Developing an IT Service Strategy Part 1 Describing the Challenge

Developing an IT Service StrategyPart 1: Describing the Challenge

Jerry BishopBlog.TheHigherEdCIO.com

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & REFERENCESThis presentation was inspired by the work of Frances X. Frei, Professor Harvard Business School who has written extensively and very insightfully on managing service businesses.Breaking the Trade-Off Between Efficiency Versus Service, HBR Nov 07

Just for Context…

Imagine the effects on a manufacturing businesses efficiencies and quality if they had to deal with their customers walking around the production line involving themselves in the process that makes up the physical value chain.

Now consider…

By contrast, in a service business the customer is an integral part of the value chain, which in many cases is virtual, and customers introduce a tremendous amount of variability while simultaneously demanding quality and consistency of service at a low price.

SERVICE VARIABILITY 5 categories of customer introduced variability

ARRIVAL VARIABILITY

Customers do not want service at the same times which is not always

convenient for the company.

Arrival Variability

Classic IT Approach:

Require appointments or reservations

The IT Challenge: Users cannot predict or plan for when they will need support and they often cannot wait for assistance.

The Result: Inefficiencies and queuing

REQUEST VARIABILITY

Customers’ wants and needs are not the same.

Request Variability

Classic IT Approach:

No substitutions, set expectations, service catalogues

The IT Challenge: Customers want custom, personalized computing experiences

The Result: Needs aren’t being met

CAPABILITY VARIABILITY

Some customers are more capable of assisting in the service while

others require hand-holding.

Capability Variability

Classic IT Approach:

User Training, mentors for executives, help desk

The IT Challenge: More important when customers are active participants in the delivery of a service and support is remote

The Result: Frustration, slow response times

EFFORT VARIABILITY

When customers must perform a role in a service interaction, it’s up

to them how much effort they apply to the task.

Effort Variability

Classic IT Approach:

Create incentives

The IT Challenge: Few incentives to offer of any value, attitudes towards self-support

The Result: Impact on service quality and cost, either directly for the engagement at hand or indirectly for other customers

SUBJECTIVE PREFERENCE VARIABILITY

Customers’ opinions vary widely on what it means to get good

service

Subjective Preference Variability

Classic IT Approach:

Set expectations, tiered services

The IT Challenge: Culture of customer is always right, difficult to manage expectations down

The Result: Makes it that much harder to serve a broad base of customers

Considerations for Outsourcing

• Customers may feel like they have given something up under outsourcing – jobs, higher cost

• Customers expect something more in return usually in the form of premium results

• When you take something away you have to replace it with something of equal or greater value to those affected by it

• Requires deliberate plan to address the value expectation or variability will shift dramatically compounding the situation

PART 2: DEALING WITH VARIABILITYDealing with variability will follow on blog.thehigheredcio.com and be posted to slideshare.net

QUESTIONSJerry Bishopblog.thehigheredcio.com