SITS14 - My Experience and Takeaways ( 29th, 30th April, Earls Court - London)

I have been very much looking forward to presenting at this part of the world for 2 primary reasons.  ITIL’s humble origin at the OGC /Cabinet Office and this country hosting some of the elite and vibrant ITSM professionals whom I have always wanted to meet face-to-face.

I did plan my self-funded trip from Bangalore to London for 3 simple reasons:  a) leisure & sight seeing b) attend and present at the SITS14 conference 3) connect with ITSM people & friends

What surprises me is that, how do you get such great quality speakers and sessions free to the audience?  As a delegate, it would be a bonanza to hear & connect with some fascinating ITSM minds across globe.

I agree with what James mentions in his blog – This has more value than much of the paid conferences.

The breakfast briefing on day 1 that had Barclay facilitate a panel discussion on customer experience was quite stimulating and the panelists including Toby, Simone and David did a good job in articulating relevant examples which complemented the CX survey results.

Having Jeff from Gartner as Keynote Speaker marked the icing on the cake and was glad that he was able to entertain audience for both the days.

I would admit that the Tube strikes in London was little unfortunate as we did loose around 15 % of registrants. However it also meant that 85 % of who did register were so compelled they had made alternative arrangements to be a part of this event.

This year marked 20 years of success for the Service Desk & IT Support show and couldn’t be a better fit launching the ITSM contributor of the year award.  Barclay’s contribution to the ITSM industry, knowledge, teaching and consulting have had a huge fan following for him including me.  It was heartening to see him win the well-deserved award.  Watch here.

The whole event had a good bunch of Keynotes, sessions and hot topics for 2 full days and it was a tough challenge for delegates to pick and choose merely by the high quality speakers.

I particularly liked a lot of sessions and would be difficult to point them all, but one thing that I need to make a special mention is the Panel discussion on “Is ITIL going to die”?  We couldn’t have a better panel team than  Stuart Rance, Kaimar Karu, Andrea Kis and Ian Atchison, facilitated by Barclay Rae.

Special thanks to all the people who took their time to attend my session on “Governance & Fragmented IT – must service desks let go?”  I am humbled by the comments and feedback that indicated it gave some take-aways for everyone who attended.

For me the highlight of the whole conference was to catch up with lot of ITSM professionals discussing various diversified interest and make that emotional connect.  I did make sure to take snaps with all those I interacted with and no wonder I landed up with 500+ photos of just ITSM people.

 - With the SDI team: Howard, David, Tessa, Paul and me in front of the ‘Big Red Tool Box’ stand.

I did tweet a lot about what I learnt, enjoyed and missed at #SITS14 and you should just do a quick search on twitter as to what has been everyone’s experience.

I could start writing raving reviews of SITS14 conference and the best bet would be to catch up on SITS14 podcast  at the ITSM review  that has a collective opinion from James, Melanie, Toby, Simon, Barclay here.

Running such a conference is not a child’s play. Toby Moore did indicate when we discussed during our SITS14 podcast, that it took a whopping 7 months effort to turn a piece of paper to a reality event.  The Organizers and particularly Laura Venables has done a fantastic job in managing this event to perfection.

I cannot believe that 2 days at SITS14 has come to an end.  What a terrific event this has been.  I have earned great friends and made strong emotional connect and will carry those pleasant memories.

We will miss Laura Venables next year as she moves to OZ later this year, but am sure that the Leader of the Ship has some great people who will adorn the show next year.

Finally, I am certain that this is the best conference that I have attended in almost a decade and will look forward to being again next year from 3-4th June 2015.

This was published at SDI  on May 9, 2014

TFT14 - Leverage ITIL beyond IT to deliver true value

We have been swarmed for years talking about how IT can get benefited using ITIL best practice framework for more than a decade. Its time that as practitioners, we use them to provide value to various aspects of Industry like Hospital, Transport, Health Services and more importantly in our day to day aspects to deliver true business outcomes. This talk would focus on with pragmatic use case study to take ITIL beyond IT and deliver true value to your customers worldwide and also eat our own dog food in managing our personal and professional endeavors

If you would like to have this session at TFT14, this June 2014, 24 hour free online ITSM conference, then please vote for me.

 

itSMF Singapore Conference - ITSM Leadership Congress

As I pack my bags heading back to India, I wanted to share my initial thoughts and experiences of the recently concluded itSMF Annual Conference on 21^st March 2014 at Park Royal Hotel, Beach Road.

The Theme of the Annual Conference was “ITSM Leadership Congress” that witnessed 125+ Delegates, 11 Speakers, 10 Sponsors, 6 countries, providing 5 PDUs, 4 Panelists, 3 Keynotes, 2 tracks during the 1 day jam packed schedule.

Just prior to the conference, AXELOS conducted its First ever Round table event at the same venue that attracted some of the leading ATOs and EIs attend full day event on 20^th March, sharing some key insights and feedback to AXELOS leadership team.

Aligning to the theme of “ITSM Leadership Congress” – Broader topics were selected to present with both national & International flavors on ITSM Leadership trends.  Rama Prasad Mamidi, President itSMF Singapore welcomed all the delegates, speakers, sponsors and Council members gathering.

The President’s speech was followed by an energetic group of students from Republic Polytechnic do a group dance of rock & roll to pep up the whole conference using their electrifying performance.

The GOH, Leong See Sum – CIO of Defense Science and technology Agency (DSTA) mentioned that Singapore is the Asian hub for IT Service Management.

The Conference was divided in to two tracks based on choices and 3 key notes that had the entire audience attend at the big room

Some key aspects that would be of interest to know from this conference

a)      First 20 registrants received  a free 1 year itSMF Membership worth of SGD 200

b)      MoU was signed between itSMF Singapore & EXIN to collaborate and provide value to itSMF Members.

c)       This is one of the very few chapters in the world that provides global members of  itSMF voting power and acceptance to represent Executive Council/Board.

d)      AXELOS decided to host its first Round table event at Singapore and also chose to participate as the first Asian itSMF Conference.

e)      The Conference focused on diversified topics like Green IT, Service Governance Consultancy, The Era of End User Experience, Transitioning Services into Production, ITSM story telling, CSI in action, Leadership transformation,  Emotional Intelligence in action and Future Best Practices . Click Here

Running two tracks simultaneously has its fair share of pros & cons – However all presentations had pragmatic use cases, case studies in demonstrating ITSM leadership trends and best practices.

Four sessions that received maximum kudos from the feedback received from delegates were

 “Service Governance” from Peter Brooks, ITSM – Story Telling by Rui Soares,  Leadership Transformation -Be a professional problem solver by Matt Fourie  & Green IT by Ian Toland

I was particularly impressed by two sessions that appealed to me easily in both our personal and Professional life.   a) ITSM – Storing telling way   b) Emotional Intelligence in action

Rui Soares faced the challenge of doing a session parallel to AXELOS Peter Hepworth, but attracted quite significant interest and kept the audience captivated. I was glad to be a recipient of his personal drawing gifted towards audience question.

Drawing the technical sessions to a closure, Dominic Siow made an emphatic & energetic presentation inspiring all the delegates providing key takeaways to master emotional intelligence in both professional and personal life.

The Panel discussion had 4 panelists, 2 of them were representatives from end user organizations like Changi Airport & Citibank, while 2 were from itSMF Singapore and itSMF Australia respectively.  Panelists discussed about challenges, market trends and adoption of ITSM across different domains and industry sectors. The session was lively and little animated when the audience started debating on business value from IT Service Management.

There was plenty of traction during tea-breaks, lunch break & registration time among delegates, sponsors, speakers and council members.  I had some great discussion from practitioners and representatives of end-user organization on the context of how ITSM is creating the right value proposition to yield true business outcomes.

The Master of Ceremony - Marco & Ayish did a fabulous job in articulating a story thread from the beginning till the end creating logical continuity of flow from one session to another.

Vinay Jain, VP of itSMF Singapore proposed the vote of thanks followed by the big raffle draw and number of lucky draw prizes.

Later in the evening, the Annual Members night had a good informal get together of all itSMF members, speakers and sponsors to network with 8 course round table dinner, followed by cultural performance. 

 

 

Personally, I felt reasonably satisfied to have been part of this final conference as a Board member and had a great experience being part of the Speaker Panel & organizing committee.

In case you had participated in the conference, we would like to know your candid feedback and suggestions for improvement that can be made next year

TFT 14 - Best Practice Frameworks and Standards - Why complicate? Be Pragmatic

Best Practice Frameworks and Standards adoption- Why complicate? Be Pragmatic

Today we have several compelling best practice frameworks like ITIL, CobiT, CMMI and industry standards like ISO 20000 that makes organizations ponder the best way to go about and leverage maximum benefits. This talk would focus with pragmatic case study to illustrate a simplified approach and methodology to fit the framework and standard to the Organizational environment.

This talk is available as part of TFT14, done on 18th Feb 2014. Hope you enjoyed and feel free to share to your friends and colleagues

Link to recording: http://tomorrowsfuturetoday.com/tft14/suresh-gp

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/ServiceDeskInstitute/tft14-suresh-gp

Beware – Don’t Let Branding Make you Blind

This blog stems from my recent experience and insight of how two of the best reputed companies in the globe delivered an unbelievable customer service experience.
As you might be well aware, Emirate airlines was named as the World`s Best airline in 2013 and the recent narration makes me wonder, if we are being misled by branding and awards
Five of the passengers had lost their baggage and did not receive it even after 40 hours, first update of missing baggage came after 36 hours, paid phones for customer service had a wait time of 25 minutes with no response, none of the emails sent to the service desk or twitter postings were even acknowledged. On top of all these, the staff were rude to passengers. More detailed insights from Vinod`s blog


While I can understand that there are technical and logistical glitches likely to happen, the aspects detailed above clearly indicate a fundamental failure to provide a supporting and courteous customer experience.
This cannot be termed as a one-off incident because there are clear disconnects at various touch points making it a pathetic and frustrating end-user experience.  From a Service Management perspective, I would focus on 4 main issues.


a)     Lack of ownership of the Service Desk to acknowledge, update progress and communicate to the user
b)     Staffing & Role fitment issues for various modes of email, phone, social media in addressing queries
c)     Behavior and attitude of customer service staff demonstrates lack of training, enablement and more importantly basic customer service etiquette
d)     Lack of Customer Liaison Champion or leader to be in charge, manage customer expectation and bring situation under control

The 2nd case is that of Fiat India where there was no customer redressal policy when one of its dealers, was at fault.
My friend had taken his Fiat Linea for service to get a break-fix done for an issue that occurred during his long distance travel. The dealer’s service engineers diagnosed it wrongly, suggested the owner should pay the charges without approaching insurance agency in order to save the no-claim bonus. After a few days, the issue reoccurred and highlighting that the dealer had done a shoddy job in fixing the root cause. During the time the car was with the dealer the front panel of dashboard buttons had been mishandled by technicians. So now the dealer does not own the charges even when they admit their carelessness and negligence in fixing it right first time. So when we escalated it to the customer service manager of Fiat India, there was a shocking excuse that they don’t have a customer redressal system if the dealer is at fault.

These reveal some startling aspects of Service (mis)management that can be summarized as follows

a)     Setting up of prerequisite criteria of requirements & compliance aspects before qualifying authorized dealers was not done in the first place.
b)     Absence of governance and control of dealer performance to the Fiat end users (Actions on feedback from customer, Customer redressal system, penalties)
c)     Lack of a clearly defined escalation path to get control of the situation and  address customer pain swiftly

Would not the lack of ownership by Fiat for the dealer`s mistake cost them dearly in terms of reputation and good faith?

Let’s not get carried  away by terms like value, customer delight when we are struggling to get the basics right and in spite of following the modus  operandi and standard escalation protocols, no result has happened for a month.

What can we do about it? As consumers, you have every right to voice your pain and publicize when the branded companies are refuse to admit and remediate for inconvenience.

So provide checks and balance to highlight the pathetic service and pass on the note to your friends and peers to be extra vigilant without blindly falling into a trap.

With the social media advantage, exercise your weapons to force companies to be accountable for their shortcoming and deliver corrective action and prevent such things happen in future.
Finally don’t get carried away by branding and certified standards.  Let’s ensure companies do not stay complacent on and rely on past laurels and history.   Will this be a wakeup call?

This blog post was published on Shift on 5th March 2014 Beware-dont-let-branding-make you blind

ITSM India Podcast - Meeting with AXELOS CEO

On 5th March 2014, I had the opportunity of having 1-1 with Peter Hepworth, CEO of AXELOS as part of 4th ITSM India Podcast discussing about ITIL Roadmap, ITSM in academia, Cost of Exam impact to Indian Market, Ways & Means India can contribute to the best practice roadmap and means to get engaged to take it forward.  Peter was candid enough to be open and transparent in his communications and highlighted the importance of India as a Strategic Important Market for AXELOS.

http://shiftmediainc.com/2014/03/03/itil-india-podcast-peter-hepworth-axelos/

Can ITSM Help to Organize Events Better? A Case Study

As a practitioner of IT Service Management, I am often questioned on the relevance of ITIL^® beyond IT, and here is a classic example of my experience .

Recently, I had the experience of attending the Edinburgh International Science Festival at Bangalore and it was quite an eye opener. The event organizers had offered tickets online through a couple of websites, and also in person. I happened to sign up for this event on the last day and was left with only the option to book through ticketgenie.com. We reached the venue to get our e-vouchers validated with credentials only to find a long queue at the entrance.
I was surprised to see that there were two Service Desk staff sitting idle as they were monitoring the tickets from other websites, while one person at ticketgenie was struggling to take care of a few hundred.
A simple option of Capacity Planning based on requests received could have handled the validation and issue of hard copy tickets much faster.
I did go and talk to the other folks working about the option of adding more counters to facilitate quick processing, but nobody seem to pay attention. This clearly demonstrated that there was no Incident Management process in place to resolve requests and yield better customer satisfaction.
After a heated debate, we did enter the premises to find that each activity or experiment had a specific time slot to be adhered and booked in person. Each slot could accommodate only specific number of people for the 35- 40 minute interval. This meant that parents had to do the standing on the queues while children would go on their own to watch the experiments and science shows. So the fun of parent and child watching and working together on robotics, electronics, light and sound experiments was totally missed. This demonstrated absence of understanding customer requirements and expectations which is the fundamental prerequisite of hosting a Service Desk.
One striking difference in the whole episode was the food service (Chinese, Indian, Continental, Asian), which had provisions in plenty to accommodate the rise in demand with ease. This confirmed that good business practice was driving things from the front (with the customer in mind) . It was evident that Demand Management process had been well ingrained to facilitate business outcomes.
As expected, a monsoon played the spoilsport and had the last laugh with a heavy downpour. People were forced to stick to indoor events, and then persistent rain caused a total power outage. It was shocking (pun intended) to note that the backup generator did not start as expected which means neither IT Service Continuity nor business continuity plan were in place. The rest of the experiments and shows had to be suspended indefinitely as there was no target resolution. I wondered to myself whether, if they had understood the principles of Problem Management or Knowledge Management, they could have have effectively handled these issues based on previous experiences and best practices.
I hope that these aspects would at least be considered in alignment with ITSM during the next event to make it a rewarding and memorable customer experience.

This post was published originally on Sep 18 at HDIConnect  http://www.hdiconnect.com/blogs/servicemanagement/2013/09/can-itsm-help-to-organize-events-better-a-case-study.aspx