Tool to help you connect to your customers

In my last post i reviewed some training I had been on, I was rather impressed, one of the key features of the training in my opinion was that it got you out of the IT world and actually prompted you to speak to the "business".


I have been pointed in the direction of BSM-NOW.com who are offering a free trial version of their web tool.


I have not used this tool in anger, but I would point ITIL and ITSM folks in it's direction, it seems interesting, let me know what you think.


Here is a video that helps explain what the site is all about: http://bsm-now.com/videos/


I love the tact that proven methodoligies are being used, give it a try!


Again I should note that this is NOT a sponsored link, it's just a site that I think has some interesting features my readers will be interested in.
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Measure service - not indicators.

Measuring service has been one of the hardest things to get to grips with in the IT world, we usually measure our infrastructure and use that to predict how well we will do, or calculate the number of times we failed. Neither of these techniques really delivers what we need: an understanding on how well IT delivered to the business needs, not IT's definition of business needs.

It was this this challenge that I believe the people at IT-SVM have managed to go a long way in solving, they have a good method put together for gathering what those business needs are, plotting the importance of those needs, and then plotting the actual service delivered.

The benefits of this seem to be threefold:

1. Plotting the importance of a business process from the horses mouth (so to speak)
2. Plotting the actual service delivery
3. Getting in front of the business and asking them the questions they want to tell you to solve!

I have only been on the intro course and it was well worth the value, I would heartily recommend it to anyone (re)embarking on an \ITSM journey.

NB I am not paid for this review, I was just a happy and impressed customer.

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Whats more important in a tool?

A little battle broke out on linked-in today around recommendations BMC v. Service-now, and though a lot of this was vendors fighting their own corners it did raise an interesting question:

What is more important "compliance" with the OGC or even Pinkverify or a tool that you really want to use on a daily basis?



I do think it's important that when buying some new software that says its going to help[ you with your itil based processes that it does exactly that.

But that really is just a first hurdle, and to be honest most of the tools on the market are so flexible that you could make them into what ever you wanted, I have had experience that none of the vendors will ever say tat their tool cannot do something.

It is my personal belief that usability, upgradeability and functionality are the most important features of any tool, and that ITIL "compliance" is lip-service at best.

In fact, I would be skeptical of anyone who even uses the term "ITIL Compliant", ITIL is not a standard, it is a set of books that lay out a possible way of managing your IT organisation.

With that all said, whether you need that tool in the first place is probably a better question.





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Playing With a Prezi for ITSM

I have thrown together this Prezi for an intro to ITSM, This is just a first draft which needs work but a fun tool for presentations.







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