BUSINESS VALUE OF INCIDENT

www.wendia.com The value of Incident Management lies not only in the number of calls being resolved in the first contact, resolving incidents and recovering services in the least would contribute to this, of course, but taking measures possible time – in this paper we will have a look at the to reduce the number of incidents is something that real value of Incident Management. would really make a difference. If a business manager really cares about the Purpose of Incident Management performance of his personnel, the following should be important to him: If you ever had the experience of dealing with Incident Management, you may have pursued the idea that • In the last month, when were we performing the Incident Management was only about recovering the least? service in the least possible time and according to the • In the last month, how effective were we? service level agreement you have with your customer. • What could be done so our personnel could improve This, however, is a quite reactive approach to Incident their performance? Management and one that does not create much value for your customer. So what would create even more As these are questions that the business manager value for your customer? would often expect the CIO to answer, the CIO should use the Incident Data, data gathered when doing Incident Management, as it is valuable information for What customers really IT. want from you as the service provider is that the service does not Incident Data is a valuable go down; Recovery of source of information, about the service as soon as what is causing the failures, possible is valuable, and by analyzing it you can but it would be even find the root cause of the more valuable not incidents. Knowing the root to have any service cause of incidents is the first outage at all, or at least step towards the reduction reduce the number of of incidents. outages. As CIO, you should analyze your Incident Data to: To answer that let us consider the goal of IT Service • Detect the relation between this data (Answering the Management itself, which is to increase the value following five questions: Who? What? When? Where? for business. Even if your service is not What is the context?) very mature ITIL-wise, you can collect valuable data • Analyze the pattern of incident occurrence and from incident resolution and the real value of Incident find out the relation between incidents (Why are the Management lies in using that as a base for the incidents happening and what do they mean?) following: • Categorize the incidents according to the impact they 1. Reducing the number of Incidents have on your business (Loss of opportunity, and loss of 2. Improving the resolution time revenue) 3. Defining an improvement plan of service One efficient way to reduce the number of incidents is to consult with the person(s) responsible for and , so by root Incident Reduction cause analysis of the problems or implementing proper If a CIO was asked if he wanted to save time for his Change Management, you may reduce the number experts, surely his answer would be yes. Solutions, like of incidents, or eliminate their root issues. Not to shortening the average duration of calls, or increasing mention that, to prioritize these issues, you need to

www.wendia.com interact with your business departments, which you will be taking action against the incident faster, which may conduct this process using Continual Service decreases the impact of the incident on your business. Improvement. Once you start performing the processes mentioned above, the number of incidents will decrease dramatically, resulting in an improvement of your Using a self-service portal is another way to reduce services. the resolution time of the incidents. Based on the knowledge that you have created before for your incident resolution, and classifying it in an Automated Improvement of Resolution Time Troubleshooting Tree, you can assign resolution of If you are trying to fix issues that, from your customer’s a large portion of your incidents to the end users perspective, should not have happened in the first themselves. If they are not able to resolve the incident place, you certainly should have them resolved in the by themselves, you can lead them in a structured way least amount of time – and preferably in a proactive so you will gather more precise information, helping way. Meaning, you should not wait for the incident to your service desk to reduce resolution time by targeting happen and then start resolving it, but take measures to the incident exactly according to the information decrease the number of incidents as much as possible. provided. Self-service portals in addition to tools that But when incidents do happen, you have to be can automate Incident Management processes could informative about them and recover them proactively. help you resolve more incidents quicker, and thereby For this, you need to know the possible symptoms have more available for valuable of incidents, so you can predict the incident, and you business targets. can improve your resolution time of incidents. You can do this better if you use this data in the Knowledge An Automated Management process. Analyzing incidents proactively Troubleshooting Tree and documenting their resolution in the Knowledge powers the POB Self Management process will help you decrease resolution Service Portal, and you time, based on the previous patterns in your service can share the knowledge organization. of your service organization The ITSM tool that you are using for your Incident with the customers. This Management, should have will enable end users to capabilities. Without Knowledge Management, your tool help themselves. will be more like an issue tracker, just helping you not to miss your customer’s critical issues, but not being able to help you in the improvement of your resolution time. Defining an Improvement Plan of Service When analyzing your Incident Data, you should also look for possible methods to improve your service, POB Service Desk and thereby not only meet but perhaps even exceed Management not only customer expectations. Some items that could help fully supports the Incident you: Management process, but it can also automatically • What changes in the current or new service could convert incident resolution help you increase customer satisfaction? to knowledge. This way, • Which new technologies can help your service whenever an incident with organization decrease the number of incidents and a known resolution or any improve the resolution time – and how? other related knowledge • Can you improve your service quality by providing topic occurs, you can use training to customers? Would the training cost you less the diagnosis solutions than a service outage would? already provided for your resolution. Therefore, you • Which service features do the customers have the most questions to? Can we reduce the number

www.wendia.com of questions by changing our software or hardware incidents, decrease the resolution time and have an service? improvement plan constantly on top of it. • How was the customer covering their requirements Wendia and our toolset, POB – Point of Business, can by innovative methods? Can you learn something from help you target the improvement targets on Incident these for improvement of service? Management by using our implementation experience • Which workarounds were the customers using to fix so you do not have to run trial & error for this. the issues? In Wendia, we aim to help our customers gain the • Which support groups could get help from another for real value of Incident Management by enabling fixing the issues? them to use Incident Data to improve their processes and services. • Which services could be added to your service organization to support “Why cannot I” question? • Which customer requirements have never had any To summarize: service provided at all? • Do not make the improvement too complex; Start with • What services could the customer use, which is the smallest thing first. For example, find the root cause provided in other enterprises? of the most common calls to your call center and fix that. • Which question answers are among the ones “not compliant with the policy”? How can we help the • Ask your service desk staff to help you analyze your customer with this? Incident Data. As a CIO, you can always reward them for what is best for your business as a whole! In addition to the answers to all the above questions, any answer to “I could do it easier if…” could contribute • You should always discuss the business value of to a plan to improve your service. Incident Management with your colleagues, and ask them to help reduce the number of incidents and not just resolve them. Using POB KPI • Discuss with your service organization the possible Explorers it is easy impact of the incident on customer satisfaction, and to extract information always see incidents from the customer’s point of view. gathered in different processes, and use • Do not concentrate only on the traditional incident that to define an KPIs like reducing the number of calls, shortening the improvement plan of average duration of calls or increasing the number of your service. incidents that are resolved on the first contact, but focus also on reducing the number of incidents and improving your services. Real Life...

You may say that you hardly have the time for resolving If you would like to have more information about incidents, how could you find the time for analyzing Incident Management or in the data gathered through the Incident Management general, and how POB can help you to optimize process? your Enterprise Processes Management, please We know how you feel, we have experienced this too. contact your local Wendia office or partner or reach Often, service are challenged by their us at [email protected]. incident resolution and do not have the time to focus on improvements. However, you need to make a decision whether you want to react to your incidents as before, or change how you interact with your incidents by having a robust plan to improve the process; Reduce the number of

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