History About What Is A Service Desk

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the current challenges of IT Service Desk, due to the complex nature of the IT infrastructure, hardware, software, services management inventory management, change management, and service support. In a world of multiple media and globalization, is a constant struggle for organizations highlighted in a saturated market. The point in the direction where people, processes and technology combine to provide a business service is the service desk. The Service Desk provides essential daily contact with customers, users, IT services and any other applicable third party organization support. The main goal of the service desk is to travel and to improve service and support on behalf of an organization.

IT Service Desk is customer-oriented service that provides a single point of contact, advice, support and rapid restoration of normal services to its customers and users. Processes requests, incidents, problems and change requests. More than that, it also manages maintenance contracts, software licenses and provides a service level management and configuration management. Service Desk incidents taking press urgent requests an interface to other ITSM processes, such as a single contact point to ensure that it is easier for the integrity of data and to simplify the communication. Controls use incidents and implement a system lifecycle management to track all service requests.

A user survey was conducted with participants asked to fill out an online questionnaire to find out what customers think of the service by the Service Desk to provide out.

IT was found that ITIL processes are supposed to be managed Service Desk, ITIL is the most widely used approach for IT service management in the world. It provides a practical framework for services and reasonable identification, design, implementation and support of IT throughout the organization.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Aims

This study aims to examine the key issues facing IT service desk today. And as an optimization module for Service Desk Management can benefit Service Desk Management. Three main issues are by service desk of the service desk faces today are the following.

This study aims to examine the major issues faced by IT Service Desk today. And how an optimisation module for serve desk management can benefit the IT service Desk. This will enable them to provide world class service. The following are three major issues faced by today’s Service Desk.

Having no or poor knowledge of customers: Despite considerable improvements in the areas of information technology computer science, from which modern not to take over business processes and their importance. The lack of knowledge about the client's history, reduce the effectiveness of the interaction between the front desk staff and users to limit the customer experience overall.

Managing the complexity of change: Increased number of configuration items (CI) and the speed and complexity of change is not a process of change remains to be a repository for storing and managing data change as a Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

Pressure of Multiple calls: The pressure of increased call volume, faster with multiple departments in different time zones employ. ITIL defines an "incident" as any unplanned interruption to a reduction in the quality of IT services and ITIL defines a "problem" as the cause of one or more of these incidents. The primary objectives of Problem Management are to see problems in the future and to control in order to prevent incidents, to eliminate recurring events and minimize the impact of incidents that can not be prevented. The problem management process depends on a mature Incident Management.

1.2 Relation of the topic to the course:

As Information Technology (IT) services and consulting companies grow, new challenges emerge in the quest to provide comprehensive and cost effective IT solutions to customers. If dramatic growth happens quickly, it becomes difficult to maintain the outstanding service levels that defined the company when it was founded.

The number of clients and service tickets rapidly multiply, making it next to impossible for owners to stay on top of service team schedules or get an accurate end-to-end view of the entire business.

When an IT company struggles with help desk management, client satisfaction begins to decline and the business is not as profitable as it should be because there is limited visibility into how employees use their time.

Nagging questions bother the company owner and team leader:

Is the work prioritised?

Did they get to all the places they were needed?

How many tickets did they resolve?

As I already work at the proposed organisation (Syntax Integration). This can help to improve Syntax’s customer relation and Engineers allocation. As I see some times customer or engineer getting frustrated. And this is damaging the customer relationship. After improving the ways, customer can more focus on their other aspect of their business and Engineers will be able to resolve their problems in less time. This way we can release the pressure on Engineers and we can focus on new clients. This will give Syntax Integration more confidence to take on more and more clients and expand the business rapidly. We can achieve the following

• Reduce complexity

• Optimisation of projects

• Effective management of IT assets (engineers, hardware and software)

• Greater flexibility

• Standardization of services and organization

• Consolidation of duplicate processes, technology and systems

• Increased productivity of IT and business

• Improve the quality of IT service

• The development of an approach to service and equipment suppliers management, and communication with customers, between users and IT departments

• Management control and reporting

1.2 Research Questions

How to make service desk more efficient and reliable to meet customer’s need?

Implementing ITIL in Service Desk Management helps provide world class service?

Can knowledge about a customer be effective resolving issues?

What are the implications for managing complexity of change?

How does reducing multiple call pressure effect Service Desk?

1.3 Objectives

Conduct a literature review

Evaluate current Service Desk

Conduct a case study

ITIL V3 Foundation course to understand Managing IT services in detail

Techniques to expand customer knowledge

Find the way to manage the complexity of change

Proactively reduce incidents before they become big and reduce the pressure of multiple calls

Evaluate the results in relation to objectives

Present a work flow and prototype for Service Desk management.

Present a work flow and prototype for Customer Knowledge.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

In this chapter all aspects related to Service desk will be reviewed. The pace of technological change, while already extremely rapid, is increasing exponentially in the world of Technology.

IT managers and directors can find it challenging enough to keep abreast of the Technology developments, let alone ensure that that the systems they are deploying are robust enough to support the daily growing demands organisations are placing on their IT departments. Even greater challenge is the deployment of systems and approaches not only meet current needs, but also the future. A single point of fully managed service, which works fully Service desk services with IT service providers.

From the reviewing of Service Desk, service level agreement, which is between the service providers and recipients of services. How information technology helps survey mismanaged companies IT departments that are explained in detail in the company. The importance of customer satisfaction, to see what the customer expects from a service provider and customer’s behaviour. Service management world class service desk practical challenges of being an IT Manager, managing service level agreement, incident management and problem solving are, services and IT outsourcing, configuration management and review of the change management briefly in this chapter.

2.1 What Is a Service Desk?

According to Mattias Lind (2011) Service Desk is very different fashion age help desk, your single point of service, which is fully managed. Service Desk with defined IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Service Desk can be part of an internal IT department of the company or managed IT service or third party service provided. It can easily be mistaken with the same old fashion Helpdesk. But there is a huge difference between service desk and help desk or customer service because way of providing a customer support is different and delivered differently.

Service Desk can be defined in various ITSM processes in ITIL Service Desk is not a process in itself. There are few ITIL processes, ie, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management, Availability Management, Capacity Management, Security Management (Mattias Lind, 2011).

Mattias Lind (2011) explores the idea that the service desk requires a single point in the case of failure or change. All events and user queries are heard and owned by the service desk. It is service desk responsibility to ensure user requests and incidents are resolved, regardless of request are for third party or for service desk itself. Service Desk also provide system support for users and resolve any problems as quickly as possible and be sure to provide the service to users which works for them.

The Service Desk provides managed support service to customers as a service level agreement (SLA) that what services are available, explains offered. Service Desk is required to offer the service in its Service Level Agreement which in short (SLA) (Mattias Lind, 2011).

According to Mattias Lind (2011) any communication between the service desk staff and customers / users must be stored in the central database or software. Such database or software should have functionality which helps the service desk to perform its work, such as::

* Web / e-mail creation and monitoring of requests

* Knowledge Base

* Internal chat with storing of conversations as part of the requests

* Customize the interface to suit the organization's processes and the best support

* Motor automated workflow do everything automated

* Flexible reporting as necessary to monitor progress of applications

* Control Panel for staff offer the opportunity to know exactly what to do

* Automated access control as promised in the SLA

* The latest user software for proactive monitoring

As the Service Desk is the central point of contact for users, often set so that the communication must go through the service desk. This includes issues that must be provided by a service provider to the users. The communication then goes back and forth through the software or database. This software and the database help for future references and makes service desk staff to be more efficient and provide swift solutions to any the problems which already accord in the past, and solutions were found and recorded. (Mattias Lind, 2011).

In the theory of ITIL processes should work for any organization, but adapt business purpose must be changed. Implementation of ITIL processes can be very difficult at first, but once tfheir few processes such as incident management, problem management and change management are implemented. It is easier to implement the remainder of the process. Once some or all of the ITIL processes will be implemented to be easier to govern ITSM organization and helps the service desk staff to provide world class and high quality service to its customers. (Mattias Lind, 2011).

Next topic is Service Level Agreement between IT service provider and client. In this it will be explained in depth the relationship between the two.

2.2 SLA’s and Customer satisfaction

According to Dirk Draheim (2010) IT Support Services uses SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and customer satisfaction are always the main indicators of IT support for success, according to the Bureau of UK Service 2007 Benchmarking Report practice Help Desk Institute (HDI) "nearly half of all IT service professionals considered customer satisfaction to be the most important measure of a helpdesk to increase the business. Two thirds of service desks now employ SLAs and 86% of those surveyed consistently meet the targets set out in these agreements. There has also been a substantial rise in the implementation of a two-tiered service desk structure, reflecting an increased focus on customer service"

(BSC Latest industry news, 2007).

Barclay Rae, HDI Europe professional services director, said: "The service desk is certainly being taken more seriously." "It is usually very difficult to fix the problem on first level on first time. But by routing calls to a central helpdesk and then to second-level experts to solve problems quickly, more organisations are able to concentrate on getting better alignment with the business" (BSC Latest industry news, 2007).

However IT advice and research firm Gartner, recently claimed that many SLAs were failing to "measure up", because organisations were implementing too many SLAs and are not able to review them on regular bases (BSC Latest industry news, 2007).

To see the senior management and IT department’s relationship in depth the following article was studied.

2.3 Senior Management & IT Department

We hear more and more complaints often managers, most of them CEOs, CFOs, COOs and other senior officials do not realize a lot of business value of technology high price is installed. Meanwhile, the list of seemingly necessary IT skills to grow, and IT spending continues consuming an increasing share of its budget. Where is the recovery period? Or how they will make money from the large investment injected in Information technology. Return on investment they have made in information technology as everyone wants to generate income or revenue for each department. But they know that information technology has no direct income, it only helps generate the maximum value and the business to its full growth potential (Draheim Dirk, 2010).

In fact, our research on IT management practices has shown in hundreds of companies around the world that most organizations do not generate the value of IT investments that could be. Companies to manage their IT investments most successfully generate returns that are 40% higher than that of its competitors (Draheim Dirk, 2010).

Numbers of factors distinguish the company and performing companies. The important thing is that the senior managers play their role as leader of information technology to make decisions more important. When managers do not take the leadership role and take their responsibility, in result information technology executives often face disasters

(Draheim Dirk, 2010).

When it comes to adoptions of large scale customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning systems, such as ERP and CRM, where the results are very costly and complex systems and running But, in reality, the problem is usually when executives do not recognize that this is not just a technical challenge, but this system ceased business. Consequently, we do not accept any responsibility, where changes in processes and business organization are required (Draheim Dirk, 2010).

The following survey tells us about the behaviour of IT users in different companies in relation to IT and IT management.

2.4 ITIL survey

According to Global Knowledge Training LLC Survey, one cannot say enough the critical importance of ITIL emphasize at this important moment in history. There is a huge gap between consumer (ie, enterprise customers and users) and providers (ie the IT organization) IT services. Recent studies continue to show a significant gap between the two. Surveys in 2008, 2009 have shown that the following view of enterprise customers and users about IT services:

21%of organizations view IT as an "expensive overhead"

45% view IT as "necessary"

Only 32% see IT as a "valued strategic partner"

37% feel that "business is constrained by IT"

Another 14% said, "IT is not considered part of business advancement" This represents a fairly disconcerting reality.

However, it is not without merit. Other surveys show that the IT organization in most situations rather than problems:

• 60¢ of every $1 spent on IT goes toward infrastructure

- Less than 20% manage human capital or worker performance

• 8 out of 10 IT outages are caused by a failed change

- 70% of support calls are "self-inflicted"

• Only about 20% of all IT projects are successful

- 30% are cancelled at significant loss, balance not as promised

• 25% of hardware and software is never installed

- 67% of IT organisations don’t track software assets

• 90% of mid-market IT organisations use manual processes

- Most IT organisations average 6 standalone IT software tools that do not interoperate with each other"

Following article review Customer Experience helps to know more about customer experience, means what customer think or expect now days.

2.5 Customer Experience

What does it mean by customer experience? Today, companies are more interested in developing, improving and managing the customer experience. For example, Amazon is their task to provide high quality end customer experience, including delivery. The customer experience has been described as the surest way to remain competitive at the top. Usually experience is a response to interpersonal or interpretation and external stimulus. But when it comes to customer satisfaction, it can be defined as cognitive and effective outcome of customer’s exposure to, or interaction with, a company’s people, process, technology, products, services and other outputs (Buttle Francis, 2008).

Happy customer means more positive feedback and this helps business drive towards the growth and be successful in the field. Customers will stay loyal if they keep receiving high class service. Positive feedback and word of mouth helps to expand business and take on more clients (Buttle Francis, 2008).

Following article Service Management gives an idea in detail how to manage service.

2.6 Service Management

Services management experts have identified a number of features that characterize services. Services are performances or activities are intangible dominant services that cannot be seen, tasted or detected by other means before consuming. A customer buys an office cleaning service which cannot be seen in the result of the service before it is executed. Services are high in experience attributes and credibility, but low on some search attributes. Experience attributes are attributes that can be experienced by scanning a product (K. Mani Chandy; W. Roy Schulte, Sep 2009).

Such as health services, insurance and investment advice are rich in credence attributes. Even if after use of these services to see the quality of service delivered is not possible. Services are low in these because of their dominant character immaterial. Receiver of these services looks for tangible clues before making the sensible choice. Buyers will look for team spirit, presentation of the equipment. "Service marketers therefore need to manage tangible evidence by tangibilizing the intangible" (K. Mani Chandy; W. Roy Schulte, Sep 2009).

Next article review Good service desk practice tells us about the service provided in world class way.

2.7 Good Service Desk Practice

According to Rich Schiesser, there are many ways to organize and infrastructure, but there is no single method or standard or structure that can be applied to all situations. The reason for this is a different size, maturity and orientation of the IT organization, and they vary from company to company and directly affect the optimal design of the IT infrastructure. Some companies combine voice and data network groups, and others are clearly separated. Sometimes the position of a department can play an important role in the distinction of a world-class infrastructure from a poor. Four departments where this is the case in particular is the service center database administration (including development), network operations and management systems. The success of any infrastructure is essential to the correct location when the service center is in place. There are several reasons for this. High level of service in an office is Level 1 is the first contact an IT organization. Mix of services other office locations hierarchical structure can increase the effectiveness and visibility. The first impression the client when they first contact the service is long-term

According to Rich Schiesser there are many ways to organize and infrastructure but there isn’t any single or standard method or structure which can be applied on all situations. The reason for this is different size, maturity, and orientation of IT organization, and they are vary from company to company and directly influence how best to design the IT infrastructure. Some enterprises combine voice and data network groups, and other are kept totally separate. Sometimes the organizational position of a department can play an important role in distinguishing a world-class infrastructure from a mediocre one. Four departments where this is particularly the case are the service desk, database administration (Including developing), network operations, and systems management. The success of any infrastructure is critical when proper location of the service desk is in place. There are many reasons for this. Important level in service desk is level 1 which is first contact of an IT organization. Mixing of services desk other places in hierarchal structure can increase effectiveness and visibility. First impression that customer get when they first contact service is long lasting (Rich Schiesser, 2010).

Answer incoming calls as soon as possible it’s best to answer within two rings.

Service desk agent should answer the call if it’s possible because users don’t like to be connected to an automated telephone menu.

If you do ever use automated telephone menus, then design them to be as simple to understand and use as possible.

Sequence most commonly used automated telephone menu items first.

Allow for the bypass of some or all automated telephone menu items.

Calculate and report to callers average hold times in real time.

Practice good telephone etiquette by being polite, patient, courteous, and helpful to callers.

When handing a call off to level 2 supports, give the caller a reliable time estimate for follow-up and resolution.

Follow up with level 2 support to ensure the problem is being worked.

Follow up with callers to ensure problems are resolved to their satisfaction.

Following article IT Manager’s Role tell us more about the IT Manager’s responsibilities and their role in a business.

2.8 IT Manager’s Role

IT Manager’s position can be very challenging at times. It is very different degrees, which allows contact with a large portion of your business can directly affect the overall governance of organization, and it is a great experience to acquire. In addition, you need to increase your field of experience, they are forced to go to or follow the latest developments in technology so you have the required set of skills required by the business. This experience broadens network of contacts (Bill Holtsnider and Brian Jaffe, 2010).

Just as important as all that is, there is an additional advantage. Information Technology has taken the strategic value of your roles played by companies in the new economy in recent years. Information technology is now a back bone of US economy and many companies around the world. The 2008-2009 Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics: "Computer and mathematical science industry is expected to grow by 25% between 2006 and 2016. More than twice as fast as average for all occupations" (Bill Holtsnider and Brian Jaffe, 2010).

Report for IT managers says "employment of computer and information system managers is expected to grow 16% over the 2006-2016 decade, which is faster that the average for all occupations. New applications of technology in the workplace will continue to drive demand for workers, fuelling the need for more managers". Not only is your work interesting and rewarding, it is also very important, and demanded more and more. Dependence on technology is only increasing, and issues such as security and compliance makes it more visible across the organization (Bill Holtsnider and Brian Jaffe, 2010).

Corporations see this new world a challenging new world. Applications such as email, World, excel and handheld devices such as Blackberry are not unknown or difficult for many executives but some have little knowledge about more in depth technical issues if information technology and some don’t have at all. They think of information technology to be a power, but in the complex world where the rewards can be great and magical risks are scary awful. These leaders and their companies need professionals; both explain and perform in this new world. This is where Information Technology Manager comes (Bill Holtsnider and Brian Jaffe, 2010).

You can use your knowledge of technology, experience and interests directly benefit your business and the requirements of the loss. Together, you and your company give a strong association. Only your individual skills and passions may fade into mystical interests and expertise can build business models relevant to global economic decades in the past (Bill Holtsnider and Brian Jaffe, 2010).

The following article tells us how ITIL helps us focus on services strategy.

2.9 Focus on ITIL Services Strategy

Existence of Information technology is our customers, so be sure that you understand what your customers need and business results they want. Why do some of us think how to do it before they impact the business plan. The value must be created efficiently, effectively and economically, and then realized with the services and support delivered. (Anthony Or, 2011).

Creating value through Business Service Management (BSM), the foundation of BSM is managing Information Technology by business point of view is to build a positive relationship with partners, technology implementation, empowering people and alignment process. Putting good strategy in place and focusing on business rather than technology. You would be more successfully strategic part of an organisation as whole (Anthony Or, 2011).

As a service provider, main focus should be building a solid foundation for a long lasting relationship with customers. After establishing this relationship, Customers will most probably be find it easier to stay with your company than to move to another service provider, because of switching costs (Anthony Or, 2011).

More and more, working in the Information Technology field is increasingly less about technical competences and more integration. While over the last decades major player in most IT Departments were excellent developers, the main roles becoming increasingly full of those who can provide better integrate information available. Including Software development have moved towards this direction, with growth are the most competent people who can write creatively "glue" that builds on existing libraries, linked with external services, and offers a new experience in the weeks to take months or years to develop from scratch (Anthony Or, 2011).

As in this dissertation one of the questions is about customer knowledge, the following article has been reviewed to understand why knowledge is important in relations to Service desk is explained in more details.

2.10 Concept of Knowledge

Broadly speaking, "there are two types of knowledge: tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is that stored in the brain of a person and this type of knowledge can be called personal knowledge. Explicit knowledge is that contained in documents or other forms of storage other than the human brain". Type of knowledge which may be stored or embedded in products, processes, facilities, systems and services is called explicit knowledge. Tacit and explicit knowledge can be produced as a result innovations or interactions. May be outcome of alliances or relationships would penetrate the everyday organisations to operate and achieving their goals. Both tacit and explicit knowledge allow organizations to target and respond to new situations and new challenge (Filemon A. Uriarte, Jr., 2008).

Tacit knowledge is another word personal knowledge. This is stored in the minds of people. It is gained through experience and study. Through the process of interacting with others this type of knowledge is developed. It grows through experience of success and failure of trials practiced. (Filemon A. Uriarte, Jr., 2008).

Explicit knowledge is encoded. It is stored in databases, documents, emails, websites and similar. It is the knowledge which can easily be place available to others and shared or convey in form of systematic and formal languages. Explicit knowledge includes everything that can be coded, documented and archived away. (Filemon A. Uriarte, Jr., 2008).

2.11 Developments in IT Service Management

In recent years IT departments and IT services providers have had to deal with new challenges. The key challenges are internal restructuring of the IT Departments,

The main challenges are internal restructuring of the IT-Department, the importance of service orientation caused by increased market and customer orientation as well as the industrialisation in IT-Service management. As a result of the increasing focus on efficiency and performance, organizations recognize that the operation of IT is not their key competence. Hence the organizational structure of IT-Departments is changed from internal cost centres to market oriented service providers. Organizations have started to evaluate the added value and performance of their internal IT-Departments and benchmark them against market offers from external IT-Service providers. On the one hand, this follows in a changed position of the IT-Departments and IT-Service providers as well in a modified situation for managing IT-Services. On the other hand, this results in an increasing procurement of IT-Service via external markets for IT-Services (Aileen Cater-Steel (ed) , 2009).

To illustrate selected trends and developments in IT-Managementthis chapter shows the need for anew conceptof IT-Service quality management. The goal is to emphasize important developments in IT-Service management and show their impact on the IT-Service quality management (Aileen Cater-Steel (ed) , 2009).

According to the situation mentioned before, there is an increased market and customer orientation in the IT-Management sector. The different departments in an organization become customers of the IT-Department or an external service provider. As a result, the relationship between the several departments and the IT-Provider is similar to a partnership with external customers. Both parties work together on basis of defined service levels under real market conditions (Aileen Cater-Steel (ed) , 2009).

Therefore, market and customer orientation makes new demands on IT-Departments and IT-Service providers. They are forced to define products and services which are provided for the customers. The definition of IT-Services, the "product" of the IT-Department, becomes a key challenge for the IT-Management (Zarnekow & Brenner, 2004). The development and customization of suitable service packages will be a future challenge for service providers in general (Spath, van Husen, Meyer & Elze, 2007). "IT-Products" are a combination of different IT-Services which support business processes (Uebernickel, Bravo-Sanchez, Zarnekow & Brenner, 2006). From a service providers’ point of view, this product orientation implies that a portfolio of offered services has to be defined and regularly updated to the customers’ demands. From a service recipient point of view, the IT-Service portfolio has to be actively managed and continuously adapted to the changing business requirements and the business processes (Aileen Cater-Steel (ed) , 2009).

The increased focus on business value and performance results puts an increasing pressure for IT-Service providers to improve their efficiency. In this context, the term "industrialisation" describes the transformation of productivity methods from the industry sector to IT-Service management (Aileen Cater-Steel (ed) , 2009).

The ISO 20000 Standard suite provides a basis for a measurable quality standard for IT-Service management. It is the further development of the former British Standard (BS) 15000. Therefore the original orientation of the ISO 20000 standard was derived from the BS 15000. On the basis of the ISO 20000 standard organizations can be audited and certified to proof the compliance with this international standard. Furthermore the ISO 20000 fosters the implementation of an integrated process approach for the IT-Service management within an organization. The standard covers all aspects which are relevant to implement an optimal service management. Hereby the standard especially focuses on the service providers perspectives. ISO 20000 consists of two parts. The first part promotes the adoption of an integrated process approach to effectively deliver managed services to meet the business and customer requirements (ISO 20000). The second part is a code of practice and describes the best practices for service management within the scope of the first part (Aileen Cater-Steel (ed) , 2009).

The goal of the standard focuses on the provision of a common reference standard for all organizations which provides services to internal and/or external customers. Due to the great importance of the communication between service provider and service recipients one of the main targets of the standard is the definition of a common glossary for the service providers and their customers (Aileen Cater-Steel (ed) , 2009).

2.12 World Class IT Service Delivery

According to Peter Wheatcroft (2007) service is not something we can call a manufactured product and can’t be made pre-packaged quantity and sold at a discounted price. It is not something can be stolen or taken away from its owner or a creator. Hence service is misunderstood in IT delivery chain. "It is often confused with operations, derided as being the province of back room staff, and yet it accounts for the greatest proportion of IT customer complaints when delivery does not match expectations". We can say, may be customer expectation could be wrong, but actual part of IT Service Delivery cycle is settings such goals, service involves the customer in the transaction.

As compare to the past service delivery is more important than ever due to multiple technologies supporting each system and end users have also changed. Service provider is like a retail on the street now which provides service directly to the person. As only retailers know their customers well enough through service experience that the relationship between retailer and the person goes beyond what is just being bought from us. Should it effect managed IT service the same way (Peter Wheatcroft, 2007).

World Class or best practice terms are often used interchangeably to describe the attainment level of a particular IT organization or service offering. They don’t mean the same thing and their difference between these two terms must be understood. Peter Wheatcroft (2007) describes how these two terms have a relationship and can be used to govern IT service delivery. There are number of concepts and modules are introduced, well know examples starting with outside IT and concluding or merging with an accession model developed models for IT service departments (Peter Wheatcroft, 2007).

The issues and characteristics of organisations those have goal to achieve high level or outstanding service performance can be analysed and measure, and auther explains number of important models that do this are explained. Before exploring at the models it will be useful to know generally what is the definition of world class. For example, the Government Accountability Office in the USA defines world-class organizations as being ‘recognized as the best for at least one critical business process and are held as models for other organizations’. In contrast, The Bridgefield Group, which specializes in quality management and performance measurement systems, defines world class as being ‘a general term for a high level of competitive performance as defined by benchmarking and use of best practices’. And not least of all, Wikipedia – an online collaborative encyclopaedia – defines world class as ‘ranking amongst the foremost in the world; of an international standard of excellence; of the highest order’ (Peter Wheatcroft, 2007).

According to Peter Wheatcroft (2007) above explained world class definitions support performance as being based on the best practices, benchmarking and excellent delivery. And this will also be explained now and in later chapters of the book, that all aspects and factors are critical in order to explore a comparative and objective level of service quality.

The category in which we are most interested is World class. Organizations that continue their investment in effective processes continue to gain a benefit in terms of service performance. There are organisations which invests in their service delivery, to have a good relationship with their existing customers and taking on more customers and also winning awards. IT service delivery organisations should aspire in of that which can easily achieve this and it’s not impossible. "The service practices that lead to this level of performance can be grouped into five different result areas – service process, leadership, people, performance management and results". This type of formation or grouping is a common way of thinking about the actions those are due to be effectively delivered not on as IT service but other type of outputs too (Peter Wheatcroft, 2007).

2.13 Risk-aware Decision making for new IT Investments

According to Georges Ataya (2003) IT related decision are initially made in most organisations are some form of Return of Investment (ROI) or on the derived internal rate of return (RRT) to measure and evaluate the projects. We should not forget while allocating IT budget because most expenditures in IT are dominated by the operation and maintenance of the current application which are being used. Mostly business managers those who have to make an IT budget complain that they are paying too much for too little in return for the business benefits, but new investments retain small proportion of the global IT budget. The sixth edition of Corporate Information Strategy Management says that "few non-IT professionals understand that the cost of maintaining and managing the IT infrastructure often represented 80 percent or more of yearly IT budget, leaving few resources to be directed towards creating business value." While the traditional ROI-based approach neglects the alignment with business strategy and disregards project risk and intangible benefits, new methodologies are bringing additional elements to ROI analysis (Georges Ataya, 2003).

Successful projected related to technology require available skills, hardware, software or any existence of application software required to generate the anticipated value. Georges Ataya (2003) explores Contribution perspective as New, better and faster perspective development processes; development with new technologies. User perspectives are user interfaces for external users. Operational excellence is rapid development, web site development, data warehouse development and data mining development. Future orientation is based on training and education of IT staff to new and emerging technologies which can benefit the business. Decision making process and underlying planning and implementation process for IT into four critical dimensions that are assessed regularly and encapsulated throughout the organization are approached by the structure which Georges Ataya (2003) explores.

Upper level management and on people on the board are only few those who are advocated in this cost-cutting era. Due to recession and period of depression it’s hard to make such decisions to invest in existing operations, organisations rather investing in quick and fast revenue generating parts of the business due to business financial continuity issues to save their businesses. IT itself is another business of the enterprise with its own investment requirements. For longer terms IT should have investment scheduled for it and should determine the yearly costs of backlogs which were caused by lack of or unavailable funds for IT. When funds for IT are approved and accepted by management, IT should take full advantage of IT governance principles and reflect back on its own management process. When management is made aware of IT related information on a regular basis, it will be able to adequately perform corporate governance (Georges Ataya, 2003).

2.14 Focusing on Success in a Multi sourced Environment

Derek Lonsdale, Wendy Clark and Bina Udadia (2006) describe ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) as a best practice framework for service management which provides standard guidance for deployment in one dimensional service delivery environment. Due to complex nature of most organisations aren’t that simple and because of all that IT is outsourced among several providers. Each service provider has several service management tools, support models and techniques of their own. According to Derek Lonsdale, Wendy Clark and Bina Udadia (2006) "Attempting to deliver ITIL best practice in these complex environments without consideration for the specific needs of the organization often results in the expected benefit or "step change" in performance not being realized". This will benefit the customer who is receiving such services managed on ITIL fundamentals.

To gain early success will be easier to achieve by comprehensive and focused implementation and it can help organisation improve rapidly. This type of implementation needs to be built upon the foundation of clear priorities to be successful in a complex environment. These foundations should include a program of activities that focuses on processes that will deliver visible benefit, a design for the organisation which runs end to end service management, underpinned processes and a continuous drive for benefit delivery (Derek Lonsdale, Wendy Clark and Bina Udvadia, 2006).

Any organisation implementing ITIL based Managed service strategy should divide deployments into list of priority changes because all organisations have different priorities which depend on their current process maturity and business issues. To fit quick wins there are number of processes can be added, service level management, problem management, incident management and change management because they are clear candidates’ prioritization (Derek Lonsdale, Wendy Clark and Bina Udvadia, 2006).

To build better customer relationship by faster service restoration and minimum downtime and deliver most visible and immediate benefit are advantageous by prioritizing the processes. Further than that outcome of prioritizing these process can give organisations the vision to implement the rest of the ITIL deployment. (Derek Lonsdale, Wendy Clark and Bina Udvadia, 2006).

The advantage of prioritizing these processes is that they deliver the most visible and immediate benefit to the customer through reduced service disruption and faster service restoration, and, at the same time, assist in building better relationships with the business. In addition, outputs from these processes give organizations the information they need to prioritize the remaining pieces of their ITIL deployments. For example, the problem management team may discover that most of the problems are being caused by a lack of effective capacity management. Delivering these benefits early will assist with building ongoing commitment to the change program (Derek Lonsdale, Wendy Clark and Bina Udvadia, 2006).

Derek Lonsdale, Wendy Clark and Bina Udvadia, (2006) concluded in their search by finding that although the ITIL best practice framework guidelines are standard and easy set of guidelines, it can be modified and implemented according to the organisational need where this guideline will be introduced. Implementation can be successful when "the complexity of the environment by prioritizing a small but critical number of focus areas, establishing a clear and accountable service management organization, implementing consistent technology across the environment, and ensuring that the right performance information is available from the outset". Implementing ITIL in any organisation who wants to provide managed services can make a real difference after implementing successfully ITIL (Derek Lonsdale, Wendy Clark and Bina Udvadia, 2006).

2.15 Service Integration in a Multivendor Outsourced IT Environment

Imagine asking two teenagers to take out the garbage every Wednesday. Anyone who has kids knows that the garbage will not be taken out on Wednesday because the two teenagers will point at each other and say, "I thought he/she would do it." In an environment where IT is outsourced to multiple service providers, IT struggles with a similar challenge. For example, when one has a complex incident that cripples a major business aspect, the suppliers will inevitably point at each other and say "it’s their fault." (Jan Vromant, 2010)

Jan Vromant (2010) explores that even though there is a less control due to multi sourcing or outsourcing, why there is still an increase trend out there? Then the best answer would be " different IT service providers have different strengths and capabilities and cost structures. Often, service providers have strengths in specific industry segments (e.g., health care, automotive) or with particular products or technologies (e.g., SAP R/3, network management) and have built up the skills and the knowledge to provide strong value in that particular area" (Jan Vromant, 2010).

Jan Vromant (2010) also explains that due to having in house application support for the organisation under the same roof has weak infrastructure or operation support. "One of the reasons for this phenomenon could be that apps are more a people-focused endeavor (because most of the cost of apps is people) than ops, which results in different types of corporate culture. Labor arbitrage or "cost-shoring" (i.e., finding the best geographical location for the service) in most instances can be more appropriate for apps than for ops".

2.16 The Drive for Value Management

According to Jon Thorp (2008) every small business, medium business or a large enterprise in USA which is public or privately owned, whether profit or non profit organisations they all have to deliver value in return to their stakeholders or their owners. Past few years or so this has been the part of enterprises business discussion that how to achieve the value. The current interest in value management is driven by a number of factors including, poor track record of capturing value, changing nature of value with a greater contribution coming from intangibles, the increases complexity of value creation, resulting in great part from the pervasive use of IT and globalisation, increased transparency mostly driven by regulation such as the Clinger-Cohen and Sarbanes-Oxley act in US.

John Thorp (2008) explains the survey taken in 2006, 150 senior executives worldwide took part in the survey, which was conveyed by Economist Intelligence Unit in conjunction with Deloitte "1 found that that the notion of value creation and preservation through investments in business change is still usually treated as an implied principle, and not a conscious and pervasive tenet-guiding behaviour" (John Thorp, 2008).

As John Thorp (2008) summarises that Investment involving IT affected by such type of thinking, which changed the views that investment in IT is no longer just about the technology itself but this is the investment for an organisation as whole. The failure to realize business value from investments in IT enabled organizational change is a symptom of a wider malaise, one that presents managers with significant new challenges. Implementing any major change successfully is terrible track record. The success rates of business process reengineering and mergers and acquisitions.

2.17 Unlocking the Value of IT Investments

According to Georges Ataya, (2007) the importance of application of Information Technology from automation of work through information management to business information has been increased the number of different potential application of information technology. It’s not that only more things can be done with the help of automated application for information technology, they can be a great help in any type of complex environment to make work easier and faster. Due to the fact automated application can be very helpful for any type of complex business, organisations are not making IT investments but they are investing in Information Technology enabled change. Most organisations have plenty of legacy applications of technology installed which are quite large, they have to be maintained and updated according to the business need. With an increasing amount of potential valuable work to do an amount that consistently exceeds available resources, the challenge of selecting the right Information Technology business investment is becoming difficult because there are many issues, for example making choice, complexity, increase of risk, impact on business, more visibility and more management executive attention required.

Georges Ataya, (2007) describes the challenges faced by organisations are to make the choice of investment which have great benefits for business and which can also deliver the value to the business. Portfolio management is the power fool to be discussed is a big challenge for organisations. "One of the three processes of Val ITTM.1 Portfolio management has been applied to financial investments for decades, helping decision makers choose amongst increasingly numerous and complex options in a volatile environment". Core of effective governance is the combination of performance management and portfolio management.

Georges Ataya, (2007) explores the meaning of portfolio management and process management. A portfolio can contain any investment or asset that an organisation needs to manage and investments or assets which can be described on the basis of their type or characteristics. Criteria can be established to support the evaluation of investments or assets in each category based on what is of interest to management, including contribution to value, strategic and financial objectives, and degree of risk. How to manage the portfolio can be decided on the bases of criteria and performance of the portfolio including identification of actions to increase the overall value of the portfolio.

The focus of portfolio management in the initial release of Val IT is on new investment programmes. The programmes in the portfolio must be clearly defined, evaluated, prioritised, selected and managed actively throughout their full economic life cycle to optimise value for both individual programmes and the overall portfolio. This includes the proper allocation of resources, the management of risk, the early identification and correction of problem (including programme cancellation, if appropriate), and board-level programme portfolio oversight (Georges Ataya, 2007).

According to Georges Ataya (2007) Portfolio management has nourished it’s importance over the last few years and now often promoted as the solution to aligning business and IT and demonstrating the value of IT’s contribution. "Whilst programme portfolio management, as described in Val IT, certainly holds this promise, most current implementations of portfolio management relate to project portfolio management (PPM), which is generally more narrowly focused on IT projects" (Georges Ataya, 2007).

Georges Ataya (2007) explains that "While PPM is certainly useful in managing IT resources and costs and, to some extent, in addressing strategic alignment, portfolio management must be extended to encompass IT-enabled business investment programmes if organisations are to realise the potential of IT to contribute to business value". For IT governance and effective enterprise governance Portfolio Management can be used a very powerful tool. The link between Portfolio Management and enterprise specific investment strategy is also linked provided by this also initiatives and actions undertaken to execute strategy. Portfolio management also supports the identification, evaluation, selection, execution and monitoring of investment. Portfolio Management further supports the on-going monitoring and evaluation of organisational assets which includes the results of investments and the resources are required to create, maintain and improve the value of those assets.

2.18 Auditing IT Service Delivery

Serving customers should be the first priority of information technology. Information Technology is a tool to perform day to day business processes, such as transferring or receiving funds, goods or recruiting for its users in the operations of any business. Information Technology makes it easier to communicate via emails, instant messaging, enhance team work via available collaboration tolls, facilitating better decision making by delivering a variety of information through many delivery mechanisms. Information Technology also offering opportunities for newer business models leading to competitive advantage and value creation for any business (S.Anantha Sayana, 2005).

Since Information systems are business critical need of any type of organisation today, it should not only be secure but also available for its users to respond to make processes faster. Information Technology and business is never the same at all time, they both require change. "Change in either one alter the interface between the two and require a response and resolution". The final stage of an application is to deliver correct functioning of a large number of components. Complex nature of many information technology and business complexity results many issues with users, these issues should be tackled fast and systematically (S.Anantha Sayana, 2005).

S.Anantha Sayana (2005) explains prime information systems audit, which should be the prime focused of systems security. It is very important for IT be secure along with evaluating whether the integrity, availability and confidentiality of data through effective implementation of various controls. "An IS auditor needs to perform audits in the areas of general and environmental controls, application security, network security, system administration covering controls in operating systems and database systems, disaster recovery and business continuity, etc. However, security is not the only area of IS audit". Business benefits by investing in IT should be evaluated by an IS auditor (S.Anantha Sayana, 2005).

According to S.Anantha Sayana (2005) "IT service delivery is the aspect of information technology where the fact that IT exists for the business and its and users is clear". Information Technology brings the benefits to the business only when user is able to accomplish tasks easily and efficiently which then increases productivity. Information security auditor needs to approach both sides of the information technology, users and Information Technology Service delivery side. The value of information technology can be evaluated by conducting the survey of users, that how much users are satisfied by the information technology service provided.

2.19 The Hidden Values of IT Risk Management

Not many organisation are new to Risk Management, because every organisation has a threat to its value by definition and every organisation has to manage risk to avoid any type of threat. " The processes for lowering loss exposures to acceptable levels is something well understood across many industries and fields, most notably in financial risk management for banking and insurance companies (Timothy Abram, 2009).

Timothy Abram (2009) explains that security aspect is included, since "risk management provides the rationale and justification for virtually all information security initiatives." For example Information security as a knowledge domain and specialization exists primarily to manage risks related to information technology and its resources and risk is the proximate cause of IT security. There is a big relationship between traditional risk management methodology and information technology based risk. Risks are increasing due to the potential for financial efficiency gains that may be learned from better prioritized remediation efforts and from the potential for well-informed risk decision making (Timothy Abram, 2009).

Timothy Abram (2009) says this kind of risk management don’t only mean that we find the way to avoid any concern which involves potential risk of anything to an organisations, but it helps an organisation to take more risk to grow more. If the risks are properly managed and understood the value in return is sufficient. This is one of the hidden values that can be derived from a healthy IT risk management environment. "Whatever framework or processes are used, the important concept in risk management is a structured and organized identification, analysis, evaluation and deployment, followed by an effective remediation and monitoring program" (Timothy Abram, 2009).

Chapter 2.2: Conclusion/Summary

To summarise what’s been discusses in these article reviews:

2.2.1 What is Service Desk?

Service Desk is a single point of service but very different then old fashion helpdesk. Service desk is more managed and proactive kind of service rather than helpdesk which is reactive service. Service desk takes the owner ship of any incident until it is solved.

2.2.2 Success depends on the appropriate SLA

When SLAs are configured upon ITIL rules, achieving the project deadlines will be easy. And all the employees and engineers will know their role in the project.

2.2.3 How Information Technology helps Businesses

When senior executives know and realise IT as a driving force of their business instead of an overhead then they can generate the maximum value out of their business. Also IT if they understand that IT does not generate the revenue but it certainly maximises the ability and drives the business as whole towards its goals on a faster speed. Senior Managers should take leadership role to drive the IT department in right direction.

2.2.4 Reality of poorly managed IT

With the help of the survey, one can say poorly managed IT department can cost allot more than its specified budgets and can become an expensive overhead. Fully managed and controlled department can save and get maximum out of people and technology itself.

2.2.5 Importance of Customer experience

Happy customer means more positive feedback and this helps business drive towards the growth and be successful in the field. Customers will stay loyal if they keep receiving high class service. Positive feedback and word of mouth helps to expand business and take on more clients.

2.2.6 Service Management

Services are not easy to be characterised until they are being delivered.

2.2.7 Good Service Desk Practice

An organised service desk infrastructure is a good influence on the client to whom the service is delivered. Hierarchal structure can increase effectiveness and visibility of service desk, because service desk is the department where end user calls first when they have problem.

2.2.8 Challenges of being IT Manager

The position of IT Manager can be very challenging. It extremely varied in scope, allows you to come in contact with a large portion of your company, provides you with opportunities to directly affect the overall direction of your organisation, and is excellent professional experience to acquire. There are few definition for manager "assembling the resources to achieve a mutually agreed upon objective" and "getting things done through others people". A proper dictionary definition is the "authoritative control over the affairs of others". All three views are commonly held beliefs. The radical difference between the definitions is first two talk about collaboration (Mutually agreed upon and through"), whereas the last on defines management as "control," as always, flexibility is key.

2.2.9 Service level agreement (SLA) management

Information Technology has a function to commit to providing a level of service that defines various parameters such as uptime, response and resolution times for various problems reported. Service level agreement or agreements should be easy measurable. Service Desk should a in house built software or standard package to record all customers calls, tickets and their responses and resolution. To meet all the Service level agreement the reporting system or service desk call log software should be temper proof, which then will be very helpful in managing and meaningful reviews to meet the promised service to customers.

Service desk procedures for escalation and senior level experts help should always be documented in central database or document management system. Good knowledge management system or previous call records and their resolution will help resolve problem fast and be the trigger for many proactive actions.

2.2.10 Incident management and problem resolution

Every incident or outage of service is a lesson and it requires a well-designed process to learn from these incidents. It is very important to handle any type of incident or failure very calmly even in crises. Incident management process for any incident should always be recorded with its effects, impact on business, user/users, loss of business revenue and impact on regulatory compliance.

2.2.11 Outsourcing and IT Service Delivery

IT service delivery is a very important part any business whether it’s provided by the in house service desk or outsourced to a third party. If the IT department or part of it is outsourced then most of outsourcing contracts have stringent and tightly defined SLAs with incentives and penalties that aim to make the outsourcing deliver better service to the end users. If the part of IT is outsourced then everything should be made clear with internal and external IT departments about their responsibility in case of outage of different services. If and when in emergency or disaster, who supposed to be doing what to restore the services back to normal.

2.2.12 Configuration management and change management

What to manage is the first step of managing IT infrastructure in any organisation. Most of the organisations have an inventory of their IT infrastructure assets. Any type of changes in inventory, deletion, movement, redundant assets, adding new assets are to be addressed thro