Service Desk Trend Analysis

[katgar]

Evening all

I was hoping for some advice on Service Desk Trend Analysis. I'm new to Service Desk Management and have been tasked by the Head of IT to gather stats on the Service Desk.

Where should I start and what should I report on:-
Top 10 incidents in the last 12 months
Average fix time
Incidents closed per analyst
Top resolution code last 6 months
Cost per ticket

I just don't know where to start and really what to measure, any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Katgar

[swansong]

This works every time. Send the following message and don't do the work until it is fully answered.


TO:- The Head of IT
FROM:- Katgar

Where should I start and what should I report on:-
Top 10 incidents in the last 12 months
Average fix time
Incidents closed per analyst
Top resolution code last 6 months
Cost per ticket

I just don't know where to start and really what to measure, any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Katgar

[Diarmid]

What do you want/need to know about the Service Desk and for what reasons?

1. Top 10 incidents in the last 12 months

(This is a list not a statistical measure and has little value for trending)
By "top" do you mean greatest business impact, greatest cost to fix, longest time to fix, or something else?
Will your Problem Management function not already have milked these prominent incidents?
How will this information inform management?
What action will you be able to take derived from this information?
Will it provide useful input to service improvement initiatives?


2. Average fix time

Will this be broken down by incident type?
Will a relatively steady average conceal areas where process and technique and expertise could improve performance on certain types of incident?
How will this information inform management?
What action will you be able to take derived from this information?
Will it provide useful input to service improvement initiatives?


3. Incidents closed per analyst

Will this measure analyst performance or incident type distribution or neither really?
How will this information inform management?
What action will you be able to take derived from this information?
Will it provide useful input to service improvement initiatives?


4. Top resolution code last 6 months

I hope you have really useful resolution codes!
How will this information inform management?
What action will you be able to take derived from this information?
Will it provide useful input to service improvement initiatives?


5. Cost per ticket

Do you have reliable time and materials information mapped to incident resolution - including change management and implementation costs? To be meaningful you have to exclude all fixed costs like staff full time on the service desk, software and hardware used to run the system, etc.
How will this information inform management?
What action will you be able to take derived from this information?
Will it provide useful input to service improvement initiatives?

I would not start with this list. Rather I would ask myself (and management, who should know the answer) what information will be useful in pursuit of
A) auditing the quality of the service desk/incident management function
B) informing management of the performance of the service desk/incident management function
C) service improvement activities

This all assumes that these are the objectives. The more general question, to return to my first line, is: what information is required by whom to assist them in meeting their objectives?
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[tedescoj]

I was also just asked to report these "trend analysis" reports but our help desk system (kace) does not make this easy at all. Could someone please post your reports so I can see an example? Thanks!

[Diarmid]

It's all in my previous post. Well, mostly all.

What areas have you been asked to analyse for trends?

If you haven't ("could you do some trendy - sorry, I mean trend - reports for us?"), then I suggest that you go to the policy and objectives documents that surround your QMS (IT service management system).

If you do not have those, then you have the choice:

of telling management that there is nothing that can usefully be analysed
or
developing a list of areas that it would make sense to manage properly - you could derive from my previous post those which seem most relevant to you
or
you could form a judgement as to what measures will make you look really good and analyse those to death
or
you could propose policies and objectives, get agreement, implement systems to conform to them and then start measuring everything useful related to them.

On the other hand, you could copy or select from someone's reports without understanding the difference between your service and customers nad organization and theirs.
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[gautambangalore]

Probably you might want to do an analysis on

1. number of tickets created based on a CI
2. repeated incidents,
3. if there is an increase in the number of incidents over a month, reasons for the same and so on...

look at your KPIs and you might get a clue on what could be analyzed.

[KenLuo]

What's the purpose of this trend analysis?

It's to understand how many staffs you need to support current business or future business?
It's to understand which domains or services you should improve next?
It's to understand how much your company has lost based on SLA miss?

Well, it all depends on what you want instead of what you can produce.
_________________
Luo, Tian-Hong (Ken)
Regional Operation Lead

ITIL Expert Certified