For more than twenty years, the technical service and support industry has been trying to arrive at a common understanding of IT/business alignment. But why is this subject so important? Well, IT/business alignment has long been seen as one of the keys to synching IT’s goals with the business’s...
Tag(s): business alignment, incident management, ITIL, service desk, service level management
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016
While BYOD and broader consumerization trends may be turning the corporate IT world upside down, such factors have long been a reality in the campus IT environment. But that doesn’t mean that university IT departments are immune to the changing expectations of today’s empowered device owners.
Tag(s): case study, byod, desktop support, service desk, security management
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016
For UBM Tech, HDI’s parent company and a global live media and B2B communications, marketing services, and data provider, innovation is one of the four underlying corporate values leading the company down the path to be the best—and biggest—event business in the world. UBM Tech’s David Michael...
Tag(s): business value, leadership, support center
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016
L.L.Bean, a leading clothing and outdoor recreation equipment retailer, was built on a legacy of high-quality products and impeccable customer service. Founded in 1912, today the company generates about $1.5 billion in sales worldwide, thanks to the efforts of 5,000 year-round employees. After...
Tag(s): business of support, infrastructure change management, IT-business alignment, support operations, case study
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016
In order to run IT like a business, a technical service and support organization needs to have a clear picture of the services it provides and how these services create value for its customers. Many organizations find it difficult to define services from the customer’s perspective because...
Tag(s): business value, business alignment
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016
TECO Energy’s vision for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) project was to consolidate its existing financial, materials management (supply chain management), and human resource management applications and systems onto a single integrated platform across TECO Energy’s businesses. This...
Tag(s): case study, business alignment, process management, support center
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016
Without clear objectives, metrics are just a pile of numbers. The good is when we beat our targets, the bad is when we fail to hit those targets, and the ugly is when we fail to set challenging objectives. Remember, like baseball, the only thing that really matters in the end is whether or not...
Tag(s): metrics and measurements, performance management, service desk, service delivery
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016
In the business world, we’re often required to decide between products or services we don’t know much about; this is especially true when it comes to new, cutting-edge technology and trends. We’re much more susceptible to hype when we’re in unfamiliar territory and have no prior experience. This...
Tag(s): business value, research
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016
Some of the most effective techniques for doing more with less come from lean management. Using these techniques, I’ve been able to mobilize my teams while maintaining or improving morale and customer satisfaction. But where do you start? How do you identify the areas that will have the biggest...
Tag(s): continual service improvement, leadership, organizational change management, process-improvement, support center
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016
Supporting Office 365 is no easy task, especially in a university setting with a diverse audience of end users. But the University of New Mexico Information Technologies (UNM IT) is doing just that—and achieving exceptionally high first contact resolution rates, as well as huge growth in the use...
Tag(s): case study, desktop support, first call resolution, infrastructure change management, knowledge management, KM, release management, service desk
Date Published - Last Updated February 25, 2016