For general information and resources, ITIL and ITSM World is the most well known for both ITIL and ITIL Books. A shorter snapshot approach can be found at ITIL Zone
Note: ® ITIL is a registered trademark of OGC. This portal is totally independent and is in no way related to them. See our Feedback Page for more information.
The Itil Community Forum: Forums
ITIL :: View topic - Beyond the Service Desk - Self-Serve
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 4:17 am Post subject: Beyond the Service Desk - Self-Serve
I'm working on a project that would allow request to go directly to LAN teams, thus bypassing the service desk. I need to come up with the top ten, or more, requests that could be routed directly to the the techs. We are a big organization - 20,000 - so there is a lot of traffic.
Does anyone have any ideas about where I could get information regarding this kind of project? I work for the government of Canada, and generally we are behind the private sector as far as implementing change is concerned. I'm assuming that this sort of thing is standard practice out in the real world....
Joined: Sep 16, 2006 Posts: 3118 Location: London, UK
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 7:31 am Post subject:
First off
The project seems to go away from an ITIL oriented IT Model.
The use of a web tool for LAN work by your users should not 'bypass' the Service Desk. The web tool merely speeds things up. The Service Desk should be used for one of its prime purposes - actingt as the interface between the customer and the support teams
What is the function of the business and its customers ?
If you are a IP LAN environment, then you need to check with your Service Desk and your IP LAN team to see what tickets can automatically be done through the web site
However, there needs to be some intelligence and some intelligent thinking in regards to what the web site can request
Can the user request all circuits/IPs / IP LAN subnet be turned off or expanded without any financial implication
What information is needed from the customer to identify their particular piece of the network / LAN / Cloud
Before you go off to drive to solve the Gordian knot, you need that kind of information.
Merely replacing the Service Desk - who are people - with a website smacks of cost cutting / stripping of the most important assets - staff
Nothing seems more like very poor service when you can only deal with electronic interfaces - whether it is a web site or a phone menu. And nothing drives people to leave.
So what sort of work does your LAN team do for your customers and what are your customers expectation from your organization _________________ John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)
Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter
Very probably everyone on this forum agrees with John, including myself.
What you can do is set specific incident management procedures to be adopted by the service desk, clearly specifying that these 10 types of incidents should be automatically escalated to the LAN team.
However, the incidents are received and logged by the Service Desk who will own them until closure.
Joined: Jan 01, 2006 Posts: 500 Location: New Jersey
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 1:59 pm Post subject: Re: Beyond the Service Desk - Self-Serve
Hello Marc,
Please find my comments, embedded below...
DrmWvr wrote:
I'm working on a project that would allow request to go directly to LAN teams, thus bypassing the service desk. I need to come up with the top ten, or more, requests that could be routed directly to the the techs. We are a big organization - 20,000 - so there is a lot of traffic.
YES!!! I love these kind of posts because you've hit on a key question that every good leader will ask! How do I completely get rid of or minimize the footprint of my Service Desk/Help Desk? Remember, in theory, you strive for perfect products and services that need no support, which would mean that you wouldn't need a Service Desk, at all.
Many enterprises are outsourcing their Service Desks because they're trying to drive down the costs of ownership for them. Smart leaders also realize that not everything can be handled effectively by the Service Desk, as they will never be, nor should they ever be intended to be the experts for the products, services, and/or processes they support. ITIL also has a major flaw in that its definition of a Service Desk completely leaves out the handling of Incidents and Service Requests for non-Production environments, which is the majority of IT.
As a result, you can start to drive down your costs for IT by attempting to eliminate or reduce your Service Delivery groups, your Service Desk, etc., especially when you're a small enterprise that can't afford the separate and dedicated headcount. So, you're on the right track, here.
Now, let me state that what you're talking about is "Request Management" or what is the traditional (non-ITIL) definition of "Service Management".
Quote:
Does anyone have any ideas about where I could get information regarding this kind of project? I work for the government of Canada, and generally we are behind the private sector as far as implementing change is concerned. I'm assuming that this sort of thing is standard practice out in the real world....
An option, here, is to use a Service Catalog (SC) that allows users to go into the SC, find the Service that they wish to invoke, invoke it by creating a Service Request, and having that Service Request be automatically assigned to the Organization and/or Person that owns those Services in the SC. Specifically, you're going to need to look for "Request Management" tools. (As stated above, also known as the traditional definition of "Service Management", which is the process of managing Services and their invocation and execution through completion).
If done correctly, your Organization and others will be set up in the Service Catalog and bound to the Services that are owned by the Organization(s), as Service Owner Groups. You will then define the "Services" provided by those Organizations, where the Services will have the Owner Groups and Resources embedded in them. A simple use case would be that an end user will go to the Service Catalog, search for the Service he/she cares about through some Search/Look-Up feature, and then "invoke" that Service. The invocation will yield a "Service Request" task that will automatically be routed to the Organization and/or Person accountable for performing the Service (essentially putting it in their queue). The Organization will execute that Service according to the contraints and SLAs for that Service. They will then close the Service Request ticket when they know that the end user (Service Requestor) has successfully received the output/deliverable(s) from that Service.
If you have questions about any of this, please feel free to contact me offline at Frank.Guerino<@>TraverseIT<.>com. We help enterprises with this sort of thing all the time so I might have some things that could be useful for you.
Anyhow, I hope you find this information useful.
Best Regards,
Frank _________________ [Edited by Admin to remove link]
I assume those are critical requests about critical services you want to bypass, right? Do you have any monitoring setup for those services? Is there a way to automate the process to send/page the LAN team with requests automatically when a critical service is down? This way, the LAN team will be notified timely and the ticket will be generated automatically and correctly without human intervention. There won’t be delay for service between service desk and LAN team. I am not sure if this is ITIL oriented?
If the requests are not critical, then maybe you can add some pre-questions that users have to answer before they can file certain type of tickets. Or you can still have them call Service Desk but train the analysts what type of calls has to attach “problem” or “change” requests immediately. These will make sure no unnecessary tickets are generated for LAN team which is not supposed to handle incidents.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Forum FAQ
Search
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
