There has never been a more compelling reason to adopt the best service management practises than having to make the most of lean IT budgets. As the song use to say, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” and service delivery departments are as hard headed as they come.

While the techniques of investment appraisal have long been used in IT to evaluate the business benefits of spend on development projects, they are rarely used by IT services departments because the linkage between investment levels, return on investment (ROI) and the ongoing costs of delivery has not been properly articulated. This is a pity, because the cheapest service is almost always the most effective – as it cuts out waste and delivers value!

The official ITIL version 3 definition of a service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve, without the ownership of specific costs and risks. What this means in practice is that a service should achieve what the customer wants, at a price they are prepared to pay and without worrying about it going wrong. A service that doesn’t worry the customer when it goes wrong is well managed if it doesn’t jeopardise their business goals and they have trust in the delivery power. This isn’t new, but is far from current industry practice as evidenced by the continual wave of outsourcing (and new in sourcing) deals being reported.

A major survey carried out recently of 2,600 service projects in 550 different companies returned some surprising results. Over 75 percent of these projects were completed in order to improve customer service, and yet only 12 percent of them had yielded any form of financial benefit. Of course not all projects will show a financial return, although it could be argued that the cost of poor service will lead to loss of customer confidence and so addressing this concern will show a benefit – although the organisations concerned did not generally take this into account in their submissions. Many projects were felt to have some financial justification, although there was little or no evidence provided of a detailed, robust or consistent ROI process to demonstrate the value. Despite this measurement of value derived from these projects was thought to be important in 37 percent of the companies surveyed.

What could you do to cut costs while dramatically increase Service Management?

How about updating your IT Service Desk Application with one that will not only look after your ITSM (IT Service Management) but can also be deployed in other areas of Service Management such as Facilities.

Oxygen Service Desk empowers organisations with a fully automated ITMS enhancing service quality, making best use of available resource while improving the efficiency of IT operation.

Rapid Implementation:

Typically with one of our Consultants we can install and deploy our Service Desk in as little as two days.

Integration:

Integration with Microsoft Active Directory using the same database, Active Directory also allows you to assign policies, deploy software, and apply critical updates to your organisation. This data can be imported and synchronised meaning that there is no need to invest large amounts of time re-keying information.

Further integration with systems management tools and other business applications provide Service Desk operators with access to live and complete information about users and assets increasing the speed and accuracy of incident management.

Web Based Self Service Portal:

The Oxygen Client Self Service Portal enables customers to take ownership of their own incidents, logging, tracking and accessing self help through the Oxygen Knowledge Base, all via a web browser. Our Clients and Service Desk Operators can also publish their own documents, in virtually any format including, HTML, Microsoft Office documents, AVI’s and PDF's.

Flexible Licensing:

Every module within the Oxygen Service Desk is included there are no additional costs. That includes Incident Manager, Problem Manager, CMDB, Service Level Management, License Manager, E-Mail Manager, Active Directory and Client Self Service Portal.

We were also the first company to offer a true on-demand SaaS (Software as a Service) license Model. Unlike most companies Oxygen is an original 100% web based developed application.

Perpetual licenses are also available as either named or unnamed (concurrent).

To test drive Oxygen click here.