Powerful and Practical Tools for Service Desk Quality Improvements and Cost Savings Kirk Holmes President, Holmes and Associates, Inc. kirk@holmesinc.net http://www.holmesinc.net
Objectives and Agenda of this Presentation Objective: Keep it Real!! Explain Tips, guidance simple, tangible take-away s For non-lss experts Change the way you approach IT Agenda LSS Case study
About Kirk Holmes 30 year management, technology, & strategy consultant Selected as 2011 and 2012 Examiner for Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award First General Manager for Broadband Internet within Comcast Advisory Board member for Enterprise SPICE (part of ISO 15504) Education: MIT B.S. Electrical Engineering; Stanford MBA National Capital Area LIG 4 Years, itsmf USA Board of Directors Portfolios included Publications, Bus Dev, Treasurer, Knowledge Management (Managed USA launch of ITIL Version 3) One of original 23 founding members in 2003 LIG President from 2006 2009 (grew to largest LIG in world)
About Holmes and Associates, Inc. Executive advisory service and transformational consulting IT Service Management Excellence / ITIL Operational performance improvement Business Transformation (culture, organizational change management, organizational design) Service Solutions Clients have included IRS, NIH, Army, Time Warner, Comcast, State of Montana, and larger Gov t contractors
Biggest Challenges? Declining budgets Increasing customer demands Competition and outsourcing Fast technology change 5
IT Tends to Focus on the Wrong Things Change Is Needed: TRANSFORMATIONAL 10% MODERNIZATION 20% STEADY STATE/PRODUCTION 70% Data from a Federal GAO budgeting class 6
CASE STUDY: Service Desk Faced Growth Pains Call Volume THE BIGGEST CUSTOMER CONCERN: Resolution of escalated user issues sometimes took as long as 180 days or more
Death by Daily KPIs: Not All Metrics are Actionable DAILY INCOMING VOLUME All Customer Interactions (Incidents and Service Requests) AVERAGE HANDLE TIME HOURLY UTILIZATION HOURLY ABANDONMENT RATES
Improvements Before LSS IT Infrastructure Library regarding planned changes? nt Intent 4 Is the business need for a Service Desk clearly identified and understood? N The need for Help Des management team but between Gov't and Co not clear about combin Baldrige National Quality Award (Organizational Maturity) Leadership Customer Satisfaction People Process Information and Analysis Planning 7 Has the purpose and benefits of the Service Desk been disseminated within the organization? 8 Has an education and/or training program been conducted for customers and users in the use of the Service Desk and its benefits pability 11 Does the Service Desk provide the customer/user with i f ti i il bilit i id t b N N N Purpose and benefits o While there is general effort needed to educa benefits Does not follow-up on h dl h t t Benchmarks Help Desk Institute (HDI) reference Lower Cost/call Lower Average Handle Time Improved Service Levels but still no prevention of sporadic high-mttr tickets
Some Help from IT Service Management and ITIL ITIL is just one tool in the ITSM toolkit Also COBIT (audits), ISO standards, CMMI, project management, security guidelines Information Technology Infrastructure Library The most comprehensive set of guidelines for IT Service Management in the world ITIL is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries 10
Case Study Focus: Help Desk Ticket Escalation
What do IT Best Practices Say? Are ITIL guidelines enough? Escalate from Tier 2 to Tier 3 when the incident will need deeper technical knowledge or the second-level group has not been able to resolve the incident within agreed target times Hierarchic escalation is also used so that senior managers are aware and can be prepared and take any necessary action
Getting the IT People to Ask the Right Questions If we are doing ITIL, does that mean we are doing well? Exactly when is executive intervention needed? Is it getting better yet?
What is Lean Six Sigma? Lean Reduce Waste And Complexity Reduce Cost and Time Six Sigma Count Duration Improve Mean and Reduce Variation Improve Quality Meet Customer Needs
DMAIC Methodology Overview 15
Case Study LSS Tools Supported by a Master Black Belt mentor and facilitator Pareto Charts Value Stream Mapping Cause & Effect Diagrams Frequency Plots (Histograms) Scatter Plots Control Charts (SPC)
CASE STUDY: Define Phase Problem: Customers are experiencing delays in the resolution of their issues that can sometimes exceed 180 days from date of receipt Problem/Goal Statement Goal: The goal of the project is to achieve a 90% reduction in the number of improperly escalated Service Desk incidents Business Impact Statement The project will improve the capability to manage all tickets escalated from Tier I to Tier III and back to the user through final resolution by reducing the ticket processing times by 95% for all escalated tickets. 17
TIP: Started with Tie-In to Balanced Scorecard (BSC) Financial Business process Customer Workforce Financial Metrics Financial Goals MEET FINANCIAL AND GROWTH TARGETS Measures Description How Measured Baseline Targets Nov Dec YTD Current Period Analysis YTD Analysis Increase Customer Cost Efficiencies Cost per Contact, normalized Fees charged per contact Total monthly cost divided by total number of contacts handled $5.98 /contact <$3.50 /contact $4.61 $4.90 $5.35 Increase Customer Cost Efficiencies Cost per User, normalized Fees charged per user Total monthly cost billed (total labor plus direct fees) divided by Average number of Users $0.40/user /month $0.30/user/mo nth $0.37 $0.36 $0.39 BSC helped the IT management get their heads out of their daily world and link to the business objectives
Constant Rule: Listen to Stakeholders VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER VOICE OF THE BUSINESS KIRK s RULE of THUMB: If you never or rarely have formally asked customers their satisfaction, you are doing poorly in the eyes of the customer
Case Study Process Workshop It was easiest when run by the Black Belt. Less push-back Map the Flow of Process Steps Map the Flow of Information Add Data Boxes and Starbursts Identify Value Added (VA) vs. Non Value Added (NVA) steps Engage the Team
Measure Phase Value Stream Map Triage and Handoffs 21
We Drilled Down to Bad Escalations Baseline Data Collected Do it like a Ritz Carlton CEO
Analyze Phase Engaged the Brains CVA/NVA/NVA-R Analysis Critical X/Root Cause Analysis Critical X/Root Causes Analysis Prioritized Root Causes / Effects Pareto Chart 23
Improve Phase Making it Happen Key Improvements Accelerated Sr. Management review of potentially overdue tickets Accelerated Tier 2 Review of unedited Ticketing system queues Streamlined escalation and deescalation Dedicated Tier 2 ticket processing Re-Training Operational Level Agreements between Tiers Control Charts Sampling of escalations New KPIs focusing on escalation To-Be Process Map Full process reengineering 24
Control Phase Consolidating Victory Transition to process owner SOPs Training Replication Step Action/Task Responsible Accountable Consulted Informed 1 Nov 6 Full SOP update of new process flow Bob John Craig Alex 2 Nov 12 New report format weekly, monthly Fred John Craig, Sandy Mike
Taught the Team to Use Control Charts Time to Resolve (TTR) for all escalated tickets Note: a Tier 2 Service Desk Analyst was taught to use control chart functions within Minitab 26
Results: Less Fire Fighting BEFORE AFTER Mean Time to Resolve Variability Extreme violations People understood 27
Results: Potential Impacts on the Business 5 Year Projected Cost Avoidance $1 Million Monthly Measure BEFORE AFTER Mean Time To Resolution for escalated tickets * % escalated tickets closed in less than 7 days 15.1 days 4.6 days 48% 72% % of tickets properly escalated 54% 75% * Used 2-t Significance Test to prove statistical significance of case study improvements 28
Key Lessons Learned ITIL alone is not sufficient Data vs. information Voice of Customer & Voice of Business Alignment and harmony Cross-functional teams are critical Push the tool usage down to the team Remember Hawthorne Methodology brings some comfort Fact-Based decision-making (see Baldrige) To Do List: Stop blaming Start analyzing Control the things within your control
Thank you Contact details: Kirk Holmes http://www.holmesinc.net kirk@holmesinc.net (301) 998-6108