful way to get richer engagement. And, through the provision of relevant and more personal information IT can both offer to business users and make; relevant choices, actions or deliver content.

What’s New?
LANDESK Service Desk 7.8 will help you add context to your working day with:
• A new role-specific Workspace for targeted ITSM working experience
• Enhanced Computer Telephony Integration gives contextual insights for better interactions
• New dynamic in-context knowledge increasing analyst efficiency
• Advanced Integration actions
• And much more…

In addition we’ve released a number of content packs (which others often refer to as apps) alongside this release:
• Support Appoint Content Pack enabling “genius bar” style support and engagement
• IT Asset Management Content Pack initiating simple ITAM processes from one environment
• Time Tracker captures the amount of time spent on a task for project management, billing etc.
You can learn more about this release here

Win, Win, Win!

But before you go off and learn more about 7.8, to celebrate our newest launch, I want to invite you to enter our competition. Context will give you those IT moments of clarity, experience and data to help you gain insights about your business users, and we would like you to send in your own #ITMoments.
We are looking for images or photos that illustrate your IT Moments—good, bad, or just plain funny. Judged on originality and creativity there are two opportunities to win. You can enter as an individual or you can enter as a team. With prizes such as a Go Pro Camera and a 3D Printer up for grabs, why not give it a go.Closing date for the competition is January 31, 2015.
For more details and how to enter go to our Facebook page

Ok…now you can go take a look at 7.8

Stay tuned for more about context in later blogs from me!