Posts Tagged ‘reporting’
HPSU attendees speak: why is reporting awesome?
June 16th, 2010We are the Champions (of reporting)
June 1st, 2010The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the 19th FIFA World Cup, the premier international football tournament. It is scheduled to take place between 11 June and 11 July 2010 in South Africa. The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the culmination of a qualification process that began in August 2007 and involved 204 of the 208 FIFA national teams. As such, it matches the 2008 Summer Olympics as the ports event with the most competing nations. The thirty-two countries that are qualified are ‘fighting’ for the tournament to decide which country can be crowned as World Champion for the next 4 years.
To achieve the goal to be the World Champion the team of trainers/coaches, players and all kind of staff members (doctors, chefs, dieticians, etc) need to find the right chemistry. This chemistry and right communication in all kind of ways are extremely important to achieve the goal of being the next World Champions. As a natural born Dutch guy I hope the Dutch team, aka the Oranje (Orange), will perform great, but I completely accept that England are going to win – because Wayne Rooney is the best player in the world.
Next to the football Orange team there is another Orange team, the Westbury Orange team. We have our managers as our coaches. We have our R&Defense as the engine of the team. We have Sales and Marketing as our midfield who are exploring the outside world. Our consultants are the attackers who are finishing off the work by implementing our powerful SMI reporting solution at the customers side, or, in other words, scoring the goals. And last but absolutely not least, we have our Support department as our staff to facilitate and to support the internal Westbury Orange team players and of course all our customers.
The Westbury Orange team has been putting their strength together to create chemistry and this Orange team full of chemistry was able to bring you a powerful reporting solution like SMI Suite. I dare to call it the World Champion of reporting solutions on HP 
Service Center / Service Manager. I hope you’ll agree with that.
On behalf of the Westbury Orange team I wish you a great World Cup next month and I hope the best for your favorite country – although I hope the Orange will reach the final and lose to England. If not the other Orange team is already a World Champion.
Martin
Self Service Reporting for ITSM delivered!
May 21st, 2010My 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
The brains behind HP Service Manager
May 4th, 2010While studying massage I thought of some comparisons with my work at Westbury [bear with him, this is going somewhere interesting - Westblog Ed].
In the world of massage, anatomy is a very important part. Anatomy is the biological science concerned with the structure of the human body, including the human bones, muscles, ligaments and other structures. The most common functions are to hold the body together and to make it possible to move the body. The processes of how every structure of the body works together are very complex. 
Luckily we have a brain that’s taking care of all the complexity and a nervous system that’s taking care of all kind of communication between all structures. This saves us a lot of energy.
When I look at the HP ServiceCenter / Service Manager (SC/SM) database I see a similarity in the complexity. Maybe not that complex but when you think of reporting on the SC/SM database you need high skilled people (sort of like surgeons) to make reports and even then it’s not always possible to report on the subject you want to report on.
Westbury has created the ‘brain’ of SC/SM. This ‘brain’ is taking care of organizing the data from the SC/SM database into a relational database with a standard structure so you can easily report on it. Furthermore the ‘brain’ is doing all kind off calculations to enhance the ease of reporting. The ‘brain’ also contains a universe layer on top of the structured database. Next to the ‘brain’ Westbury created a nervous system. This nervous system is taking care of informing the right people at the right time by scheduling and publishing the reports.
And like the real brain, Westbury’s ‘brain’ and ‘nervous system’ can save companies that want to report on SC/SM a lot of energy, along with time and money.
Self Service Reporting!
April 20th, 2010Working on our new web site really triggered me to focus hard on the benefits of SMI Suite, our reporting solution for HP Service Manager/ServiceCenter.
Our main goal with the new site is to make sure that the home page immediately makes clear what SMI Suite does and how it will help our customers. Result of three months of brainstorming and editing is the following intro block that will be prominent on our home page:
Westbury’s SMI suite is the self service reporting solution for HP Service Manager
Do you like it? Is it unambiguous?
The main benefit to extract from this sentence is “self service reporting”. SMI Suite will put the power of reporting in the hands of the power users, the ones really in need of the reports. With SMI suite there is no dependency on internal or external BI specialists, no need for technical, scripting knowledge or endless sessions explaining the reporting requirements to whoever will create them for you. SMI suite will do all the heavy lifting of extracting the data from the HP SM database for you and load it into our own SMI database. The Business Objects layer we created on top of our SMI DB will allow you – by just dragging and dropping the objects – to build your reports and distribute them to those who requested them.
Check out our Test Drive to experience the ease of use of SMI suite yourselves: http://westbury-it.com/solutions/service-management-intelligence-suite/smi-suite-test-drive
The new web site will be up before the HP Universe in Washington DC this June. This means that we will have several more brainstorm and editing sessions over the content and the layout of the web site. Although it will probably never be perfect, the main objective is to be absolutely clear about what we are doing and how it will help our customers. Once the web site has been launched I will definitely check with you all if we have accomplished this goal.
Floris
Get started up with Westbury’s start-up reports!
April 16th, 2010
Our Westbury Service Management Intelligence Suite solution contains a lot of start-up reports. In the past we called them “out-of-the-box reports”, but we changed the name for one very important reason. When one of these report is missing one or more important fields specific to the customer in question, they only have to add the missing fields in to make the report suit their purpose. So “start-up reports” is more accurate because these reports can be modified, customized, copied and changed as much as you like.
It wasn’t until a year after I started working at Westbury that I found out that the out-of-the-box reports could be customized. Now we’re referring to them as start-up reports and that says it all. Hopefully it’s clear that the reports in our SMI Suite are a starting point for you to launch your own, customized initiatives.
Ilse
Boris Evelson: 2nd gen meta driven BI apps
March 17th, 2010Looks like Boris Evelson is quickly becoming Westbury’s most favorite analyst (see post below). In this post Boris explains what he is looking for in, what he calls, 2nd gen meta driven BI apps.
My excitement about blogs like these is obvious, because like 2nd gen BI apps, Westbury’s goal is to auto-generate as many steps as possible out of the ETL components necessary for our SMI suite.
Here’s the link:
Next gen of metadata driven BI apps
Take a look!
Floris
Next gen of metadata driven BI apps
Vivit HP Service Management SIG update
March 8th, 2010Latest news from the Vivit HP Service Management Special Interest Group
HP Service Management at the HP Universe 2010 in Washington DC:
If you’re planning on attending the HP Universe event, there are several activities and sessions taking place that might be of interest to you
1) Vivit training sessions
There are two special Vivit training sessions taking place:
- The first is called ” A practical approach to operational reporting from HP Service Manager and HP Service Center” (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/trainingandcert.html#4) and takes place Monday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm.
- The second is called “HP Service Manager advanced tailoring concepts and best practices” (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/trainingandcert.html#5) and takes place Tuesday morning 8am – 12pm.
2) HP Roundtable session on Service Management (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/roundtables.html#6)
3) Track Sessions – HP Service Manager falls under the umbrellas of both “HP Lifecycle Management” (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/tracks.html#2) and “Pragmatic IT Service Management” (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/tracks.html#15)
Aside from HP Universe there are several other Vivit events coming up with a focus on Service Manager:
1) The Chicago chapter is hosting an ITSM User Group (https://www.vivit-worldwide.org/chapters.cfm?id=122&action=event&chapterid=4&chaptereventid=538), taking place at the DoubleTree, Downers Grove, IL, on 10th March from 10am – 3pm
2) The Colorado chapter’s winter meeting (https://www.vivit-worldwide.org/chapters.cfm?id=122&action=event&chapterid=117&chaptereventid=536) includes sessions on HP’s ITSM roadmap for 2010 and reducing the cost and improving service levels of your help desk. The meeting takes place on March 5th, from 9am to 3pm at Denver Water on 12th Avenue in Denver.
3) The Greater Toronto chapter’s 8th Vivit GTA meeting on 9th March (8:30am to 12pm at HP Canada in Mississauga) will include a presentation by Robert Lee of Achievo on migrating to SM7, and a session on responding more quickly to incidents, by HP’s John Moore.
In other news:
1) Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for the IT Service Desk report (https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-85^12473_4000_100__) pits Service Manager against its competitors
2) HP has released a new video focusing on ITSM: http://h30423.www3.hp.com/index.jsp?fr_story=6d59bb1b1c901defc095321a2717b0b9a87189d6&rf=bm
Other resources:
The HP Service Management SIG pages on the Vivit site (http://www.vivit-worldwide.org/chapters.cfm?id=122&action=content&contentid=1094&chapterid=186) includes a list of forums (or fora for those of you who had the benefit of a classical education) where you can discuss, ask and answer anything about HP Service Manager.
See you at HP Universe 2010!
Floris
Why isn’t BI / reporting supporting your ITSM efforts?
February 18th, 2010I read an interesting blog on complaints and potential reasons around BI/reporting in the organization.
10 meanings of why-my-BI-application-is-not-useful
By Boris Evelson
Which complaints and/or reasons are (most) applicable to you, your organization or your customers?
An overview from the blog with an ITSM perspective:
1. The data is not there, because
- It’s not in the HP service management application (e.g. HP Service Manager)
- The data is of poor quality (e.g. out of date, inconsistent or not complete)
- Can’t find the right report
- Can’t find the right metadata
- Can’t find the data
- I don’t have access rights to the data I am looking for
- Was not trained
- Was trained, but the application is not intuitive, user friendly enough
- Need extensive knowledge of the underlying HP database structure
- Need SQL knowledge to create reports
- I don’t have support staff
- I am low on BI priority list
- Create a report/query
- Run/execute a report/query
- Faceted search
- SQL on data with uneven, unbalanced, ragged, recursive hierarchies
- Run a specific report
- Pick specific facts and dimensions
And 2 additional ones that I added
- My application doesn’t provide self service reporting capabilities
- My organization doesn’t allow self service reporting
- My application to present helpful information not just present data
Let me know what you think!
David vH
Other blogs that we like: updated
November 12th, 2009Happy is the clam that gets to spend all day surfing the internet looking for interesting stuff. Sadly most of my working week involves actual work, but I do get to spend some time hunting out other blogs that cover similar ground to this one. So I figured it was probably worth adding a post listing these out, and adding new ones as I go along.
So this list is very much a work in progress and I’ll be adding more sites as I come across them. If you write a blog about ITSM, change management, HP, etc, then please let me know and I’ll take a look.
The list:
Leading at Lightspeed by Eric Douglas - Executive Business Coaching
Mainly business coaching stuff, but with an interesting section on change management with some interesting things to say
The Business Intelligence Blog by BI Guru
As referenced in another recent post, Maloy has some really interesting things to say about practical use of Business Objects.
The IT Skeptic
Reads a bit like the people so gloriously sent up over at Speak Your Branes (a personal and perennial favorite of mine) but actually has some interesting things to say.
Business Objects Tips
This is the blog section of the Business Objects Tips site. It’s slightly self-promoting (something we’re never guilty of, natch) but there are some nuggets of interest in there as well.
Tom
