Category: IT Management

The Helpdesk Model – What It Means to Put Helpdesk to Work and Improve

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 6 Comments

Have you considered the impact your IT helpdesk has on the business you support? Think about your company’s reliance on technology and IT applications— when service interruptions happen, they impact processes and cause business disruption. The IT Helpdesk is much more than answering the phone and helping users solve their IT problems. Helpdesk has a direct impact on running the business, providing quality customer services and ensuring business profitability. If you are implementing an IT helpdesk in your company or in the process of improving your existing one, this article is for you. First, let’s discuss the IT Helpdesk Model. The diagram model shows the eight components of the IT Helpdesk Model. Each is briefly described below.  

Eight Components of the IT Helpdesk Model 

  1. IT Helpdesk Organization – This component represents the managers, staff, functions and supporting groups that comprise the IT helpdesk organization.
  2. Enablers – Enablers are tangible and intangible components needed to operate the IT helpdesk. This includes technology, tools, communication channels and analytics. Other important enablers are the required competencies of the individual staff working at the helpdesk and the group’s combined capabilities. 
  3. Service Review Board – The  Service Review Board is the steering committee or sponsor of the IT helpdesk organization. The group is composed of key IT managers, business/customer representatives and (if necessary) external consultants. They are responsible for providing strategic guidance, support, resources, and feedback to the group. 
  4. Business / Customers – This represents the customers that receive the IT helpdesk services. Your customers are everyone in the company; not just everyone who has computers, but everyone who has access to one that uses it as part of his / her function. It is important for IT helpdesk to know its customers and be able to identify and segment them. 
  5. Mission – The mission statement is the declaration of purpose, values, direction and tactics. It governs how the IT helpdesk will run its service delivery to its customers and guide every interaction it has with the users. 
  6. Service Offer – Your service offer represents the scope of your services to your customers. The services that your IT helpdesk provide are determined by business or customer needs. A good service offer is composed of service elements that are manageable and provide the best value to the business. 
  7. Performance – It is critical for part of the IT helpdesk function to be tied up with performance measures.  Performance should be measured periodically if the service offers are attained in a satisfactory manner. This component represents performance indicators that have to be defined and tracked. Performance also includes how the IT Helpdesk receives and handles feedback from surveys and customer focus groups.  
  8. Continuous Improvement – This component is tied up with performance measures. Your IT helpdesk will have to adjust services regularly — as business changes and as your customers demand more. Continuous improvement includes working on actionable items from performance monitoring or data analysis. 

Five Ways to Improve Your IT Helpdesk

1. Understand your Purpose, Involve your Customers and Set the Right Expectations  – Understand what senior management and your internal customers expect. Have focus group discussions with business leaders and key customers. Listen to feedback—positive and negative. Understand their concerns and identify opportunities. Invite your key customers to join and participate in your Service Review Board. When you and your customers communicate and understand what your service offers are, it easier for you to keep them satisfied because you have set the right expectations for your services. 

2. Establish a Clear Mission Statement  – Your mission statement is your declaration of purpose and values. This will set the direction of the group on how to interact with customers. It governs every interaction that deals with a call, request or problem. Putting together a mission statement must be a collaborative process. Let key members of the helpdesk and internal stakeholders participate in putting together a mission statement. A sample mission statement could read, “Focus on the needs of the business and support the customer in making the best use of technology in business.”  A sample value statement would read, “We aim to minimize downtime by restoring service as fast as we can. We solve problems, not symptoms, and work to resolve the root causes.”

3. Develop Needed Competencies and Roles. – To have an effective helpdesk organization, there needs to be clearly defined roles and an effective way of performing them. The major competencies and roles within helpdesk are: stakeholders, problem solver or experts, data analyst, communicator, and the customer service liaison. Stakeholders are represented in the IT Helpdesk Model as the Service Review Board. This group is established to provide sponsorship, guidance and support to the IT helpdesk organization. Problem solver and experts are senior members (level two or higher) of the helpdesk whose task is to solve escalated problems and find solutions to recurring incidents. Data analysts consistently mine helpdesk databases for trend analysis. The Communicator is responsible for the continuous improvement of helpdesk communication and customer service competencies. They are also responsible for call quality assurance. Customer Service Liaisons are members of the helpdesk who manage customer relationship and gather feedback from the customer through surveys and focus group discussions. 

4. Develop Your Service Offer – Your service offer should be tied up with your mission, customer need, budget and internal capabilities. Focus on providing services that give the best value to the business. Eliminate non-value creating services from your portfolio. If you provide too many services on a broad range of domains, you are setting your helpdesk group up for failure. Avoid situations where your resources are thinly spread and customers with important needs are forced to wait while you attend to a service that does not create value. Services are manageable, supportive of the business needs, well defined and well understood. After defining your service offer, communicate and market services to your customers. Remember that the service offer needs to be adjusted on a regular basis in order cope with changes in business needs, budget and customer expectations. An example of service offers are: “Provide support between 6am to 7pm daily. Allow customer channels such as email, call, voice mail, chat, and intranet site. Provide consulting on software recommendations. Broadcast information about system availability and planned maintenance. etc.” 

5.Have a Culture of Continuous Improvement – Most existing IT Helpdesks have massive amounts of data at their disposal—yet fail to utilize it in any meaningful way. Running an IT Helpdesk means gathering a lot of data for the purpose of evaluating service performance and resolving problems. Use data effectively to discover valuable insights and evaluate performance versus set target and objectives. Use data to conduct trend analysis on recurring issues so as to implement proactive measures in reducing the number of calls and incidents. Have a culture of continuous improvement. Don’t settle for mediocre performance. Always challenge your IT Helpdesk to continuous improvement in every aspect of the service it provides.

Please share with us your experiences in implementing and managing your IT Helpdesk. What were the challenges and key learnings? You can also post your questions about the topic so that I and readers can respond to them. Thank you.

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Build Value Proposition That Improves IT Customer Experience In and Out

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 1 Comment

Refine Your Service Value Proposition

IT organizations are service organizations. They don’t become service leaders through sightless evolution. IT leaders must engage their counterpart business unit leaders (i.e., the heads of logistics, purchasing, etc.) to have a good grasp of their own departmental goals, plans and objectives. Understanding the strategy and goals of the business it serves is critical to the alignment of objectives. The IT organization can provide better service if it understands the objectives of internal customers.

Revisiting the IT value proposition during annual planning sessions is an important exercise for IT managers. This will help IT managers understand the real and softer elements that are the differentiators of IT services. For internal customers, Value Proposition is the collective services they receive upon investing in IT capabilities and services. We have to understand that it includes more than just the core IT services (equipments, applications, and connectivity), and even more than just quality— it also involves several softer variables that will differentiate the total service offering such as responsiveness, innovation, collaboration and commitment.

These are two perspectives representing the two words of the terminology “Value Proposition” itself— “Value” and “Proposition”. This is broken down into: 

  • Value (Internal Customer’s Perspective) = The benefits received by the business upon investment on IT capabilities and services. 
  • Proposition (IT’s Perspective as Service Provider) = The total offering to the customer in exchange for their investment. 

IT best practices such as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and IT Services Management (ITSM) ensure that IT is aligned with the goals of the business organization. IT’s challenge is beyond technology. Its challenge is to deliver services that enable the business to balance performance, quality, risk and cost. IT’s attention is shifting from discrete technology initiatives to optimizing the value of business services delivered by IT, driving positive business outcomes and improving customer experience. 

Commitment to the business’ end-customer

Although the IT organization’s direct customers are typically internal (the business units), IT is expected to play an important part in the ultimate value proposition— the value proposition to the customers of the business units (the end-customers). When I was an IT business process manager in the Philippines, we used to program appointments that will require IT personnel and managers to accompany Area Sales Managers on their sales visits with customers. These visits allowed us to experience the action from the frontline and engage our end-customers. At the time, we were implementing Internet and mobile applications to enhance customer service management. These personal meetings with end-customers allowed me to hear first-hand the affirmations, complaints and suggestions. That experience enriched our perspective and allowed us to improve and design better customer solutions for our commercial organization to sell and serve to our end-customer.

Do your information technology (IT) capabilities enhance the experience of your internal customers (business users) and external customers (customers of your internal customers)? Do IT managers throughout your organization recognize their responsibilities for effective customer relationship and business alignment? What’s it like to actually walk in your customers’ shoes?  Do you know what your customers actually experience? Simply put, do your IT capabilities achieve meaningful differentiation by enhancing customer experience, in and out? 

Photo courtesy of Ivy Remoreras Photography.

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Building an Excellent IT Services Culture

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 11 Comments

Why do your employees feel uncomfortable about being empowered? Why don’t they follow the instituted risk and change management processes? Why don’t they put customers first? The answers may lie in your control systems — and the fact that mediocrity is too easily accepted.

Whenever an IT organization excels in providing services to its customers, its customer service orientation is guaranteed to be deeply embedded into its culture.

Culture is one of the softer elements of an organization’s identity but it’s extremely important when you want your organization to improve its service delivery system.

Culture offers answers to some really difficult issues in IT services delivery, such as:

  • Why employees feel uncomfortable and somehow do not want to be empowered (Review your control systems — your controls might be too tight to encourage empowerment. You might also be surprised to find that making mistakes is severely punished.)
  • Why employees don’t follow the instituted risk and change management processes. (Check the extent to which anyone actually follows protocol.)
  • Why getting employees to put customers first is so complicated and why there are so many complaints about poor service. (Review what happens when employees fail repeatedly in tasks and have so many complaints against them—most likely nothing! Mediocrity is tolerated!)
  • Why critical IT problems are recurring. (Check approach to problem management. Most likely you are reactive in terms of issues resolution. You do not address the root causes of the problems. Do you have a culture of preparedness, contingency and proactive problem management?)
  • Why employee turnover is so high even though they are paid competitively well relative to market standards. (Check the extent of camaraderie, teamwork and cooperation. Review learning practices. Are employees mentored or coached by managers and leaders of the organizations?)

If you want to improve the IT service culture of your organization, you have to understand that it is not an overnight endeavor.

Organizations don’t create culture overnight. Culture develops. There is no instant formula for creating culture or else you will end up with an artificial one with a weak foundation. Such type of culture is not sustainable. You don’t create culture by merely creating or declaring mission statements and rules. You don’t create culture by simply implementing new applications and best practices copied from other successful IT organizations. Culture happens through consistent behavior over time embedded and encouraged by leaders.

What does an excellent IT services culture look like? Like any culture, it is a collection of service traits, and behaviors that get repeated over time and embedded in the organization’s subconsciousness. The values, behaviors or traits you need to nurture and develop in your team to improve your IT services culture are as follows:

1. Customer First – Internally and Externally. 

Fostering a “customer first” attitude means creating a work culture that values the customers. It needs to be applied internally and externally. Customer-friendly behavior should be encouraged. It is important for IT, at every level of the organization, to build a meaningful relationship with its customers. This practice will help IT to understand the requirements and needs of the business and allow them to align their services accordingly. Every interaction point — from frontline service desk personnel to managers handling customer engagements — should provide a consistent level of customer service.

This “customer first” focus must also be practiced at every unit of the group — and even between themselves. Customer service behavior should not only apply to the external customers of the organization. Each individual, department or function is interdependent. At any point in time, one could either be a supplier or a customer to the other. It is simple logic. If one part is a weak link, it will impact the service of the whole. If customer service behavior is practiced on a consistent basis, externally and internally, it becomes part of the IT group culture.

2. Collaboration and Teamwork

The best teams have a commitment to help each other. The culture of shared responsibility is all about teamwork and collaboration. Developing teamwork is about creating a group culture that values collaboration. With teamwork, no one completely owns an area of work or responsibility. It is shared by members of the team. Each member is encouraged to be involved and contribute to the attainment of the group objectives. In a group that has teamwork, members believe that working, planning and deciding is better done collaboratively.

3. Proactive Approach, Not Reactive

It is important to find or identify patterns and get to root causes of recurring issues. There has to be a strong drive to solve problems and stop recurring critical issues. In addition, teams need to prepare for critical incidents because these will happen. Problem management and disaster preparedness should be built into the IT culture. This is not an individual task. It should be managed collectively and involve all areas of IT.

4. Learning Organization 

Learning is the best way to create culture and transmit culture. IT must have a culture of continuous learning. Employees who are well trained take more ownership and have an active role in operations. Attitudes become more positive and people aim to do things better. Learning in an organization should start early. This means starting the moment you hire an employee. An on-boarding program is one of the best ways to prepare employees and cultivate the kind of traits and behaviors you expect from them. In organizations with a strong service culture, new hires — who are selected in part for their service skills — quickly find out that the organization is serious about customer service.

5. Creativity and Empowerment 

Creative people don’t accept standards as a given. They are obsessed with innovation and change. They are impatient for progress and will always look for ways and means to improve how things are done. For IT organizations to embed creativity and empowerment into their culture, IT leaders must learn to value negative results as well as positive ones. When you create something new, you don’t always succeed. The culture of encouraging creativity and empowerment will lead employees to be more collaborative, effective and innovative.

Being service oriented, or more specifically, being successful and excellent with providing services can’t be achieved swiftly. A service culture has many attributes that may be difficult to achieve. If you are trying to make your organization more customer-oriented, you need to assess what customer service traits are more prevalent and what needs more work. Creating a culture of service requires that you practice the service traits we covered earlier consistently in order to develop the attitudes and norms that will govern the behavior of all the members of the organization.

Photo courtesy of Ivy Remoreras Photography.

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Learning IT Organizations

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 3 Comments

We’ve all heard the saying that leading by example is one of the most powerful ways of leadership. But ironically, it’s often the most overlooked. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” Gandhi once said.

The best way to create culture is to transmit culture. The most obvious ways to transmit culture is through teaching and coaching. IT managers and staff look up to their senior leaders for directions.  IT leaders should not limit their engagement with their employees with discussions about operation work. They should engage their subordinates in other meaningful ways so as to help them develop themselves.

The best IT teams must have a culture of continuous learning.  In IT organizations, developing employees is not optional, it is a necessity. Development is necessary to acquire the skills and learn the knowledge needed to keep up with new technology and processes in order to achieve business goals. Additionally, development programs in volatile and competitive organizations like IT are important in attracting and retaining employees. 

Information Technology needs future-oriented leaders. Arguably, it is the most unpredictable and most innovative area of the company. If the CIO is not forward-looking, IT will most likely neither be as competitive nor at par with competitors who are relentlessly pursuing innovation. IT leaders are fascinated about the future. They are relentless about change and impatient for progress. CIOs should always be looking forward to new technology and practices that are developing, searching for new processes, tools and methodologies and experimenting how it will make sense in business in the future.  

  • How many types of developmental conversations occur in your organization?
  • How can you create a culture of learning that goes beyond traditional classroom training?
  • In what ways do your communication tools and practices help build your team’s skills for participating in conversations about goals, changes, and barriers they face?

Photo coutesy of Ivy Remoreras Photography.

Transforming the IT Customer Experience: Helpdesk and Field Support (a story…)

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 3 Comments

Imagine crashing your PC after having a virus issue. You need to call the IT helpdesk. You pick up the phone and call the 1-800 hotline number. Your expectations of the quality of IT’s response time is so low that you’ll settle for a day or two without a workstation. You imagine that perhaps you lost all your files and important documents in your computer. Service? Forget it.  Your previous experiences with the IT helpdesk were terrible, if a service agent answers your call after 5 minutes waiting on call queue, it would be a small miracle. 

IT Helpdesk

Instead— you must be dreaming— your call gets picked up after two rings and a friendly service agent greets you with, “Good morning ,sir.  My name is Kyra, how are you? How can I be of service to you today?” You are surprised but refreshed with the friendliness of the agent’s greeting. It’s unusual and has never been the case before — even during the last time you called them a month ago. You reply, “I’m good, thank you. I have a problem with my desktop. When I started it this morning, I got a blue screen after a couple of minutes. I don’t know what’s wrong. I think it might be a virus or something. It was working last Friday when I left.”  The agent quickly and confidently replies, “Actually sir, we have a virus alert this morning that affected several users. We already sent a notice by email, and of course you didn’t receive it. We were about to call you but you beat us to that. We know the root cause of the problem for certain because of the new proactive monitoring tool that we recently implemented. Your desktop is one of those affected because you run one of our old desktop models with an older OS version on it. That made your computer more vulnerable to this new virus attack.” You are astonished with the level of information the service agent has already but still you have reservations as to whether this will impact the resolution time. Sure, she is friendly and she knows what’s going on but can she solve it?

Then you ask, “Then what should we do? It sounds like I won’t be able to use my computer today or for a couple of days perhaps?”  Kyra replies confidently, “No sir, definitely not. We won’t allow that. As a matter of fact, our field-support team members are on their way to the offices of the users affected. They are making rounds as we speak.  The person assigned to assist you is scheduled to arrive at 10:00 am. I think he’ll be there in minutes.”

Communication of the Service Deal

Kyra continues, “In the meantime, if you have a minute of your time to spare, I would be glad to tell you our new service mission statement. Do you have some time, sir?” You don’t have a workstation anyway so surely you have time and this wonderful service agent deserves a few extra minutes. You reply willingly, “Yes of course. I noticed a big difference in your over-all service today so far and I am pleasantly surprised. I’d be glad to hear about your new mission statement.” Kyra continued, “Thank you, sir. I am proud to say that our management and the whole IT organization came up with a common objective of improving our overall service delivery. Particularly, our technical support department which includes first level support agents, field-support service personnel and second level specialists, have the objective of providing our customers the fastest, high quality, friendly and effective IT support.”

“Sir, do you have any questions about our new mission?”  You decide that it is good for IT to communicate its service offer and you feel special to be treated an important customer. You say, “No questions, Kyra, and congratulations. I’m really happy about your service.  This is not what I expected. You guys really improved your service in such a short time. I’m impressed. Oh wait, I think the field support is here already. I have to go.” Kyra concludes, “Okay, sir, I will call you back after the service call to check if everything is fine. I know JB will take good care of you. Thank you and please don’t hesitate to call us again if you need anything.”

IT Field Support

Then as the field support agent comes into you office, he greets you warmly, “Good morning, sir. My name is John Bryan but you can call me JB. I am here to help you with your Desktop and I want to tell you about the two choices.” “Choices?”, you wonder incredulously. Now he is going to tell you the bad news that he needs to pull out your desktop for one day. Or maybe you get a loaner — something you’ve experienced before. At that time, you were given an incredibly old PC that was so slow you couldn’t even use it. You brace yourself for the bad news but instead he says.” I brought you a new computer. It’s a laptop. I need two hours to set it up fully with all your programs and files in it, or I can try fixing your virus problem for 30 minutes so you can work and then I can set up your new laptop for delivery next week.  What do you think? ” Already impressed with the customer experience so far, you think that two hours doesn’t seem so bad. Plus, you are getting a new laptop when you were expecting at least a day of no computer.  You reply, “OK, get on with the setup of the new one. I’ll wait here.” John Bryan says, “Good choice, sir. I’m sure you’ll be pleased with this new one. And finally sir, I can give you a general overview of the many capabilities of your new laptop and programs while we wait for the installations and file transfer to finish, or I could keep my mouth shut. What would you prefer?” 

After everything was done, you realize that not only has the IT support services improved but you also just had a transforming experience. Talk about exceeding expectations! 

I believe IT leaders have the power to embed a strong customer service culture through their influence…but culture embedding is not easy…organizations don’t create culture, it is an outcome of consistent behavior (demanded or influenced by leadership). If you provide the best customer service always, it becomes your culture. We try to make positive stories like these everyday… not always the case of course, what I am painting is the perfect world of IT support services, but this is what we aspire for.

Photo courtesy of Ivy Remoreras Photography.

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How IT Leaders Transmit and Embed Culture

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 3 Comments

The group’s culture provides structure and meaning to its members—in many ways it controls members’ interactions with one another and with external parties.  In this post, this concept is applied in the Information Technology (IT) group setting. The IT group culture can influence the success of the IT organization. Culture is socially constructed through leaders that embed their beliefs, values and assumptions upon the group that it leads. The culture of any IT organization is formulated and impacted by several variables. The strongest and the most obvious is the influence of its leader. According to E. H. Schein, leader’s primary embedding mechanism is seen in how they pay attention to, measure and control aspects of organization’s operations and decision making. They initiate great conversations that tie cultural norms to the organization’s goals. If the current culture is not aligned with the new realities, leaders need to be the catalyst to create new understanding and help individuals select new behaviors and, eventually, beliefs. Leaders must also define, clarify and reinforce understanding of the actions and beliefs that build the desired culture. 

To examine how IT leaders influence the IT organizational culture and IT branding let’s use some of E. H. Schein primary embedding mechanisms and apply it in the IT perspective. Each one comes with a set of questions you can use to assess the impact of such embedding mechanism in your IT organization right now: 

What Leaders Pay Attention To, Measure, and Control on a Regular Basis  

Although performance measures presented in the leader’s reporting dashboard change from time to time, most of the leaders that I know only pay attention to a small set of key performance indicators. IT leaders rely on a subset of key measures that they believe is the best indicator of the overall performance of the organization. As an IT manager, you know what your CIO is looking at and controlling most of time. Your CIO gets your attention and tracks certain aspects of operations based on these key performance indicators. In some instances, the CIO will try to drill down and find more information about a perceived problem and base his request for action on this. The performance measures that IT leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis dictate the importance given by the organization to a service, a problem or a project. 

It is but a natural tendency for managers, staff and different groups within IT to keep track of the performance measures that IT leaders are more attentive to. More likely, these people discuss these controls in daily IT operations meetings. Some will even set alarms so as to act swiftly on incidents before they become major problems. Performance measures and controls are powerful mechanisms that IT leaders use to forge a working culture based on what they think is important. How current are your departmental metrics? Do they measure against your current organizational objectives? Do they reflect the coming changes and help prepare your team for new ways of working? 

How Leaders React to Critical Incidents and Organizational Crises  

Companies in this day and age rely on an integrated set of digitized platforms and infrastructure to run and manage its business operations. When a critical IT incident occurs, it often impacts mission-critical systems and processes that affect business operations. These days, it is not hard to imagine how something like this can directly impair the ability of the company to serve its customers. These kinds of problems could unfavorably hurt the company’s profits and reputation in the short term. When a major IT incident disrupts most critical processes of the company, the credibility and reputation of the IT organization is heavily dependent on their perceived preparedness and responses during the situation. The CIO is at the forefront of disaster recovery measures and business continuity management and continues to work hand-in-hand with business managers. For mature IT groups, the planning, work and infrastructure that that is used to run disaster and business continuity situations are completed way before major incidents occur. 

Business continuity and disaster recovery is part of an organizational learning process. In the wake of a crisis, IT leaders adopt a learning orientation and use prior experience to develop new routines and behaviors that ultimately change the way the organization prepares and responds to crisis. The best leaders recognize this and are purposeful and skillful in finding the learning opportunities inherent in every crisis situation. Is your organization proactive about problem management, disaster recovery, and business continuity preparedness? What can you do to better build your team’s capabilities to manage critical incidents and crisis situations?   

How Leaders Allocate Resources

IT leaders have control on the allocation of resources in the organization. This applies to operational and projects resource assignments. The CIO controls the budget allocation to key projects, resource assignment to operations areas, and the time IT members spend on certain initiatives. On the other hand, the CIO also controls how and where to slash resources during budget optimization. How leaders allocate the resources of the organization creates a natural signal to its members about their priorities and what they think creates more value to the company. His or her interpretation of the business strategy and the expectations of the company’s shareholders impact the leader’s decision making process. Resources mean money and time. Therefore, when the CIO decides on the operating and capital budget portfolio allotment, this provides managers an indication of where in the organization best efforts and priorities are expected.

Another strong indication of the CIO’s priorities can be observed on how he spends time. To better understand the job of the CIO, Peter Weill, MIT profession and co-author of the book IT Savvy, examined how CIOs allocate their time. CIOs allocate time in four major areas: managing IT Services, working with non-IT colleagues, working with customers, and managing enterprise processes. Time allocation varies a lot because of individual management style but in most cases, where the CIO spends the most time sends a strong message. As an IT leader, examine how you spend your time. How do you think it impacts the desired cultural values of your organization? In what ways should you change your managerial regimens to better present, explain, and reinforce the desired culture?

Deliberate Role Modeling, Teaching, and Coaching

We all naturally know that leading by example is one of the most powerful ways of leadership, but ironically it’s often the most overlooked. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” The best way to create culture is to transmit culture. I think the most obvious ways to transmit culture is through teaching and coaching. IT managers and staff look up to their senior leaders for directions.  Leaders should be engaged with IT operations but their engagement in it should not be limited to supervising and running operations but also guiding, teaching and coaching managers.

Information Technology needs future-oriented leaders. Arguably, it is the most unpredictable and fast innovating area of the company. If the CIO is not forward looking, it can’t provide the business with a platform to continue to be competitive and at par with competitors who are relentlessly pursuing innovation. IT leaders are fascinated about the future. They are relentless about change and impatient for progress. CIOs are always looking forward to new technology and practices that are developing, looking for ways of plotting a course of new processes, tools and methodologies and experimenting how it will make sense in business in the future. How many types of developmental conversations occur in your organization? How can you create a culture of learning that goes beyond traditional classroom training? In what ways do your communication tools and practices help build your team’s skills for participating in conversations about goals, changes, and barriers they face? What can you do to better build your team’s capabilities for participating in transformative conversations? Is learning embraced at all levels?

The values and priorities of the IT leader- may it be the CIO, CTO, IT VP or IT Director— are reflected in the culture of the information technology (IT) organization. This is true also for other organizations, big or small, that has its members working together for some time. A positive organizational culture reinforces the core beliefs and behaviors that a leader desires while weakening the values and actions the leader rejects (Kaufman 2002). A negative culture becomes toxic, poisoning the life of the organization and hindering any future potential for growth. Obviously, there is an inevitable bridge joining organizational culture and the level of success it enjoys (Peters and Waterman 1982).

Photo courtesy of Ivy Remoreras Photography.

Understanding IT’s Value in Organizational Transformation

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 7 Comments

Do you spend a significant amount of time measuring performance and looking for ways to improve your service? When you delve into that process of evaluating your effectiveness and efficiency of service, you are, in fact, evaluating your value. Typically, big companies invest one percent to four percent of revenue in IT. This investment is usually spent on integrated digitized platform implementations, continuous innovations, and day-to-day IT operations. Businesses must see the value and return of these investments; otherwise, they won’t put their money in it. What are businesses doing with all that hardware and software IT is providing?

Andrew McAfee is a principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business in the MIT Sloan School of Management. In one of his articles for the Harvard Business Review entitled IT’s Three Key Organizational Transformations, he outlined what he thinks are main organizational transformations that IT provides the businesses. He wrote that companies in all industries are using Information Technology to accomplish three broad and deep transformations: they’re becoming more scientific, more orchestrated, and more self-organizing.

Run Scientific Methods 

Andrew McAfee mentioned the need for making the company more scientific. He meant that companies are able to use advanced scientific methods using new technology. “Computers, of course, are amazing tools for science” he wrote, “they can gather huge amounts of data, conduct sophisticated analyses of it in the blink of an eye, run elaborate simulations, and serve as experimental testbeds.”

I attended the most recent SAPPHIRE conference hosted by the German software giant SAP in Orlando, Florida. SAP presented its newest innovation on In-Memory computing. Co-founder of SAP, Hasso Plattner, declared that by using In-Memory Computing technology, companies can now store data of the whole enterprise in memory. This technology will increase the computing and processing speed of enterprise applications and will give rise to next generation business analytics. You can just imagine the type of scientific analysis companies can run with such high speed databases.

Orchestrating End-to-End Business Processes 

In this article, McAfee defined orchestration as designing how work will be done, and then assuring that it is actually executed as designed. Once re-engineered processes gets embedded in ERP and other enterprise systems it becomes much easier to ensure compliance. He gave an example to illustrate his point saying that applications like— CRM, sales force automation, supply chain management, procurement, and so on have brought tight orchestration to every part of the company, and pushed it down to almost microscopic levels.

One of IT’s major roles in most big firms is to implement and run digitized platforms. It is usually anchored on a major piece of purchased enterprise resource planning software- such as SAP and Oracle. Software companies are moving quickly on innovating applications to keep up with business demands. The unforgiving global economy brokers no excuse. Business expects IT to provide solutions that help them to stay competitive and in position for growth.

Enable Self-Organization 

“Self-organization, the most recent IT-fueled transformation”, McAfee wrote, “is the exact opposite of orchestration. It is employing technology to let people interact as they wish, with few or no workflows, rules, or hierarchy, and then harvesting the good results that emerge.” The paradigm of self organization has exploded in this part of the decade. In some ways, it started outside the confines of enterprises. There are over a billion users of social media sites on the Internet. Between Facebook and Twitter alone there are more than to 500 million unique user accounts. Companies, with the help of IT organization, have stepped up to leverage these new social tools to enable self organization teams in the business with the objective of encouraging more collaboration, information sharing and innovation.

How does your IT contribute to these key organizational transformations in your company? Does the business you serve view you as a value creator and partner? What’s your value proposition?

Three Reasons Why You Need a Project Management Office (PMO)

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 11 Comments

A lot of technology and application specialists who used to spearhead management of IT projects from beginning to end see project managers as competition. This becomes a source of disempowerment – the single biggest hurdle, in terms of organizational transformation in IT – when IT leaders start to introduce a Project Management Office (PMO) group. My point of view is completely the opposite. If there are enough project management resources, I would rather have PMO support all my projects. Here are the top three reasons why IT needs a PMO group: 

Bring More Bang for Your Buck 

A number of IT professionals are seeing increased budget and head-count reductions as more large business decision-makers turn to cost-cutting measures. Because of this, projects are watched very intimately by IT leaders – reining in projects more closely than ever. This challenge has lead IT to turn to project management offices (PMOs) as an approach to boost IT efficiency, optimize cost, and deliver projects on time and in full. We have to bear in mind, however, that establishing a PMO team is not a short term strategy for lowering costs. Numerous studies have indicated that the longer companies have been operating PMO, the better the results in terms of accomplishing project goals.

Standardize Project Management Practices 

For large corporations, scores of projects happen at the same time and more often, it is just too hard for the CIO to keep track of them. This is where PMO provides its biggest contribution to IT. PMO introduces economies of repetition in the execution of projects and makes it easier for the CIO to track progress and results. It is the job of the project management office to make sure that the projects follow the established project management standards. The PMO group is responsible for defining and maintaining the standards of processes related to project management. It is the source of documentation, guidance and metrics on the practice of project management and execution.

Facilitate IT Portfolio Management 

The implementation of a PMO group is a stepping stone to IT portfolio management. I have reiterated this several times but I think it is important to note that progression from project management to portfolio management is intertwined with the maturity of the IT organization. If the organization doesn’t have a strong project management discipline and Project Management Office, it is difficult to even imagine how IT portfolio management can be achieved. PMO should have a staff of program managers who can manage multiple projects that are related – such as infrastructure technologies, desktop applications, processes, business model implementation and so on – and allocate investments and resources accordingly. IT Portfolio Management is focused on investments and business results as compared to the focal point of Project Management which is project deliverables. This will bring IT (and the business) double bang for its buck!

Someone who has experienced working with an effective project management office surely can give more than measly three reasons – but to me the three that I have just mentioned are the most essential. There is no uniform recipe to success when establishing a Project Management Office (PMO). PMO is not a quick-fix solution only created to deliver immediate savings. It is an important component of the organizational maturity of an IT organization. It is important that the PMO structure is closely aligned to the team’s culture. A final note:  Projects exist in virtually all areas of the company – the  PMO practice can also be implemented there. In some companies, IT’s project management office provides support and internal consulting to other departments.

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Promise, Practice, People and Performance- Four Key Components of IT Branding (Branding IT Organizations Part 4)

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 5 Comments

IT branding is the process of building and improving the IT brand identity. This identity is shared by employees and groups that control the way they interact with each other, with stakeholders and with internal customers. It is a powerful tool in transforming the IT group into people who perform calculated, yet seemingly spontaneous, service delivery in the best interests of its internal customers. 

This is part four of my series on IT branding. We have covered several perspectives on IT branding in the first three articles of this series. Part 1 talked about branding in general and how IT branding is linked to the Process Culture Maturity. In part two, the concept of IT branding was defined and how it was related to IT team culture. Part three talked about high quality IT service delivery as the best brand identity. 

This post will delve more into the subject of IT branding, understand its key components and examine how it shapes the IT organization. The four key components of the IT brand, the four Ps — Promise, Practice, People and Performance, will be defined. These can be seen in the diagram below: 

Promise 

One establishes the IT brand by building trust in a promise about what the company does, what it stands for, what its vision is, and what added business value it can provide the internal customers and stakeholders. This is represented through the established IT vision and mission statement, customer value proposition and service offers. This promise must be developed by IT top management and its sponsors through extensive analysis of internal and external environment, interviews, and research. The Promise component of the IT branding process is achieved through vital scoping, visioning and strategic planning.   

Practice 

After writing the organization’s promise, the next step is to build the engine that will enable service delivery. This is the IT Practice – comprised of IT operating model, mode of service delivery and various other methodologies. It ensures that IT teams achieve optimum results and performance. It will define the discipline in which IT systems, operations, projects and evolution will be managed. However, this discipline should not be constrained to a particular use of a vendor’s product; rather, it should focus on providing a framework to structure IT related activities and the interaction of IT personnel with business customers and users. 

People 

The most important element of the IT brand is the People component. Everyone in IT must be in sync. For new team members, this is achieved through an adequate on-boarding process. For existing employees, ongoing organizational development and engagement initiatives will work. Communication is critical in this aspect. Top management must fully engage employees. It starts by communicating the Promise (IT mission and vision, strategy) and Practice (IT operating model and methodologies).  Each team member must know his role and value in the overall service delivery system. It is important to note that the internal perception of the IT brand are affected by the IT team members’ behavior, and that one must therefore shape the IT team culture in ways that encourage IT brand-committed actions on the part of all IT employees. 

Performance 

As discussed in part three of my articles on IT branding—what is central to IT branding is the relentless pursuit of quality IT services. Organizations build its IT brand by living up to its promise. IT teams strengthen its IT brand by relentlessly improving its IT brand promise. The surest way to do this is improving performance. IT managers must define key performance indicators to monitor performance against objectives. Measuring the success of IT branding initiatives is challenging; however, it is essential that every effort be made to measure results versus targets set forth. 

A Final Note: 

One’s perception of the IT service is often reduced to a phone conversation with a helpdesk service agent. IT branding depends on each and every individual working in the IT organization—the “People”—from the top, the CIO to middle IT managers then to the frontline helpdesk service agents. It is important that all IT personnel are in sync because the service brand is all about them. It is strengthened by the established “Promise” and “Practices” that enables IT organization to deliver with high “Performance”.

Facets of High Quality IT Services (Branding IT Organization Part 3)

~ Glenn Remoreras ~ 4 Comments

In Part 1 of this series I talked about branding in general and how IT branding is linked to the Process Culture maturity of an IT organization. In Part 2, I listed the different rewards IT organizations can derive directly or indirectly from having a strong IT brand. I also defined the concept of IT Brand Identity and IT Branding. 

  • IT Brand Identity marks the tangible representation of your IT brand. This representation can be in different forms – your mission and vision, your service offers, culture and style.
  • IT Branding is the process of building and improving IT brand identity.  This identity or culture is shared by employees and groups that control the way you interact with each other and with stakeholders outside of t he company.  

I derived the idea of associating quality of IT service delivery and IT branding from the opinion shared to me by William Gearhart. Bill is the VP of Information Technology of the organization I work with. Bill’s comment was as follows: 

“Critical to the success of any company or its branding is the business model and the success of delivering it hourly, daily, weekly, etc. You can brand any identity but it is the delivery and focus of the team that moves you up the ladder of respect within an organization.” 

Bill goes on to say: 

“I believe you establish the partnership and respect, apply your brand and then focus on assuring your service delivery and processes move forward with the organization(s) you are supporting and enabling.” 

The relentless pursuit of high quality IT services is central to IT branding. It is the factory that creates meaningful stories in the hearts and minds of our internal customers. These stories ultimately shape the perception of your internal customers – thus, strengthening your IT brand identity. High quality IT service is the best IT brand identity. For a service organization like IT, the surest way to create trust is consistency in the delivery of services. 

Facets of Quality in IT Services 

Quality is the best problem solver. IT organizations that consciously pursue quality in all its services take a proactive approach in problem management. This pursuit guides IT organizations on which problems to solve first and which opportunity to seize. Problem management practices are essential in this effort. First of all, problem management should be proactive. It should be focused on studying trends in order to reduce recurring issues and ensure long-term solutions by addressing root causes. Reducing IT incidents directly helps in improving customer or end-user experience in using IT services.   

Quality is the best customer relationship. High quality in IT services is the silent salesman. Consistency in IT service delivery will create good perceptions and a positive experience for internal customers. I think that a high level of quality enables IT to function as a business partner of its customers. Somehow it is the same as selling a product in the market. No matter how much you spend in advertising and promotions, if the product is questionable and does not have good quality, it will be difficult to sell. It is important for IT to focus on delivering high quality products and services right the first time. This is done through effective change management and high quality implementations. 

Quality is your best identity. IT branding and quality of IT services delivery are two sides of the same coin, in that high quality IT services creates a good IT brand identity. The level of quality in your company’s IT services determines how your organization is perceived by your partners and internal customers. It is important for IT managers to understand that the organization establishes its brand by building trust. The best way to create trust is consistency in providing high quality services.   

A Final Note: 

One can define quality in many different ways depending on the point of view. However, quality in the perspective of a service organization such as IT is defined entirely by the customers. The customers’ perception is reality. Quality is based on the customer’s assessment of his or her entire customer experience which is the consolidated evaluation of the organization’s different touch points. Again, I believe that the persistent pursuit of high quality IT services is central to IT branding. High quality IT service is the best IT brand identity. For a service organization like IT, the surest way to create trust is consistency in the delivery of services.

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