Analytics: Transform Service Management Into Service Mastery

[MichaelDortch]

How effective are the services your enterprise delivers to its users? And how do you know?

Sure, you've got your service level agreements (SLAs) and related service level objectives (SLOs). (Right?) But what are you and your team doing to ensure that you know everything you need to know about everything that affects and contributes to these critical resources.

Basically, you need two sets of information to answer these and related questions correctly and consistently. You need the right key performance indicators (KPIs) for the technologies that enable your services. And you need accurate assessments of your users' perceptions of their experiences with those services.

The specific KPIs that matter most to your enterprise are up to you to decide. What's important to remember when selecting your KPIs is that not all data is useful information. Too much granularity can lead to "paralysis by analysis," or the inability to translate data into meaningful actions. On the other hand, too little useful data makes it impossible to optimize service management.

There are numerous lists of KPIs available from industry analysts, vendors, and other sources. But these are just starting points. You must use your enterprise's specific business requirements to winnow these lists down to the best set of KPIs for your organization.

For an interesting take on which KPIs matter most and why, check out "The Seven Most Important Performance Indicators for the Service Desk," available from HDI (formerly the Help Desk Institute). Founded in 1989, HDI was "the first membership association and certification body created for the technical service and support industry," and now has more than 150,000 members. The paper was written by the managing partners of MetricNet, specialists in online and service desk benchmarks. They argue that a mere seven KPIs "is all that is required for measuring, managing, and continuously improving" the performance of end-user service desks.

Once you've established the right list of KPIs for your organization and integrated these into your service management toolkit, you can focus on user perception assessment. None of those KPI-focused efforts matter a bit if they don't result in satisfied users. Dissatisfied users require more (and more expensive) support. They're also more likely to bypass dissatisfying services in favor of "work-arounds." These can have unpredictable and costly effects on your service environment. Dissatisfied users can therefore cost your enterprise money, agility, resilience, and trustworthiness.

You need tools and processes that solicit regular feedback from your users, and that encourages and motivates them to provide that feedback. Tools can range from regular, simple surveys conducted online or via e-mail to social networking features and applications, gamification, and actual or virtual prizes. (ServiceNow architect and fan Robert Fedoruk has shared some interesting views on surveys and project engagement right here in the ServiceNow Community.) Processes depend on the culture of your organization, and the current relationships between those who deliver and manage business services and those who consume them. And remember to capture survey results and any follow-up interviews in ways that make that information as easy as possible to search, retrieve, and use to refine and improve your service delivery and management efforts.

To begin, if you have not yet done so, take a close look at ServiceNow Performance Analytics. If you already have the application, consider working with a partner consultant or company with proven expertise in KPIs and SLA management and optimization. Collaborate with your marketing colleagues to explore options for gathering user perceptions, and managing and leveraging the results of your perception-gathering efforts.

You know the old saying. You can't manage what you can't measure. Fortunately, you can measure how well your service delivery and management tools and processes are working, and track that information over time. And you can do the same with the perceptions of the consumers of the services you and your team deliver and manage. And if you do it right, you can collect, then manage that information in ways that transform service management into service mastery across your enterprise.