Featured White Papers
Improving service management requires organizations to do things differently, and doing things differently requires organizational change. This white paper describes a straightforward, reproducible method of managing organizational change that will help...
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Improving service management requires organizations to do things differently, and doing things differently requires organizational change. This white paper describes a straightforward, reproducible method of managing organizational change that will help ensure the success of any service management journey.
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There are many reasons to monitor quality in the support center, and many ways to do it. This white paper, based on recent research, reveals the current state of quality assurance in technical support centers.
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There are many reasons to monitor quality in the support center, and many ways to do it. This white paper, based on recent research, reveals the current state of quality assurance in technical support centers.
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Shadow IT is simply information technology that hasn’t got an IT department’s stamp of approval. It’s a major concern for IT departments because of the cloak-and-dagger games being played by business users and traditional IT staff. It will serve the...
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Shadow IT is simply information technology that hasn’t got an IT department’s stamp of approval. It’s a major concern for IT departments because of the cloak-and-dagger games being played by business users and traditional IT staff. It will serve the support center—and IT in general—much better if policies are drafted and put in place that fully support business goals and efficiencies, but which recognize that there are risks involved that must be considered.
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New mobile trends present serious opportunities for businesses and IT departments—and serious risks for those that turn a blind eye to the evolving mobility landscape.
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New mobile trends present serious opportunities for businesses and IT departments—and serious risks for those that turn a blind eye to the evolving mobility landscape.
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Recent White Papers
Author: Roy Atkinson, John Custy, and Rick Joslin
Jun 16, 2014
Together, ITIL and KCS can improve IT service management.
Although the names are often used interchangeably, there are substantial differences between help desks and service desks. The former support end users, while latter are a strategic component of service management. They vary in scope—the “size of the umbrella,” if you will. If you aren’t sure whether the transition from help desk to service desk is in line with your organization’s goals, this white paper lays out the elements you and your organization need to take into consideration.
Author: Members of the HDI Desktop Support Advisory Board
Jan 01, 2014
Does “desktop support” have a future? The HDI Desktop Support Advisory Board thinks it does, and this white paper is a road map that will help organizations navigate the changes ahead.
The new world of support will be based on more than transactional analysis—it will be built around relationships, goals, and business value. For years, support has tracked volume, speed, and performance against transactional goals. But the new world of support is one in which we will need to track those things that help us measure business outcomes and predict issues and trouble spots that could have an impact on business processes and productivity.
In blog posts, presentations, and papers, the technical service and support industry is hearing the same thing: You need to show your business value. The HDI research discussed in this paper sheds light on the ways support centers—at least some of them—are working to show that they are valuable, and that it does make sense to increase expenditures to improve their ability to support emerging technologies and new ways of doing business.
Most IT departments can tell you how much they spend on support, but few can quantify the economic impact of support. The result is that many technical service and support organizations are on the defensive when it comes to budgeting and spending, and often struggle to get the funding needed to deliver even adequate levels of support. In recent years, a handful of pioneering organizations have adopted a different strategy when it comes to support—a strategy that emphasizes value over cost—and they routinely deliver benefits far in excess of their costs.
Every organization faces challenges when it comes to replacing the tools used to accomplish its work. Should the organization adjust to doing things according to the way the tool is designed, or should the tool be customized to fit the way the organization works? Whatever we decide, it’s imperative that we understand and serve the goals of our organizations (i.e., the businesses for which we provide services). The days when IT was essentially a black box, and could purchase new tools at will, are gone.
Even in the best organizations with the best infrastructures, there are unplanned outages. These outages present challenges for the support center, especially when they involve standard communication channels such as email, intranets, and/or the network over which communications are carried. How can support centers continue to keep end users/customers informed and handle the increased volume of contacts when unplanned outages occur? What are some alternative communication channels they can use when things go wrong? How can staffing requirements be adjusted quickly when there’s an outage and volume increases?