What is the purpose of the SOW in ITSM?
The Service Operations Workspace (SOW) presents a modern, intelligent interface designed to enhance the agent experience. Being customized for distinct user personas, it ensures that individuals can access the tools and information most relevant to their roles. Its primary objective is to align people, processes, and technology, thereby fostering efficiencies that directly contribute to improved business performance and achieving key performance indicators (KPIs).
Purpose of SOW:
- Empowering people: SOW provides tools and information to help users reach their goals and business objectives. It focuses on user experience and positions technology as an enabler.
- Aligning processes and technology: By aligning people, processes, and technology, organizations can achieve improved productivity, process adherence, and even customer satisfaction (CSAT).
- Shifting focus: To improve IT service delivery effectiveness, SOW emphasizes the quality and impact of user engagements on outcomes rather than just the quantity of clicks.
SOW acknowledges that optimal productivity in ITSM is achieved by equipping personnel with appropriate tools and the relevant information necessary for fulfilling objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). By delivering accurate information and actionable steps at critical moments, SOW enables users to execute processes more effectively, thereby supporting the attainment of essential KPIs and service level agreements (SLAs). This integrated approach to process enablement directly and positively impacts overall productivity.
Organizational Change Management (OCM) and user adoption
As organizations adopt SOW and integrate emerging technologies, the workplace undergoes continuous transformation. Well-designed interfaces enhance accessibility, user experience, and operational efficiency while enabling innovative approaches to task execution, surpassing traditional methods.
Organizational Change Management (OCM) is crucial for guiding employees through the transition from current work processes to new ones enabled by SOW. OCM helps improve communication, reduce user resistance, and enhance user adoption rates.
- Benefits of OCM: OCM improves communication, helps leaders understand project impacts, reduces user resistance, and enhances decision-making.
- Organizational change journey: OCM guides employees through the change journey, improving productivity and boosting employee morale.
Real-World Example
A company implemented OCM to support the adoption of SOW. They conducted live training sessions, created reference guides, and established a support channel. As a result, they saw a 30% increase in user adoption rates and a significant improvement in overall productivity.
Key requirements for successful OCM implementation during your transition to SOW
- Design the strategy: This involves creating an OCM strategy and plan, developing a program narrative, and identifying and assessing stakeholders. A clear roadmap and understanding of the project's impact on different stakeholders are essential.
- Get the word out: Communication is key to successful change management. This includes developing a communication strategy, running awareness campaigns, and using various channels such as emails, newsletters, and Video on Demand (VoD) to keep everyone informed.
- Ready the team: Preparing the team involves conducting live training sessions or e-learnings, creating reference guides, knowledge bases (KBs), and detailed user guides. This ensures employees have the necessary knowledge and resources to adapt to the new processes.
- Support and feedback: Providing ongoing support and collecting feedback is crucial for continuous improvement. This can be done through office hours or dedicated Teams channels, conducting surveys or focus groups, and collecting metrics to measure the effectiveness of the change management efforts.
Real-World example
OCM is important for admins too. When writing release notes—especially for software updates with UI changes—include behavioral changes to support a smooth transition and keep users informed.
*Please note that Organizational Change Management (OCM) is not IT Change Management, such as application changes, code changes, and scripts. OCM can be leveraged with all processes, including IT Change Management, but they are different.
Value of sow: Business outcomes & key performance indicators
After learning about OCM, you may need guidance on presenting its value to your organization and linking benefits to user needs. Below are key value statements and SOW benefits based on personas and KPIs.
Potential value statements for your organization
- Sow design: SOW is built on the principle of optimizing the "people" element to drive overall productivity. It provides tailored interfaces designed for specific personas, reducing the need to navigate through irrelevant information and ensuring users have the tools and information relevant to their job.
- SOW provides a unified place for navigating incidents, problems, and changes. This capability impacts KPIs such as MTTR, FCR, and CSAT, leading to operational efficiency for all personas.
- Persona-based value: SOW empowers users to deliver outstanding service, enhancing user effectiveness and driving positive customer experiences.
- Productivity beyond clicks: SOW helps users execute processes more efficiently, meeting business-critical KPIs and SLAs. This directly impacts productivity far more than click count.
Value statements by feature and capability
- Major Incident Playbooks: These playbooks offer a guided approach to major incident processes, visualizing workflows in a simple, task-oriented view. This impacts KPIs like MTTR, FCR, uptime, and SLA adherence, enhancing process adherence for major incident managers and operations teams.
- Out-of-the-Box Landing Page: These landing pages provide a clear overview of tasks, prioritizing incidents that are about to breach SLAs. This feature aligns with SLA compliance and agent productivity KPIs, benefiting L1 service desk agents.
- Teams Integration: This feature enhances communication and coordination during incident and problem management, impacting KPIs like MTTR, FCR, and CSAT, leading to cost savings for L1 service desk agents.
- Recommendations and Agent Assist: These features provide contextual search and recommendations, helping in faster incident resolution and knowledge management. They impact KPIs like MTTR, FCR, and CSAT, benefiting L1 service desk agents, L2, and L3 teams.
- Guided Experience: SOW provides a guided experience for service desk agents, helping them resolve incidents faster and more accurately. This aligns with KPIs such as FCR and MTTR, improving productivity and efficiency for service desk agents, problem managers, and change managers.
- Knowledge Management: SOW integrates knowledge management, making it easier for agents to access relevant information and solutions. This enhances KPIs like CSAT and self-service adoption, benefiting knowledge managers.
Pulling it all together
To fully leverage the benefits of SOW, organizations need to understand the value it brings to their people, processes, and technology. By focusing on user experience, aligning processes and technology, and implementing effective OCM strategies, organizations can significantly improve productivity, customer satisfaction, and overall business outcomes.
Key Takeaways
- Understand the Value of SOW: Recognize the importance of aligning people, processes, and technology to achieve efficiencies and improve KPIs.
- Focus on User Experience: By providing users with the right tools and information, ensure that technology is an enabler, not a hindrance.
- Implement OCM Strategies: Guide employees through the transition to new processes enabled by SOW to enhance user adoption and productivity.
By applying these principles, organizations can create a more efficient and productive work environment, which can lead to better business outcomes and customer satisfaction.
