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Report Openness our window-dressing?

August 25th, 2010

I feel we are about to enter a new area of Openness. How are you responding to that? How are you using those opportunities in day-to-day practice? Are you catching that train on time?

At Westbury we’re entering a new stage of Openness by means of Yammer. We use it for expressing feelings, ideas, vision, and performance and to just celebrate victories internally at this first stage. It will prepare us using this culture of Openness for the next stage in which we will be sharing with our allies outside our organization (partners, customers, industry specialists …). Openness provides new opportunities of idea generation, vision commitment breaking through all hierarchical settings and it (will) attracts customers, partners and talent. Some regions like Australia show where we are headed. And it’s more and more influencing fields of expertise like communication, leadership, competitive advantage, idea generation … Just notice the headlines and different articles.

On the other hand window-dressing seems almost normal behavior in the world of finance (products, financial stability …). Don’t we all know the examples by now? In an other field like IT Service Management we often notice the same kind narrowness and fear to share figures and ideas on the performance of processes and units. It’s a heavy burden for those involved and they often strangle with new improvement initiatives (processes, products, services) which in the end should lead to new competitive advantages. It results in static, nothing saying reports instead of reports being information drivers for improvement and idea generation to get there.

It’s difficult to move forward. Sometimes it seems we need a crisis and new social developments to open our eyes to really start providing data en stages to discuss these problems and data into the Openness.

How to start in the field of service management? Ask questions and provide openness. I think it’s just as simple as that. Questions like: Are our reports really reflecting the correct picture? Are we providing the right data at this moment? What does that data actually say? And if we compare this with other data, what does it mean to us and our customers? And discuss those kinds of questions with managers, colleagues and customers. Perhaps by using network tools like Yammer?

Be aware that we can’t keep up window-dressing taking into account that more and more real improvements and authenticity are counting in this world within the social context in which more and more of your performance, data and comments on your organization will be available and free accessible on the Internet (benchmark sites or sites like http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm).

Are you prepared to clean the window and share your lights?

Also check out:

http://www.itsmportal.com/columns/clean-window-if-you-want-more-light

http://www.yammer.com

http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2010/08/the_future_of_w.html

Martijn

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Strategies for Doing More BI with Less

August 4th, 2010

Is there a second economic downturn coming up? When will it be possible based on the first downturn to do more with more? Will this ever be the case in the near future?

Interesting research from TDWI among BI adopters shows the following popular strategies to squeeze more out of existing BI investments:

1. Use more BI Self-Service as this offloads reporting from IT and empowers users to get the data they need & when they need it;

2. The implementation of a BI Competency Center and/or the use of small-inter disciplinary teams;

3. Reduction or elimination of spreadmarts;

4. Using existing tools instead of purchasing new ones as well as cutting-edge approaches such as the application of agile or spiral development techniques.

5. BI tools consolidation.

Especially 1 and 2 were rated as the most important strategies to do more with less. From our engagements we notice the same. Our product is a typically a self service solution and attracts more and more attention this year. We earlier choose the path of self service and based on experiences and customer requests most of our development efforts are heading that way.

An interesting downside mentioned in this research is report chaos which occurs when BI teams implement self-service BI without governance or controls.

Together with the second important strategy mentioned above it more and more shows that the organization and processes around BI are crucial. This underlines our vision that successful reporting and day to day BI practice should be embedded in a governance structure (BI strategy, reporting process, organization and roles).

Are you ready to Do more BI with Less?

Feel free to respond or to contact us.

Source: TDWI report – Getting the Greatest BI Bang for Your Buck http://tdwi.org/Articles/2010/08/04/BI-Bang-for-Your-Buck.aspx

Martijn

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Vivit training completed successfully

June 15th, 2010

Yesterday at HP Software Universe, here in Washington D.C. we conducted a training session in association with Vivit, the official HP user group, around reporting options for users of HP Service Manager and HP ServiceCenter.

The session was well attended – not only in terms of numbers showing up, but also in the quality of discussion and input from the attendees.

The goal of the session was to identify challenges that people were having in reporting from ServiceCenter and Service Manager, and then to look at the solutions available, including Crystal Reports and – of course – SMI Suite.

David vH led the session, assisted ably by Richard and David dSA. We’d like to thank everyone who attended for their participation and input – and we hope the session was useful.

Tom

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Westbury Supported Platforms Lists and Support Policy

May 28th, 2010

Support is an important part of the software industry. Also Westbury has a department that supports several HP and Westbury products. If you want to know which products are currently supported or will be out of support in the near future, visit the Westbury site at: http://westbury-it.com/support-a-services/support

You will find the supported platforms lists and the support policy of the Westbury products. In the near future we will have a supported platform list for all third party software (For example HP Service Desk, HP Service Manager, HP Service Centre, Business Objects etc.) available. We hope you will benefit from this Westbury service!

Martin

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SMI Suite: the Dentist of ServiceCenter / Sevice Manager

May 26th, 2010

Six or seven weeks ago I had a terrible toothache. I knew I was pain and I knew it was something with my teeth, but I didn’t know exactly where it was coming from. Because I hoped it was a temporary thing I relieved my pain with painkillers. But the pain didn’t go away and I had to take further steps. Luckily we have a dentist who is an expert on teeth and who  specializes in searching for the cause of the pain. One time it’s harder to find the cause of the pain than the other, but finally the dentist will find the cause. Therefore I will visit the dentist today. A bit late after so many weeks you would say? Sometimes it takes a while to proceed the right way.

This is the same way it works for SMI Suite. A lot of organizations are suffering within their IT organization hoping it will be an temporary problem and will be solved by time. And for all that they know they are suffering, they do not know exactly where the pain is coming from. After a while they realize that  a solution is not going to fall out of the sky. To find the cause of the pain they need to report on their IT environment and processes. Luckily for them, SMI Suite can help with finding the cause of the pain so the suffering organization will be relieved.
Martin

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Self Service Reporting for ITSM delivered!

May 21st, 2010

My favorite BI analyst Boris Evelson of Forrester discusses in his latest blog the alignment between the business and IT for BI. The question on the table is if the main requirements for the business (BI should be fast, agile and easy to use) with regards to BI can ever be fulfilled by IT? Because of the business requirements BI vendors are very much focused on developing tools for Self-Service Reporting to put the power of BI in the hands of the end user. Although there is a long way to go, Boris predicts that Next Gen BI tools will close the gap between business and IT.

For Westbury closing the gap between business and IT for IT Service Management is what we do! Like Boris mentioned in his blog, BI vendors like Westbury take care of the back end (ETL, reporting database) of the BI solution and provide the end user (IT process owners) with an easy to use, non-technical user interface (see diagram)

The main challenge for our customers (the IT process owners) in getting the data out of their Service Management tooling is that they are fully dependent on either their internal BI team or some external BI consultants. This dependency is expensive and causes a huge delay  in getting the right reports out to the requesters (the business). Exactly like Boris predicts in his blog, the end users (again, the business) want to create or modify the reports themselves. IT (in our case Westbury) delivers the technical environment and out of the box BI tooling (SMI foundation) that moves the reporting power in to the hands of the end user.

Self Service Reporting for IT Service Management delivered!

Floris

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Banging glasses or making music?

April 21st, 2010

Are your organization’s reports hitting the mark or are they to IT Metrics what the “Skoltimaier 7even” are to the music industry?

All too often we see organizations where countless IT reports are generated each week, month etc.. Often such reports are based on Andy’s clever Crystal Report or some other SQL query, the data is then exported to MS Excel  where it is massaged so that pretty charts can be exported to MS PowerPoint. Although these reports take a huge chunk of time consuming manual labor, it is important to question how good these reports really are. Ask yourself the following questions for each of the reports:

-          Is there a clearly defined and communicated goal and purpose for the report?

-          Who is the audience for the report? Who is receiving the report? Why?

-          Do you know who actually looks at the reports?

-          Are there any formal communications conducted that use the reports as their basis and do the reports ever lead to concrete follow up actions?

-          Is there a feedback loop in place to validate the purpose and contents of the reports?

-          Are you able to respond and keep reports current and valid in the goals they are trying to meet?

It takes a considerable effort to be in a situation where the above questions can be answered in a positive and mature manner. However with the right reporting solution and the correct approach it is possible starting tomorrow.

So what’s it going to be? Are you going to continue ‘banging glasses in flashy suits’ or are you going to make some music?

David dSA

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Metric of the month – First Call Resolution

April 19th, 2010

At Metricnet the current metric of the month is First Call Resolution.

This metric is one of the metrics that’s in use at almost all of our customers and if your not measuring it yet, you should!

Check out http://www.metricnet.com/metric_month.html for their coverage of the metric.

Of course we ship a start up report around First Call Resolution with our SMI Suite product and we actually provide an easy to configure computed boolean as there are numerous variations in determining whether or not a ticket has been resolved at first call.

David vH

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Gartner Magic Quadrant: BI tools

April 7th, 2010

You may remember a few months ago Gartner produced one of their magic quadrant reports on ITSM platforms – something we all read with interest here at Westbury Towers because we were keen to know how HP Service Manager fared against the competitors. We have, after all, hitched our wagon to Service Manager’s train, and the perceived value of Service Manager has a knock-on effect for us.

Fast forward a few months and another Gartner magic quadrant is out and again it’s looking at an area pretty close to Westbury: BI tools.

Our relationship with SAP Business Objects isn’t quite the same as our relationship with HP. After all, we’re an OEM reseller of Business Objects – it’s part and parcel of our Service Management Intelligence Suite product. But our solution is also somewhat platform independent when it comes to the BI tool – if you’re standardized on Cognos, for example, we can work with that, and SMI Suite is still very relevant.

So what’s the upshot from Gartner’s exercise in compare and contrast? Well, on their quadrant’s x-axis (“completeness of vision”), SAP Business Objects falls second only to IBM – quite an achievement in a field of fifteen big players. But on the y-axis (“ability to execute”) Gartner has it seventh – still good, but not as good. Overall this places Business Objects in the “leaders” quadrant.

On a more detailed level, Gartner says that “BusinessObjects’ reporting and ad hoc query capabilities continue to be cited as its top strength by its customers,” and that it provides “leading-edge capabilities, many [of] which complement its BI platform, in the areas of collaboration and decision support, text analytics, in-memory analytics, OnDemand BI (SaaS), search coupled with BI, data integration with lineage and impact analysis, and data quality.”

In the “cautions” column, however, Gartner warns that “customer support ratings for SAP are lower than for any other vendor in our customer survey”

Overall SAP comes out as one of the better, more established players, albeit with some areas to improve on.
Read the full report here: http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/oracle/article121/article121.html

Tom

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Carlsberg don’t make customers… part four: the department head

March 23rd, 2010

Well, it’s been a while, but I’m finally back to conclude this run down of our ideal customer profiles with part four – the Department Head. I’ve already looked at the process guy, the tech guy and the budget guy.

To recap, the process guy is usually our first point of contact. He wants to improve process, drive down IT costs, improve efficiency and so forth, and realizes that he needs to understand, empirically and backed up with real data, what the IT department is doing. The tech guy comes in to verify that what we claim SMI Suite can do, it can actually do, and that we really can deliver an out of the box solution with none of the data warehouse, BI team, dedicated DBA nonsense that you would usually expect. Once they’re both on-board, they’ll bring in the budget guy to approve the spend – which, given the cost of the alternatives, is rarely a big ask.

But often there’s one final person we need to convince, and that’s the department head. He’s the guy with overall responsibility, the one with the vision for how he wants his department to operate. Often we find that he simply isn’t interested in the level of detail that speaks to the other three. He isn’t immediately concerned with exactly what SMI Suite does, or how it does it.

He is, however, concerned about what the implementation of SMI Suite will mean to the big picture, because he’s the ultimate big picture guy. He wants to know how much money SMI Suite is going to save him, and how long it’s going to take for him to get a return on his investment. He wants to know which other big players – and particularly those in the same sector, or those of a similar size – are using SMI Suite and what their experiences are. The flipside of that is that once SMI Suite is up and running, and the ROI well demonstrated, he is usually happen to give us the sort of customer testimonial that we can then use on the next department head we encounter.

That concludes this little series, which I like to think of as a sort of latter day Charles Dickens kind of a deal. Shorter than A Christmas Carol. Slightly less tedious than Bleak House. I hope you enjoyed it.
Tom

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