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A Service-Oriented Mantra
CIO Phil Bertolini runs IT for the county government in Oakland County, Mich., where the help desk wasn't always very helpful. Back in 2002, Oakland County users -- municipal employees from 61 villages and townships -- had various numbers to call and were never quite sure which one to use. On the back end, the county was so short-staffed that IT managers were recruiting programmers to staff the phone lines.
Bertolini turned to ITIL, which provided a blueprint for a new service center with designated phone lines and staffers specifically trained in a series of protocols to resolve incidents as quickly and painlessly as possible. Among other steps (see "An ITIL Checklist," below), Bertolini created a series of metrics designed to measure the rates of problem resolution, internal transfer and overall support time.
"Our people are better trained, our processes are more responsive and our incidents are manageable," Bertolini says. "It has changed the entire way we do business -- for the better."
While the service support book highlights users of IT services, the service delivery book emphasizes the business as a customer. This book discusses the best practices a business requires of its IT provider to deliver adequate support. The discipline consists of five processes: service-level management, capacity management, IT service continuity management, availability management and financial management.
The service-level management portion of the book recommends that businesses identify, monitor and review the levels of IT services specified in service-level agreements (SLAs) and provides a framework to set them up. It also suggests questions companies should ask of vendors before they enter into such agreements.
An ITIL Checklist |
When officials in the municipal government of Oakland County, Mich., recently embarked on an IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) implementation, the process wasn't as simple as buying books and following directions. Instead, CIO Phil Bertolini says the effort required several steps along the way. Here is Bertolini's rundown of critical checkpoints:
- Research ITIL best practices.
- Train key project staff on ITIL (Oakland County is planning to dole out practitioner certifications for future phases of implementation).
- Analyze existing processes, and determine those improvements that could be made without replacing a service desk system and those that require a new system.
- Incorporate automated voice response at the service desk.
- Select a service desk tool (Oakland County chose Unicenter from CA Inc.).
- Prototype new process flows.
- Administer Apollo 13 training for key staff members.
- Configure the Unicenter system.
- Train staff and customers on the new processes and system.
- Implement (at Oakland County, this stage is in process).
- Measure and evaluate (at Oakland County, this stage hasn't begun).
--M.V.
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