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IT Service Management Industry Survey Reveals Top Five IT Trends for 2010

This is the 5th year that Consulting-Portal, an IT Service Management (ITSM) consulting firm, has conducted the IT Service Management Industry Survey. This year results pointed to 5 trends that we feel will prevail in 2010:

Organizational governance is still very weak

Software as a Service (SaaS) adoption is on the rise as an ITSM solution

Organizational support for ITSM is on the rise

There is a lot more focus on customer-facing processes like Service Level Management and Service Catalog Management

Auto-Discovery / Dependency Mapping is more popular than ever

For the second year in a row, as little as 29% of organizations surveyed have defined, implemented and enforced ITSM governance in place. Lack of governance makes it hard to comply with standards like Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II, not to mention making it difficult to quantify the return on investment (ROI) from costly IT projects.

Software as a Service, Cloud Computing, Utility Computing - whichever name you prefer, the trend toward customers subscribing to hosted ITSM tools is definitely on the rise having grown from 0 to 17% in just 2 years.

[Full Article] Mar-07-2010

Business "Value" Metrics are Needed to Gauge Data Management and Governance Success

More than half (60.8 percent) of 400 technology executives polled online by Deloitte believe metrics that gauge cost, time, quality and risk, along with governance compliance dashboards, are the most effective types of data management and governance measurements. Polled during a recent Deloitte webcast, executives also believe that focusing attention on the business case for data management is more important than just considering what type of technology might solve information governance issues.

Other notable polling results included:

A mere 7.4 percent of technology executives said their companies tried to implement a data governance program and were either unsuccessful or searching for new ideas and guidance on implementing data governance.

More than a third (36.4 percent) think the chief information officer (CIO) should be the sponsor and accountable for data governance in an organization; 8 percent favored the chief technology officer (CTO).

Just over 20 percent of respondents believed enterprise information asset optimization (i.e. -- data warehouse rationalization) is the most pressing business problem within their organizations; 15.5 percent chose data asset specific optimization (i.e. -- customer, products, and supplier) as their top problem.

[Full Article] Mar-07-2010

Survey: CEOs Prioritizing the People Agenda as a Means to Recover and Grow

Insight from the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) 13th Annual CEO Survey, suggests that CEOs are prioritizing the people agenda as a means to recover and grow.

The research found some areas of weakness have been highlighted by the recession and the vast majority (79%) of CEOs expect to overhaul the way their organizations manage people during change as a consequence of the economic crisis. Attending to staff morale was highlighted by three-quarters (75%) of CEOs as an area also in need of reform and increased investment. Some 59% said they will make changes to flexible working while 55% will revise global mobility arrangements such as staff travel.

Despite a massive majority seeing the existence of a talented, well-skilled and well-educated workforce as critical to future competitiveness, only one in five (20%) think their government has been effective in helping to create a skilled workforce.

Previously released findings showed that CEOs recognize the importance of having the right people in the right place - with over a third (39%) hoping to increase headcount over the next 12 months. That said, 48% stated they had reduced headcount over the last year. Perhaps in recognition of the new skills required of the emerging business environment, more than three-quarters (77%) plan to increase investment in training and development.

79% of global CEOs expect to overhaul the way their organizations manage people though change

Prosperity depends on an increasingly-limited number of talented people producing wealth; only one in five (20%) think their government has been effective in helping to create a skilled workforce

Unanticipated rate and scale of people management changes required in the downturn brought some human capital failings to the surface

Over a third (39%) of CEOs hope to increase headcount over the next 12 months while more than three-quarters (77%) expect to increase investment in training and development

[Full Article] Mar-07-2010

Service Revenue: A Top Goal for Chief Service Officers in 2010

The latest research report published by the Aberdeen Group found that leading organizations are looking to their service resources to generate sustainable and predictable revenue streams to help support margin initiatives. As such, these organizations look to generate nearly 40% of their overall revenue from the service side of the business in 2010, as compared to 35% in 2009.

Research findings indicate that top performing companies are nearly two times as likely as all other companies to leverage contract management and end-to-end service management solutions to support their revenue generation efforts. Along with an increased use of customer relationship management solutions, the revenue generation technology roadmap for these organizations mirrored their stated strategic actions around increased customer visibility, improved collaboration and enhanced contract management. As such, these firms exhibited the following:

15% increase in total service revenue over the last 12 months as opposed to a 1% decrease for all others

A 90% level of customer retention compared to a 74% performance for all others

A 85% current contract renewal rate when compared to a 53% performance for all others

[Full Article] Feb-28-2010

Multichannel Experience most Dysfunctional Aspect of Customer Service

eGain Communications Corporation, a provider of multichannel customer service and knowledge management software, reported that over 70% of leading North American enterprise businesses were rated "below average" or "poor" in multichannel customer service experience.

eGain has been tracking and reporting on the state of customer service in North America and Europe over the last several years through the industry's most comprehensive mystery-shopping multichannel research study. This research provides a holistic assessment of the state of multichannel customer experience within and across phone and eService channels.

Analysts used a "mystery shopping" approach to measure customer service performance in six dimensions: choice of communication channels, email response, web self-service, cross-channel consistency, single-channel cross-agent consistency, and phone customer service. Scores for these metrics were then abstracted to an overall Service Quotient (SQ), on a scale of 0.0 (worst) to 4.0 (best), for each company, as well as for each industry sector and the overall market.

Key findings

The retail sector ranked first in overall customer service, with an “above average” SQ of 2.3, followed by the communications sector (telecom, cable, satellite and Internet services) with a score of 2.2. Although the overall market remained flat in SQ, these two sectors improved their SQ scores over last year.

SQ for the overall market was "below average" at 1.9 out of 4.0, with half of the companies in the "poor" or "below average" categories. There was only marginal improvement over last year's score of 1.8.

All areas except web self-service declined in performance, with web self-service posting a slight increase for the overall market from 1.7 in 2009 to 1.9 in 2010, still "below average".

A shocking 71% of the companies received a "poor" or "below average" score in cross-channel customer experience and 42% received a "poor" or "below average" rating in the cross-agent experience, measured on the phone channel. The percentage of companies that received a poor cross-channel score went up significantly -- from 60% in 2009 to 71% in 2010. The overall market bordered on "poor" in this metric with a score of 1.0.

Top performing sectors in specific aspects of customer service are:

Email customer service: Retail

Web self-service: Retail

Interaction choices: Communications

Phone: Communications

Cross-channel experience: Retail

Cross-agent experience: Consumer goods

[Full Article] Feb-28-2010

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