Guidelines for Creating a Service Desk
Based on ITIL Initiatives

by Lisa Steele

Most organizations have some sort of an IT help desk staffed by individuals who field calls from users, and then go into firefighting mode to solve users’ problems. However, some IT organizations have transformed their inefficient help desk into a proactive, service desk that offers high productivity and efficiency, but at a lower cost than before. Major companies, such as Procter & Gamble and Caterpillar, have accomplished this goal by adopting ITIL initiatives, a standard set of best practices for lowering and improving the quality of IT service delivery. (See What’s ITIL? A Question Every IT Professional Should Ask)

The Role of Service Desk Based on ITIL

A service desk designed according to ITIL initiatives functions as the day-to-day operational interface between the IT organization and its users for achieving the organization’s goals. The service desk also becomes the focal point for integrating the five disciplines in ITIL’s service support management processes – incident, problem, configuration, change, and release management. To this end, service desk staff must be able to communicate effectively with users, via a number of different channels, as well as use technology, in order to close the loop on tasks in each of the five ITIL disciplines.

How to Get Started

The first step in developing a service desk calls for identifying where you are starting from. Assessment should include a formal review of processes and procedures based on the guidelines in the ITIL Best Practice for Service Support volume. These guidelines will include measuring service performance against targets, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and aligning services with customers’ requirements. You need to compare similar operations and benchmarks to gauge improvements.

ITIL guidelines call for you to define the key service desk processes, not just what they are, but how they operate, and what affect and significance each process has to your organization. These definitions will encompass the following:

· Staffing – quality and number of people

· Daily operational procedures

· Incident processes

· Request handling and workflows

· Incident monitoring and tracking

· Escalation and closure

· Management information

· Call volumes, workload, performance, and trends

The outcome of all this should provide you with a better understanding of user requirements, service level agreements, and the operational level agreements that underpin them.

Select the Right Staff

ITIL guidelines place a lot of emphasis on getting the right people from the start or training the staff you already have. A proactive service desk must have a motivated and positive staff. A good staff becomes a service desk most precious asset. So invest in your staff. This effort might mean recruiting new staff and supporting them with training, tools, and resources to be effective. Soft skills, such as good verbal and written communications, hold as much weight as technical or business knowledge. Don’t forget to involve the staff with decisions about the service desk.

Think Service Always

ITIL guidelines call for thinking service desk. To this end, make sure your organization includes the service desk when it considers new business or new direction. Prepare the service desk to handle a new product, or service, or new users. The service desk needs to be involved from the start and have plenty of time to plan for any changes in priorities and workloads. Staff should help define service processes and priorities. The staff should get involved with transition teams to help ensure smooth running of a new business or a merged organization.

User perception of the service ranks alone side of how the was improvement. In some cases, the service desk staff might find it appropriate to work with users to integrate some of their processes with those of the service desk. Such an effort could provide a seamless support environment. For example, an organization might want to incorporate second line support, problem management, and change management facilities into its own service desk operations.

Insist on the Appropriate Technology

The ITIL guidelines stress using technology appropriate to meet the organization’s required service levels. The service desk needs to maintain or have access to a wide range of information and facilities that can be provided to users. Some of this might include reference material, such as the corporate file storage structure, contract documentation, process definitions and scripts, and frequently asked questions. Some material might have been interactive, such as links to message boards, intranet services, and external Web sites. Some material might be designed to coordinate service and change management capabilities. For example, this material might enable the service desk staff to manage problem resolution or enabling to assess, coordinate, and deliver service more effectively to users.

Recent advances in service desk tools have included remote (virtual) desktop, and network and application support. (See Tips for Evaluating Service Desk Tools) Service desk tools now incorporate facilities to identify and to resolve incidents before they affect users. In many cases, the tools can resolve problems without intervention from the service desk staff. When a user needs to contact the service desk, he or she has a range of self-help facilities, such as Web and intranet access, incident logging, incident status reports, and other information can help the individual to resolve the problem. These tools can reduce the need for users to contract the service desk for mundane reasons, and thus free the service desk staff to focus on more pressing tasks.

Links between system management and service management tools can provide invaluable insight into the performance of the complete technical infrastructure and can even highlight where attention is required to fix emerging problems. With early warning of failure, missed thresholds, and poor performance, a department manager can decide on the most appropriate actions to eliminate the causes.

The most advanced service desks, as described in the ITIL guidelines, also support functions such as inventory management and software distribution. Integration with each vendor’s Web site can provide an additional layer of service that be provided seamlessly to users. For example, one such service might include allowing users to order and download upgrades and new software. Vendors might even be prepared to fund part of the project in return for the benefits they receive.

Seek Support from Other ITIL Adopters

Never feel that you are alone in carrying out a proactive service desk based on ITIL guidelines. You’re not. Seek out IT professionals at other organizations who might have faced similar challenges to you and might be happy to share them with you. Visit these individuals and see how they work. Look at the processes you can adopt and check out businesses in other sectors. Most of all, joint the not-for-profit IT Service Management Forum or itSMF (www.itsmf.com) promotes ITIL through its 8,000 members worldwide. Be prepared to share ideas by attending itSMF seminars and itSMF regional groups.

Transforming your help desk into a proactive service might sound like a daunting task. You can lessen the task with careful planning and sensible implementation using ITIL initiatives.

Guidelines for Evaluating Service Desk Tools

When it comes to selecting service desk tools, you might want to narrow your search to those process integrated tools that completely support the five disciplines in the ITIL Best Practice for Service Support volume. For example, a service desk tool integrated with change management can reduce disruptions in the IT infrastructure. This type of tool can locate critical components with performance problems, which can help service desk staff solve user problems more quickly.

If the service desk tool can expand the concept of service management to include other increasingly important processes, such as capacity planning, then IT department can reuse and integrate the knowledge that is captured in this tool. For example, ITIL guidelines provide a problem-management process where an IT professional spend time investigating the root cause of a problem to prevent the problem from reoccurring. A service desk tool should have the capability to relate incidents to problems so that a service desk staff member can make use of the knowledge that is captured with the problem record for faster resolution. Integration between the service desk tool and the systems management environment can enable planned-outage planning support based on specific service levels.

When evaluating service desk tools, consider if the service desk tool dictates how to organize the service goal, or if the service desk can tailor the tool to suit its own way of working. Look for a tool that is based on ITIL’s recommendations for the basic organizational structure of the service desk. At the same time, you should be able to tailor the tool so that it can integrate seamlessly with the existing organization infrastructure. Each organization will have unique escalation procedures, notification rules, and approval processes to which the service desk should conform.

So, when evaluating service tools, ask yourself these five questions.

1. Is the tool completely based on ITIL?

2. Does it have the capability to define and to map IT service and their components?

3. Out of the box, does it integrate with the following:

· A confirmation or asset management module?

· A change management module

· A workflow management module

· A service level management module

4. Does the tool allow you to forward of events being generated by a network or systems monitoring tool and communicating back any status change of the incident recorded in the service desk application.

5. Can you easily learn to use the tool, navigate with it, and tailor it to your needs?

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