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Right-size Your Service Management Solution with this Checklist

Tue, 18 May 2021 10:29:50 Z

Like most of you, I have been working from home for the last 12 months and now with vaccines being rolled out I hope we are at the end of this long tunnel. During this period, I noticed that my weight has been steadily creeping up, so, to get fit I decided to start cycling again and get myself a new road bike.

1. Do Your Research Before Shopping

As with any significant purchase I make, I did my research, put my checklist together and scanned the market. At the store, I pulled out my checklist and narrowed down the selection to two bikes - both are trusted brands with quality carbon frames and parts. The price difference was huge, where the top-of-the-line bike costs three times more than the other! The store owner was an honest and genuine person and recommended I go with the bike that fit my criteria. It came down to the following considerations:

Budget - after doing my research, I knew what my limit was. The expensive bike came with pricey parts and accessories that I did not need
On-going maintenance and cost - due to the high-tech parts, most adjustments and servicing requires a trained specialist
My skill level - let's be honest here, I am not going to compete in the Tour de France, so I don’t really a bike specially designed for pro athletes

When I am not cycling, I am a Solutions Consultant at Ivanti and have been in the enterprise service management industry for over 25 years helping customers with their service management practices and solutions. When a customer comes to Ivanti for a solution, I feel that customers should have the same approach I did and select the software (and vendor) that is right for them based on the above criteria.

2. Work to Your Budget

After doing your market research and getting the approvals to purchase a new software, you will have a budget to work with. There are hundreds of Service Management software vendors in the market and a good place to help you get to your shortlist is the Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools.

Like the bike I was admiring, service management systems will have lots of bells and whistles that you do not need but are included in the total cost. Ivanti allows you to decide which Service Management bundle is best suited for the different types of users:

Help Desk - for Service Desk Analysts to manage Incident and Requests
Service Desk - includes Service Transition modules like Change and Configuration Management
Service Management - complete package with all ITIL processes
Asset Management – to manage the complete lifecycle of your company assets

In addition to picking the right bundle for your users, Ivanti gives you the option to decide on concurrent vs named licenses. It only makes sense to get fixed named licenses for users that will be using the system all day, while casual users can utilise a pool of concurrent licenses.

3. Consider On-going Maintenance and Costs

Even if budget wasn’t an issue, you do have to consider the on-going cost to maintain the system. We know that business needs can change very quickly and IT has to work with the business to meet their new requirements. This could be some changes to the Incident Management workflow, integration or even expanding the solution to meet your Enterprise Service Management (ESM) needs eg. Human Resources and Facilities. Are you able to configure the system in-house to adapt to these changes or does it require a specialist from the vendor or partner? How much will this cost your organisation each year? Do you have to pay for additional ESM modules or add-ons?

Having the ability to configure and maintain the system in-house is critical to the success or failure of the implementation. Not only will this help to manage the cost but it will foster a sense of ownership of the system. It is better to invest in your staff development by training them and allowing the team to enhance the platform. As your team gains more confidence with the system, more modules, features and functionality will be utilised, giving you a valuable return on your investment.

Finally, you are able to keep all the knowledge within the organisation, without having to rely on costly services engagement every time a modification is needed. Organisations like Custom Fleet, Australian fleet company which manages and leases over 100,000 vehicles across Australia and New Zealand, have been through this journey moving from a platform that was costing them too much every year and was severely under-utilised. They could not justify the business case for continuing on that platform and so transitioned to Ivanti Service Manager.

4. Match to Maturity Level

We have seen many organisations spend six to seven figure amounts purchasing and attempting to implement a whole of business ESM solution with the end result delivering only Incident, Service Request and Change Management. It is important to select a solution that is the right fit for your organisation based on organisational maturity level. Ivanti Service Manager is ranked the highest in the Gartner Critical Capabilities report for Intermediate-Maturity Infrastructure and Operations, where the majority of organisations sit. Ivanti Service Manager can deliver the best time-to-value with the right licenses and faster deployment.

Reach out for Assistance

Ivanti Service Manager is a trusted ITIL v4 based service management platform that is available in the cloud and on-premise we have helped many organisations find the right-size Enterprise Service Management solution, so please reach out to find out more.

And for those of you wondering which bike I ended up bringing home with me, it was the right-size bike and not the over-priced, high maintenance bike that was never suited for me.

Ivanti Service Manager: Marketplace Packages to Help with Your Enterprise Service Management Journey

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 01:31:43 Z

Ivanti Service Manager in a Restaurant

After a long day of Saturday activities with the kids, I did not look forward to cooking, so decided to stop by one of the many restaurants in my neighbourhood. The restaurant also happened to be one of many Ivanti Service Manager (ISM) customers

As we sat waiting for our meals, I decided that this is an opportune time for my children to understand how the restaurant uses ISM to support their business. Firstly, I pointed out some of the equipment around the store; desktops, monitors, cash terminals, tablets and even the kitchen equipment. I explained that these are all stored as assets in the system as a way of keeping track of them and when something goes wrong there is a mechanism to report them.

As it happens, while paying, the staff member was having an issue processing the transaction and after several unsuccessful attempts, she used another terminal to complete the payment. Excitedly I told my children that this is when ISM kicks in. The employee will now contact their service desk for assistance. The service desk analyst would then try to resolve the issue (which I am 100% sure includes a restart), but if it isn't resolved, they would have a field technician come out to either repair or replace the faulty asset. It doesn’t matter if it's an IT equipment, kitchen appliance or even a broken chair. All issues or requests are logged in ISM and channeled to the appropriate team to resolve or fulfill. I am not sure the kids had the same enthusiasm as me with the real life scenario but they do now understand a bit more about what I do.

Truly Enterprise Service Management

Ivanti customers have been using the ISM platform to support both IT and non-IT service desks long before it was referred to as Enterprise Service Management.

It always intrigues me how creative our customers can be with the platform. I have seen it used to support:

human resource cases and requests
facilities related requests
consumers, for product issues
the general public, to report road work related issues and enquiries
students, to manage requests and enquiries
medical equipment, for servicing and maintenance

By far, the most common are the first two, human resource and facilities. While many customers have implemented this with the assistance of Ivanti consultants or partners, many have taken advantage of the flexibility and ease of configurability of the platform, adding these capabilities themselves. One particular customer, Ashton Mossop of Queensland University of Technology, even documented the complete Human Resource configuration and shared it with other Ivanti customers. The University of Southern Queensland recently shared how ISM is deployed for procurement, legal services, campus security and many other shared services.

New Human Resource and Facilities Packages from Ivanti

For those of you that have human resource and facilities management on your radar, there is some great news. Ivanti's product management and development teams have been working with customers that have gone through the journey to create a human resource and facilities management package that can be utilised by other ISM customers.

The human resource (HR) package includes the following functionality:

HR specific roles and dashboards
HR case management with complete isolation from IT Incidents
New HR request offerings with pre-defined workflows
Employee timesheet management
Service level management of HR cases
HR knowledge
HR reports
HR announcements

The facilities management package provides the following capabilities:

Facilities specific roles and dashboards
New facilities management related request offerings
Work order management for custodial, operational, maintenance job
Service level tracking of work orders
Facilities buildings, floors, cubicles
Preventative maintenance schedules can be added and linked to work orders
Facilities calendar to display upcoming scheduled maintenance events
Facilities assets for managing the non-device assets, such as office furniture, building equipment, even elevators or escalators
Facilities knowledge base
Facilities management reports
Facilities announcements

Available on the Marketplace

If you are an Ivanti Service Manager customer, both these packages are now available for download from the Ivanti Marketplace. The response of the customers I have showcased these modules to has been unanimously positive. Those packages are all freely available to all Service Manager customers to apply, modify and use, without any additional module license cost.

Let Us Know

If you are looking to consolidate your service management practices in your organisation, please reach out to us. It doesn't just have to be human resource or facilities management. We have seen ISM used in so many ways, we can help to connect you with customers that have gone down the same path.

Ivanti Service Manager Customers Share Their Secret Sauce for Reporting

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 01:41:59 Z

The 9th of August 2019 was the day after Interchange Unplugged in Melbourne and I dragged myself down to the breakfast with the rest of the Ivanti team. The date was also significant as it marked my 20th year with Ivanti. I was in desperate need of coffee after a night of celebrations.

The question I constantly get asked is, why the same company for twenty years? The answer is simple – we have great products, a strong and growing organisation the great people I work with, and I enjoy what I do, which is helping customers with their business needs. I can honestly say, Ivanti customers are some of the most passionate people that I have ever come across. So Ivanti’s customer event, Interchange Unplugged, is something I look forward to every year.

Interchange Unplugged

We ran Interchange Unplugged in Sydney and Melbourne a few weeks ago and I got to meet with a lot of customers and prospects. There were a lot of familiar faces in the crowd, some that have been with us for around 20 years. That really says a lot about the trust they have in Ivanti, our products and our direction.

One thing I really enjoy about my role is learning how customers have used the Ivanti Service Manager (ISM) platform to help them with their business. I have honestly seen some amazing things over the years and some not so amazing. I remember a customer many years ago that had configured their forms with a fluorescent green background. I’m quite certain it got changed after their administrator left.

Reporting Challenge

In the Sydney session, we heard how Xtraction helped a customer with their reporting challenge. I know every organisation depends on reports to analyse their performance, identify trends and bottlenecks. This particular customer used to spend days crunching data, exporting data or copying and pasting between ISM and excel spreadsheets to generate management and service desk performance reports. When I spoke to them a few months ago about this issue and understood that they wanted to combine information from multiple objects, my immediate thought was Xtraction. To compound the issue, most of the reports had to be replicated for each support group, product line and customer.

For those that haven’t heard about Xtraction, it is the Business Intelligence dashboard reporting solution that is bundled as a value add with all Ivanti solutions, including Ivanti Service Manager. As an Ivanti Customer, you are entitled to two users of this powerful and easy to use reporting tool. For ISM Cloud customers, you will need to access the ISM database through a “BI Server”, which is a replicated database as accessing the production database directly is a security risk.

This customer can now generate Service Level Agreement (SLA) trending reports and even drill down into the months where they didn't meet their SLA targets and subsequently open up the Incidents that caused the breach. Best of all, the customer is now building reports themselves and have expanded the use to other parts of the organization.

Gamification to Drive Service Level Improvement

In the Melbourne conference, I met another passionate ISM customer and once again, it was Xtraction that was the hero. Their aim was to improve the SLA performance and by having Xtraction dashboards on monitors across the IT department, the IT teams could easily see the current status and whether they were about to breach their team's SLA. Yes, it is gamification and it works. It appeals to the competitive nature in us and we don't want to be the team with red dashboards.

The question I commonly get is how is Xtraction different from the reporting tools within the ISM platform? In terms of dashboard reporting functions, there are the Service Manager Dashboards and the Analytic Metrics. The Service Manager Dashboards and Analytic Metrics are also easy to use and can help you quickly generate dashboard reports. The main difference is that Xtraction can consolidate data from multiple business objects into a single dashboard. And the most common business objects that customers want to consolidate are Incidents and Service Requests to display the total volume of tickets logged with the service desk.

For those of you that use Ivanti Voice, the call management solution, you can also use Xtraction to report on your Ivanti Voice statistics. One of the most common challenge at the service desk is validating that all calls are logged and responded to. Xtraction allows you to consolidate data from both Ivanti Voice and Service Manager to ensure the number of inbound calls matches the number of Incidents or Requests logged.

Let Us Know

If you have similar stories to share or finding it a challenge to report off any of the Ivanti solutions, please reach out to us. We would love to hear from you and help you with your service management journey toward Unified IT.

Download It

If you are an Ivanti customer, please take advantage of this great solution as it is your entitlement for partnering with Ivanti. Xtraction has more than 50 predefined connectors for Ivanti products as well as non-Ivanti products, such as Microsoft, BMC, ServiceNow and more. You can download it from the Ivanti Community site or reach out to us for further information.

Ivanti Voice Automation to the Rescue

Wed, 23 May 2018 20:25:18 Z

After eight years of being loyal to my Internet service provider, I decided to part ways after yet another frustrating call to their call centre.

You know the drill. Cou call up the support number, stay on hold for half an hour, get transferred multiple times, then end up going through the complete troubleshooting checklist (yes, I did turn my modem off and on). And finally, the call drops.

Ivanti Voice Automation to the Rescue

The scenario I described above is all too common and could have been easily avoided with automation. Automation has been a hot topic lately and so it should. In most cases, the emphasis is on the automation of back-end processes, such as automating the employee onboarding process. In this situation, we can automate the front-end processes, which makes sense as that it the first point of contact between the customer and your service desk.

End to End Automation

Ivanti Voice is a complete call management solution that delivers better customer experience through caller identification (CLI), automated call distribution (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), skills-based routing and screen pops.

Ivanti Voice is fully integrated with Ivanti Service Manager, an enterprise service management solution to manage the issues and request raised at the service desk. Service Manager can be deployed both on-premise or in the cloud and Ivanti Voice is integrated with either deployments.

Here are a few examples where Ivanti Voice Automation can help.

Caller identification

Know your customers! By looking up the customer database, you can quickly identify the customer and pass this information to the service desk analyst. This also can help to identify your VIP customers.

Call routing using Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

Using a few simple prompts (but not too many as it can be annoying), the customer’s reason for the call can be identified and the call can be transferred directly to the right team the first time.

Avoid congestions

No one likes being on hold. If your call centre/service desk agents are all busy, give the customer the option of a call back. This will create a ticket in Ivanti Service Manager, which is queued in a visual dashboard for the next available service desk agent.

Screen pops

When a call reaches an agent, Ivanti Service Manager automatically creates a ticket, populating the screen with the caller’s information as well as information collected by the IVR. This avoids the frustration of repeating the identification process and the same information collected by the IVR. Even if the call has to be transferred, all the information you collected stays with the ticket.

Ensure quality

Staff turnover rates at the service desk can be higher than usual so dealing with an agitated customer can be challenging. Ivanti Voice provides a “Call Whispering” feature which allows a senior agent or supervisor to listen in on a call and guide a rookie through a call.

Password resets

Password resets are the number one reason why users contact the IT Service Desk. Imagine being able to automate this whole process by allowing the caller to reset their passwords themselves through the IVR. According to a Forrester research*, this would trim approximately 20% of help desk calls at an average cost of US$ 31 per call.

Self Service

The last gripe I had was going through the troubleshooting checklist and having the call dropped. Like most people nowadays, the internet is my first port of call to search for solutions. As part of the Ivanti Service Manager solution, these checklists can be posted on the self-service portal’s knowledge base. And if I need help, I can invoke a chat with a Bot or a service desk agent.

Happy Customer

Issues are inevitable and the customer is already frustrated. By putting them through a painful experience with a service desk is sure to drive them away, as was the case with me. This integrated, voice-enabled approach helps ensure that any organisation can be better aligned with its strategic business initiatives while driving down service costs drastically and increasing customer satisfaction

* Merritt Maxim and Jennie Duong, “Benchmark Your Employee Password Policies and Practices,” Forrester Research, September 9, 2015, Updated September 14 2015. Accessed January 19, 2016. https://www.forrester.com/report/Benchmark+Your+Employee+Password+Policies+And+Practices/-/E-RES122799