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
Contractors can provide value in projects—by adding a skill not present on the team, by providing basic labor for less-valuable tasks, or by “backfilling” the desktop support team’s day-to-day tasks to free team members up for project work—but they aren’t suitable for all projects.
Tag(s): workforce enablement, staffing, desktop support
In one way or another, all organizations teach. Businesses train new employees on their cultures, technologies, and processes. In IT, training often accompanies a large roll out or new initiative. In fact, many IT departments have a training department or make explicit assignments to teams to...
Tag(s): coaching, training
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
Today, outsourced service providers live in a world where customers call the shots. As a customer, you’ve come to expect more than a standard set of services. Instead of one model in one color, you want outsourced services that can be customized to your needs, uniquely branded and themed for...
Tag(s): practices and processes, outsourcing, process management, business of support, sourcing
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
Offshoring—moving jobs to other countries—is a topic that elicits strong reactions from people. Management is frequently in favor of it, for a variety of reasons; workers, on the other hand, can feel threatened, fearing that their jobs are in danger. There are political, economic, and ethical...
Tag(s): outsourcing, support center
If you agree with ITIL, successful service management is the result of “an appropriate mix of people, process, and information technology.” While ITIL is touted as a systematic approach that treats all three components equally, in practice it often focuses more heavily on the process side....
Tag(s): ITIL, leadership, process management, people, workforce enablement
Do you feel you reward and/or recognize your team frequently enough? Do you feel you are rewarded and recognized enough? For most people, there’s a big disconnect. So what can we do to reestablish the disconnection?
Tag(s): employee satisfaction, leadership, workforce enablement
The IT world is in the midst of dramatic change. With each passing day, the traditional model for remote support becomes increasingly outdated. Today there are 10 billion mobile devices, 50 percent more applications, an infinite amount of unique configurations, and more distributed workers than...
Tag(s): monitoring, remote support tools, service desk, support center, tools