To clarify the title, we’re not talking about Santa Claus in this article (even if it is seasonal). We’re talking about stereotypes and an incomplete view of IT services non-technical populations (i.e., your customers) have.
They always say: IT services are too expensive.
Well, just like car or medical insurance, you’ll only say that until you get the bill for a doctor’s visit or are in a multicar pile-up. It’s true, IT services are expensive, but they’re worth it—they’re the backbone of organizations.
The need to value actions that are often not very visible
As a manager of IT or customer service, valuing your own (and your teams’) actions is essential--no one else will.
Internal marketing will be discussed on specific or recurrent internal communication actions and will be aimed at giving visibility to the proactive and curative actions of an IT service. The implementing managers and the business executives will be the main recipients of these actions, followed closely by end-users.
On the customer communication side, it is up to the general management, the business executives. The Commission should insist on the associated ROI, based on factual and measurable data.
Supervision: Just a technical tool?
Effective, comprehensive and proactive supervision is:
- Monitoring of the base layers (equipment, CPU, RAM, Disk, etc.)
- Monitoring of applications (application scenarios, log control, response time of a URL, etc.)
- Aggregation of these elements in macro and non-technical indicators: the meteors of services
- Adapted
At this stage, the service provided is qualitative, and makes it possible to avoid unavailability.
However, the main beneficiaries must be informed: the users of the IS.
A communication-oriented supervision tool like EV Observe should allow you to:
1.Produce factual reports, support from your steering/management committees, in order to:
- Value the quality of service provided over a period, by analyzing the availability rates measured
- Justify investments
- Detect upcoming projects (e.g. migration of infrastructure that has become limited)
- Optimize the use of resources (human and below)
2.Communicate proactively to users, by:
- Sharing of the weather of the services with comments in case of degradation of the service (via webservices or Sharepoint portal)
- Creating read-only dashboards without authentication
In Summary
A good supervision tool should monitor every moment. It should also alert you as soon as possible to the risks or problems that have arisen. With a little time, and the right tools, you’ll be there in no time. Use the data and reports from Service Delivery Manager as a valuable tool to support your meetings and prove to your clients the quality of the service your company provides.
If you want to know more about EasyVista solutions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
