Continual Service Improvement

It all started in the spring of 2009, after coming in as the runner-up for the HDI Team Excellence Award. We knew we were delivering great service to our customers, making recommendations to be more effective, and creating a great working environment, but there was something missing. After...
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

We often hear of the importance of managing the risks associated with making personal investments. Until we understand investing well enough to weigh equity against the level of tolerable risk, we risk making uninformed decisions that could have devastating results. The same principle holds true...
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated February 25, 2016

Improving Customer Service from the Inside Out

When it comes to customer service, it really is only as good as the customer says it is. But what do you do when your customers think your service is great, but you know it could be a whole lot better? Think Lean! We did, and we were able to reduce our abandoned call rate from 28 percent to 9...
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016

The Keys to Success in the "New IT"

Call it the cloud. Call it converged infrastructure. Call it hybrid delivery, or whatever the marketers come up with next. The fact is, the world of IT has changed. It’s the “new IT.” But let’s be honest: it’s not altogether new, and it’s not altogether IT. So what is it, and how is it going to...
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016

The IT Strategy Toolkit

With all of the buzz around strategic planning, it’s understandable that today’s IT manager or CIO, however shrewd he or she may be, might feel overwhelmed by the plethora of definitions on offer. The easy-to-use toolkit presented in this article provides a simple, yet effective, tried-and-true...
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated July 7, 2020

How Many ITIL Experts Do You Need to Change a Light Bulb?

Some will no doubt think this is heresy, but the fact is that ITIL is a process framework. It is not prescriptive (in either ITIL v3 or ITIL 2011, but more on that later), and the books do not actually provide a method for designing services; rather, they provide the (presumably) required processes.
Date Published May 22, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016

Spectrum Health Case Study

We observed our colleagues using the request tools where they worked. We realized that we needed to present information in a role-specific manner.
Date Published - Last Updated June 2, 2016

Fiserv Case Study

Fiserv began implementing its knowledge management strategy in 2012. First, they implemented a process to streamline the receipt of knowledge updates.
Date Published - Last Updated June 2, 2016

Teco Energy Case Study

After completing its reorganization in January 2012, it quickly became clear that for the reorganization to work, KCS would have to be institutionalized in our organization.
Date Published - Last Updated June 2, 2016

Paychex Case Study

We needed to find ways to head off the expected volume increase while expanding the breadth of knowledge across all of our support agents.
Date Published - Last Updated June 2, 2016