Free White Paper- 10 Essential Steps for Service Desk Efficiency

According to research group Forrester, over 40% of large businesses have cut their IT budgets in 2008.

With new IT projects being frozen as funds are diverted to offset falling revenues, IT service desk managers need to adopt new strategies to increase efficiency and effectiveness of existing systems and processes.

Richmond Systems have released a free White Paper entitled- 10 Essential Steps to achieve Service Desk Efficiency.

The paper covers some of the key topics to consider including coping with and reducing support incident volume, automation- is it effective, reporting, ITIL best practices, the importance of people and what efficiency gains do service desk systems offer.

To download a free copy of the White Paper please visit: http://www.richmondsupportdesk.com/html/form.asp.

Alternatively to discuss how service desk software can play a vital role in increasing the efficiency of your IT support, call Richmond Systems on
Tel: +44 (0)1428 641616 or visit www.richmondsupportdesk.com.

Richmond SupportDesk all new Web Based Reporting

Richmond Systems today launched a brand new version of the service desk software Richmond SupportDesk, for enterprise IT support based on ITIL® best practices.

One of the many highlights for this release is web based reporting for powerful, dynamic and actionable reports all accessible via a web browser.

This empowers business users and support technicians alike with access to over 100 interactive statistical template reports on the support operation.

Report templates can be customised for each customer’s exact requirements and scheduled for automatic distribution via e-mail, printing, publishing to a web server or saving to a file. This ensures up to the minute statistics are available for key personnel and decision makers, whilst minimising any administration required for report distribution.

Reports include trend analysis to visualise key statistics for example, open or resolved support incidents on a daily/monthly basis, incident volume by group, priority and status. Enhanced Service Level Agreement (SLA) reporting includes average response resolutions, failed SLAs by support technician or category and exception reports.

Ideally suited to Managed Service Provider (MSP) environments and service desks that support multiple customer’s, reports can be setup and customised to each clients specific requirements, or for internal support where departmental analysis is required.


Next Steps
To find out more about the latest release of Richmond SupportDesk please visit www.richmondsupportdesk.com for a free trial version of the software or call
+44 (0)1428 641616 to discuss your service desk needs.

The Future of Service Management

One of the problems faced by service provision industries, such as IT support, is that measurement of success is difficult because there are so many intangibles involved. That considered, with great interest I read a report called The Future of Service Management put together by a group of consultants (Downton, Taurel, Noventum) which claims to have discovered the types of organisation that can virtually guarantee sustained revenue growth, and those who are destined to fall further into the pit of cost cutting and tumbling margins.

The report identifies two types of service organisation, and the shared traits which help them to become profitable. Rather than use the report's overtly complex terms, it is easier to describe the two favourable business methodologies as 'large corporate service leaders' and 'smaller, niche providers providing premium service’.

The report argues that smaller businesses which put emphasis on service excellence can succeed by putting faith in staff to facilitate top-notch support and develop relationships with customers. The service in this example is so good that customers will pay a premium for goods and services to ensure support levels are maintained and are likely to buy more products from people they trust, all which lead to ever burgeoning profits for the business.

The problem for businesses in this segment is, as they grow, it is difficult to maintain the one-to-one intimacy that smaller businesses can offer. The solution for organisations in this position, according to the research, is to redevelop the business to move to the next category. The key for larger businesses is to develop a brand, embed service focus throughout the organisation and create processes which facilitate quality service for customers. Such a brand – the example given was John Lewis – doesn't have to rely on a specific individual to maintain a long-term rapport with the customer. Instead the business performs in such a way that the customer knows that whoever they deal with, they will be offered consistent service.
The report carries on by listing various other segments that businesses can fall within the category of negative service, falling profit margins.

I won't detail each of the business types here, but they generally try to compete on price and, as profits fall, have less to spend on the actual service delivery. As service levels fall, further price cuts are the only way to appease customers and the negative cycle continues.

There is much that the IT services market can learn from this way of thinking. IT services do have a direct impact on the profitability of service, and therefore investment to follow one of the models as set out in this report can ultimately impact the bottom line.

A detailed summary of the report can be found at www.thefutureofservice.com